LP 3.5" Hdd or similar performance 2.5"

Guardsmon · 2 Sep 2013 at 19:34

Good evening all,

I'm moving my data into 1x 5.25" bay which has room for 4x 2.5" hdd's or if I can find one I believe I could get a low profile (slim) 3.5" into the same space if I can find one. I've not seen any for years, but I'm hoping someone can point me in the right direction.

I'm needing 500GB+ of storage for my documents/music/apps/older games. I have my OS and core games on my 240GB SSD.

Obviously I'd love to buy a 500GB SSD, but I can't justify that sort of money as it doesn't need that sort of speed, just not 5400rpm 2.5" speeds. Thought about getting a second 240GB to RAID, but that still isn't ideal as I'd need another small 2.5" to put extra files on. I'm hoping to keep it in the sensible <£80 mark.

I've been reading about SSHDs, and while I've read they are getting better for desktops over laptops, they don't look to be great for data and larger games due to the small about of NAND provided.

So if anyone of you have got any great ideas or know of any 3.5" low profile, but still good performance HDDs please share....

Thanks

Sasahara · 2 Sep 2013 at 23:08

If you want something cheap small with decent performance, Western Digital Scorpio Black 2.5" 750GB 7200RPM SATA 6Gb/s 16MB Cache - OEM.

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=HD-399-WD

It might be only a 2.5" drive, but it does have decent performance.
http://www.legitreviews.com/wd-scorpio-black-750gb-notebook-hard-drive-review_1658

And you can't beat the 5 year warranty.

Certainly hard to beat if you can't use a 3.5" drive or afford a SSD.

Guardsmon · 4 Sep 2013 at 12:39

Thanks for the link Sasahara, the review seems to be for the SATA2 version of the drive you linked and looking through WD's site it seems to suggest they both have the same data rate? Also I can't find the seek times anywhere.
I don't suppose you've used one or know how good these would be for loading games off?

Sasahara · 5 Sep 2013 at 23:51

I do have one in an old T4400 laptop (sata1), the laptop is the limiting factor.

I did test it in a desktop, I can't remember the exact figures, but it was higher than the laptop.

It gets a windows 7 Experience mark of 5.9 on the laptop.

HD tune maxed out at 113MB/s from 0-60% meaning the sata 1 interface is slowing it down up to that point, min speed 62MB/s. Access time 16.1s.

Can't really test it in gaming, it plays runs wow just, but CPU and graphics isn't up to it.

Sata II/6GB won't make any difference, Sata II is faster than any standard drive.