Seagate 7200.10 or WD AAKS?

Dingleberry88 · 14 Jun 2007 at 14:09

WD AAKS Decided - Full or Quick format?

Decided to get myself a nice new 500GB HDD, but which one?

I hear (boom boom) the Seagate is a bit louder than the WD?

What about performance?

Edit: Read down for the formatting question.

rpstewart · 14 Jun 2007 at 14:12

There's not much difference between the two really, 5% in terms of sustained transfer rates at the most. I'd go with personal preference and brand experience.

Craig321 · 14 Jun 2007 at 14:13

As said above, I don't think there's much difference in speed... but WDs are quieter.

Craig.

james.miller · 14 Jun 2007 at 14:15

i have both, and id say get a wd. there really is little in it but the wd's are slightly quieter and slightly faster

Dingleberry88 · 14 Jun 2007 at 14:26

When it comes to HDDs I don't really have any preference (as long as it's not Maxtor).

Looks like I'll probably go for the WD.

Anyone have any links to reviews of either drive? I don't seem to be able to find many on the WD.

XysteR · 14 Jun 2007 at 15:50

I just got 2 WD AAKS 320's to put in raid0 and a WD AAKS 500 as storage. Lovely drives. I'd never go with any other. I did have a 320 seagate 7200.10 and found it loud and speed wise i noticed no difference.

Dingleberry88 · 15 Jun 2007 at 12:00

Ok, so I'm decided on the WD. I'll go out and pick it up later.

How long do these 500GB drives generally take to full format? Will it be done in an hour or so, or will I be better off leaving it overnight?

james.miller · 15 Jun 2007 at 12:05

just do a quick format. couple of minutes at the most

Dingleberry88 · 15 Jun 2007 at 12:06

I normally do a quick format, but on a new drive I like to full format to check for errors.

XysteR · 15 Jun 2007 at 12:07

I done a full format of my 500 and it took eons lol

james.miller · 15 Jun 2007 at 12:15

ive never done a full format

i dont see the point, all it does is write the tracks which they have to do at the factory to test the drive in the first place lol

Dingleberry88 · 15 Jun 2007 at 13:53

XysteR said:
I done a full format of my 500 and it took eons lol

How many hours is eons?

Anyone ever had any problems just doing a quick format?

Edit: Just got back from getting the HDD. £66 - not bad.

XysteR · 15 Jun 2007 at 14:04

i don't recal exactly, probably around an hour which is maginally shorter than an eon :rolleyes:

Dingleberry88 · 15 Jun 2007 at 14:08

An hour-long eon doesn't sound that bad.

In that case I'll go for a full format. If it's still going after a few hours I'll just stop it and go for quick.

Thanks for the input guys.

XysteR · 15 Jun 2007 at 14:17

....come to think of it, as i sat there it felt like 2 lol

Nelly · 15 Jun 2007 at 15:30

Just out of curiosity, can anyone tell me which drives run cooler? I did have a link somewhere with temps but can't seem to find it now.

ByteJuggler · 15 Jun 2007 at 16:02

Dingleberry88 said:
Anyone ever had any problems just doing a quick format?

Quick format is fine. Full format only essentially does a surface scan these days, and should thus only be done if you are having problems/thing the drive is failing. Modern drives also remap bad sectors internally, so even if you do a logical "full format" and the drive encounters a bad sector, you will not know about it until the drive starts running out of remapping sectors. The only way you'll know about remapped sectors (unless the drive has run out of sectors to remap to) is by viewing the drive's SMART information.

So the bottom line: Full format is (generally) a waste of time, and quick format is more than sufficient in the majority of cases.

dunker · 17 Jun 2007 at 15:28

full formatted my 400 aaks, it took about 3 hours i think aaages!

Dingleberry88 · 18 Jun 2007 at 09:34

I went with a quick format.

Started a full format, it got to 1% and I was bored waiting.

M0t0r0la · 18 Jun 2007 at 14:00

james.miller said:
ive never done a full format i dont see the point, all it does is write the tracks which they have to do at the factory to test the drive in the first place lol

True but the chance of damaging sectors during transport is fairly high. Also it doesn't just write them it verifies them as well which on a new drive is paramount for data integrity!
A FULL format will detect any bad sectors and remap them with good sectors from the parity sector pool, a quick format will not do this and simply sets up the fat/ntfs tables.

ALWAYS do a FULL format on new drives imho.

P.S) I would get the Seagate HD, it has at least 2 more years warranty than WD so it's a bit of a no brainer really tbh!

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