Recommend a small, fast mechanical drive

madindehead

madindehead

madindehead

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Basically, I am looking for a small but fast mechanical drive to tie me over until the new Intel SSDs come out.

I currently run Windows on a 1TB WD Caviar Black, which is pretty snappy, but since I managed to reduce everything down to around 80GB, I want to use the 1TB drive for my Steam folder and any non-Steam games :)

I was wondering, what is a good value, fast drive? Like I said, I was impressed with the WD Caviar, but is there something reasonably small and fast, that isn't a Raptor?

Thanks :)
 
Samsung F3 500 GB is good value for money and uses a single platter which improves performance. My vote would be a VelociRaptor but are quite a bit more expensive per GB than the 7200 rpm drives.
 
Ziggy4 said:
Samsung F3 500 GB is good value for money and uses a single platter which improves performance. My vote would be a VelociRaptor but are quite a bit more expensive per GB than the 7200 rpm drives.
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Ah nice. Thanks mate. Yeah, just want something that has good performance, and value for money :) I would rather save for an SSD later this year than splash out on a VelociRaptor drive.
 
Having said that, is are the new F4 drives not meant to be pretty damn fast? Also, what are the small WD Caviar Blacks like in comparison?
 
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Reviews are scarce and sketchy at the moment and not known when it will hit the stores. I doubt it will be significantly faster than the F3. If you're planning to go SSD in the near future I'd go with the F3 then you can swap it out as a secondary drive. At 30 bucks you can't go wrong really. The new Blacks are great drives too and very fast. I posted some benchmarks of the 1 TB SATA3 Black vs an F3 some time ago if you can be bothered searching. I replaced my F3 with the Black and no regrets. They do cost more so you have to ask yourself if the 5 year warranty is worth it. Again though, since this is a stepping stone to SSD in your case I think the F3 wins out on value. Also the F3s are some of the quietest drives I've ever used.
 
Thanks for the input :) I will possibly think about a 500GB F3 or a Black. Not quite sure, will see when the time comes :)

One final question, I am right in thinking that SATA is backwards compatible, so the SATA3 Black will run ok on my SATA2 controllers.
 
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