Large storage drive needed - best options?

valve90210 · 6 Aug 2013 at 10:33

Hi All,

I'm rapidly running out of space on my pc and need to get myself another hard drive fairly swiftly.

I'm looking at the western digital caviar green 3tb disk at £100 as it seems to be decent value for a huge amount of storage. Any reason I should be wary of this drive or are there any better value options?

Also, I'm fairly certain I'll be able to fit it in the case and the motherboard will support it won't it?

Case is a Zalman Z9 + and the motherboard is a Gigabyte Z68XP-UD3P Intel Z68. Can anyone confirm I can definitely fit another drive in alone with the two SATA drives I currently have?

Thanks for any help.

SeraphX · 6 Aug 2013 at 10:41

Western Digital are a quality HDD manufacturer, 100 quid for a 3Tb Green looks a pretty good deal tbh.

Your motherboard will accept any Sata drive from Sata 1 - Sata 3

valve90210 · 6 Aug 2013 at 10:50

Always used Western Digital in the past and have been happy with them.

And I will have enough SATA channels etc for a thrid drive right? Been a couple of years since I built it and that was the only time I'd ever dealt with SATA so I cna't remember what's what....

chippy08 · 6 Aug 2013 at 10:55

valve90210 said:
Always used Western Digital in the past and have been happy with them.

And I will have enough SATA channels etc for a thrid drive right? Been a couple of years since I built it and that was the only time I'd ever dealt with SATA so I cna't remember what's what....

Best to check which is better value 2TB or 3TB drive.

valve90210 · 6 Aug 2013 at 11:05

2TB = £71.99 = £36 per TB
3TB = £99.95 = £33 per TB

Not much in it really but I need space so the larger one wins unless there's good reason not to go for one..ie any know issues with them??

chippy08 · 6 Aug 2013 at 11:19

valve90210 said:
2TB = £71.99 = £36 per TB
3TB = £99.95 = £33 per TB

Not much in it really but I need space so the larger one wins unless there's good reason not to go for one..ie any know issues with them??

How much room do you loose once formatted or how much space is left over once formatted?

SeraphX · 6 Aug 2013 at 11:26

On a formatted 1Tb under windows 7 I get 931Gb completely empty.

So you're losing around 70Gb per 1TB, On a 3Tb you should get around 2.7-2.8Tb. (If my math is mildly accurate lol)

chippy08 · 6 Aug 2013 at 11:30

I think you get 1.8tb after format on a 2TB drive if I'm correct so which is best value after formatting ?

valve90210 · 6 Aug 2013 at 11:33

It's still going to be marginally cheaper per TB going for the 3TB drive and give me more storage space...

unleashed · 6 Aug 2013 at 14:26

IMO WD have a great RMA service, if required, at any time during the warranty purpose.

valve90210 · 8 Aug 2013 at 14:07

I ordered and have received the hard drive and hopefully this evening will have a chance to get it into my pc but I just wanted to check I will actually have something to plug it into...

I've only ever worked with SATA once and that was two years ago when I built the PC, so I'm much more up on IDE with it's slave and master setup and a single cable hooking both drives up.

Currrently I have two hard drives, one with the os and programmes on and one storage drive, I'm guessing they are both connected to SATA 6GB/s connectors which is fine. I also have a SATA DVD rewriter., but where would I plug in the new drive do I have spare SATA connectors available?

My motherboard is Gigabyte Z68XP-UD3P Intel Z68 (Socket 1155) DDR3 Motherboard

http://www.gigabyte.com/products/product-page.aspx?pid=3850#sp

I know it's probably a really stupid and simple question to answer but I just want to check because my brain does not seem to be working today...

Any help very much appreciated!!!

RHS · 8 Aug 2013 at 16:12

I use one of these and it is very good.

Western Digital Caviar Green 3TB SATA 6Gb/s 64MB Cache - OEM (WD30EZRX) HDD £99.95

Over the years I have pretty much stuck with Western Digital drives they have never let me down, some of them are over 7 years old and still running, so can't really go wrong.

Jasseh · 8 Aug 2013 at 20:24

valve90210 said:
I ordered and have received the hard drive and hopefully this evening will have a chance to get it into my pc but I just wanted to check I will actually have something to plug it into...

I've only ever worked with SATA once and that was two years ago when I built the PC, so I'm much more up on IDE with it's slave and master setup and a single cable hooking both drives up.

Currrently I have two hard drives, one with the os and programmes on and one storage drive, I'm guessing they are both connected to SATA 6GB/s connectors which is fine. I also have a SATA DVD rewriter., but where would I plug in the new drive do I have spare SATA connectors available?

My motherboard is Gigabyte Z68XP-UD3P Intel Z68 (Socket 1155) DDR3 Motherboard

http://www.gigabyte.com/products/product-page.aspx?pid=3850#sp

I know it's probably a really stupid and simple question to answer but I just want to check because my brain does not seem to be working today...

Any help very much appreciated!!!

Your motherboard can support up to 4 sata 6Gb/s devices and 4 sata 3 Gb/s devices.

The 6 Gb/s connections are the 2 grey and 2 white sata ports. The 3 Gb/s connections are the 4 black sata ports.

I personally would connect the OS drive and storage drives to 6 Gb/s ports and the optical drive to a 3 Gb/s port.

BlackAle · 8 Aug 2013 at 22:05

SeraphX said:
On a formatted 1Tb under windows 7 I get 931Gb completely empty.

So you're losing around 70Gb per 1TB, On a 3Tb you should get around 2.7-2.8Tb. (If my math is mildly accurate lol)

The 'loss' has nothing to do with formatting, it's down to the fact the HD manufacturers calculate a TB using base 10 (1 TB = 1000000000000 bytes = 10^12 bytes, whereas Windows uses base 2, I.E. binary (1TB (TiB to be correct) = 1099511627776 bytes = 2^40 bytes).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hard_disk_drive#Units