F1 or WD RE3?

Gibbo_GTI

Gibbo_GTI

Gibbo_GTI

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I'm gonna be replacing my old hdd soon. I have more or less settled on the following:

1. 3x Samsung 320Gb Spinpoint F1's

or

2. 3x Western Digital RE3 320GB

The drives will be setup in RAID 0 with a 1TB external drive as backup. This would more than cover the amount of storage space I require. I mainly use my pc for gaming and the odd bit of video conversion.

Which would give me the best performance?
 
Well for a start, given the prices now, I would get a couple of the 640GB models, for whichever you choose. To help you do that, I can tell you that the WD's tend to have lower access times and the F1's tend to have higher sustained transfer rates. So which one will yield the best performance will really depend on exactly how you use the drive.

I think you would get the best general system/windows performance from a pair of the Western Digital's, but, for instance if you wish to copy some larger files, such as HD video or large photoshop images etc, then you will see slightly better performance from the F1's. They are pretty smiliar though all said and done.

EDIT: I have some different advice for you now, http://forums.overclockers.co.uk/showthread.php?t=17970170 ...these are the new Barracuda 12's from Seagate, which I understand use a single 500GB platter, so these new drives should be faster than anything else in the 7200rpm bracket right now. Looking at the prices, this is what I would get. I did not mention them initially as I did not realise they were available now.
 
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Get the RE3's, they are designed for RAID.

The F1's are design for single drive performance. If you want Samsungs take on the RAID drive you need the Spinpoint F RAID.
 
The only real difference between the Spinpoint F1 and the Spinpoint F Raid is the slightly higher performance, as the F1 is designed for 'quiet' performance where as the Raid version throws acoustics to the wind and just goes for all out 'balls to the wall' performance. The Raid edition does have twice the rated MTBF (Mean Time Before Failure) as-well, but this is academic really, it does not mean that the Raid Edition will be any more reliable than the F1 desktop drive. What it does mean, is that Samsung can charge more for it :p ...if either F1 fails within 3 years though, you can easily ring Samsung up and say "OI NOOOO" and they will send you a new one .
 
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Interesting, I missed that. Thanks very much for the info, I just read the first paragraph, I will read the rest now.
 
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