Hard Drive Advice

[RaveDave]

Just looking some advice from some of the experts on here on the best hard drive to buy to suit my needs, i built my rig about 14 years ago and haven't upgraded it since and haven't really followed the latest releases in components in many years.

I am planning in about 6 months time to build a new rig but until that happens i badly need to add another internal drive to my setup, one which works with my existing mobo ASUS P5K DELUXE/WIFI-AP LGA 775 Intel P35 ATX Intel Motherboard (don't laugh ), i am looking for one in the 2-4tb region that is a CMR drive and that can be added to my new rig when built as a working/storage drive, i'm not sure whether this makes any difference but my old 14 year old rig is still running Windows XP so would need to be compatible with that.

Hopefully somebody can offer me some advice.

Many Thanks

 

[Snapshot]

The good news is that your motherboard has SATA 3 connectors that are still the current standard. This means that any HDD you buy now will be compatible with your current mobo* and also with whatever you buy next. After that you have a choice of WD Black or Blue, Seagate Barracuda, Toshiba P300 or X300. I don't know which are CMR or SMR (apart from WD Black) as I only use SSDs in my desktop PCs so you'll have to wait for someone who does know or read a few data sheets.

It might also be worth considering a 2TB SSD rather than HDD, Yes, expensive now but well worth it for your new PC.

*It's possible the BIOS might have a problem with drives that are larger than the maximum available when it was created.

 

[RaveDave]

With this drive only being used for storage i couldn't justify the expense of going to a SSD, but i will be buying one for the OS on my new rig.

I ended up choosing a 2TB Toshiba P300, with me initially going to be using this with my old Windows XP system, that limited the max size to 2TB. After looking through the models listed, the Barracuda's are SMR and the WD Blue CMR model (wd20ezrz) seems to no longer be on sale anywhere.

Many thanks for your help it is greatly appreciated.