Cheap Stuff WD vs F3

With mechanical HDD's seek time, spin speed and interface are three of the main indicators of speed. Both have identical seek times and spin speeds. However, the WD is SATA III and the F3 SATA II. SATA III is the latest interface which allows higher data transfer speeds so in theory the WD should be faster.

From what I have read the WD Blue isn't really any faster than the F3 though so you may as well get the largest capacity as there's probably little noticeable speed difference between the two drives.
 
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+1 Shine, I totally agree, I don't think that you would notice much difference in speeds.

I would personally go for the F3 but that is just my opinion each to there own and all.
 
The F3 is faster.

The sata3 interface is useless as a mechanical drive will never reach those speeds.
 
Thanks, but.

Was confused to see WD running at 6GB/s but had a smaller cache size of 16MB.

However F3's 32MB cache made it confusing for me.

Initial gut feeling is that WD faster, just needed someone to confirm it.
 
The 6GB per second figure for the WD is the maximum transfer rate for SATA III interface not the drives transfer rate.

You'd also need a motherboard that supports SATA III to be able to hit those speeds even if the WD was capable of reaching them.
 
Confused.. Why state 6GB/s if the drive cannot reach that speed?

P.S I have a motherboard which supports SATA III
 
It is confusing and should be removed to make it clearer that 6GB/s is the interface spec and not the HDDs actual speed. The answer to your original question is the F3 is faster.
 
I can tell ya now, I have an F3 and a Caviar black, not caviar blue, and there is no noticeable difference between them, so personally, go with the Samsung Spinpoint F3 + it is better value
 
It is confusing and should be removed to make it clearer that 6GB/s is the interface spec and not the HDDs actual speed. The answer to your original question is the F3 is faster.

It's not that confusing to be honest. Anyone buying an HDD should know it's never going to exceed 384MB/s read speeds.

As Stulid pointed out. It's just clever marketing for gullable fools.
 
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