Best drives for games

Ch3m1c4L · 6 Jun 2013 at 18:56

I have managed to get down <100gb free on my games array, so I need to update it with new drives.
It is currently 3 x 1tb Samsung Spinpoint F1's in Raid 5.

I would normally just buy the newer samsung's but obviously they have been bought up by seagate.

I am looking at 3 x any 2tb drive, or 3 x Seagate Barracuda 3TB 7200RPM. or maybe the 3tv wd greens, but im unsure about putting games on a low spin speed drive?

Anyone got preferences as to which drives are specifically better at the moment? Anything new about to come out that I should wait on?

Ch3m1c4L · 7 Jun 2013 at 01:54

any input? I cant decide

linwelin · 7 Jun 2013 at 13:04

why not an SSD ?

coolamasta · 7 Jun 2013 at 13:26

WD Red's in 2GB or 3TB flavour for sure, amazingly quick drives in Raid-5 and you get reliability as the Red's are designed for Raid and also you get a better warranty, definitely worth the extra money over the Seagates or and of the Green drives

AtaRo · 7 Jun 2013 at 15:40

Get a 3TB or 4TB drive and backup your game in the array and configure your raid 5 to raid 0, giving you another 1TB storage space and a little more speed and just do incremental backup on your game array .
If the array fails you can easily restore it from your backup.
If you must really upgrade your array I suggest WD black drives.

Ch3m1c4L · 7 Jun 2013 at 16:43

Linwelin, I dont have that kind of money lol.

Ataro, I hadnt thought of that, will see if u can work out a good way to do it as I cant fit any more drives in my machine, only replace ones.

Coolamasta, sounds good to me, will get them when ive decided exactly what setup to go with

THanks for the input guys.

AtaRo · 7 Jun 2013 at 21:34

If you don't have anymore space in your case for another drive then you can backup to an external usb 3 or esata drive.

Ch3m1c4L · 8 Jun 2013 at 14:19

Ataro, I have an external caddy that isnt being used. Currently the 2tb array is backed up by virtue of my htpc having 2tb raid 0 with more or less all the same data. Even if it all broke though, basically everything is on steam and ive got 80mb fttc so its never the end of the world even if my house blew up lol. The raid 5 is just so I can take 1 drive failing plus read speed benefit.

Ch3m1c4L · 8 Jun 2013 at 14:21

Think I will buy the wd reds, stick some of the 1tb in the htpc and can use that for backup. Seems like the cheapest/ buying the least drives. Should have remembered about the htpc earlier lol

Edit: actually went for the seagate 3tb in the end, deal on them and not the wd reds anymore, 1tb more per drive while being 30% cheaper drive was too much to ignore.
Bit annoying as last week they were the same price, just different sizes