single drive speed , F1 vs aaks vs seagate single platter

[ih8modem]

Three questions :

Part 1 - Out of these 4 drives, which is the fastest in a single drive mode. Not in RAID, just plain 1 drive connected to 1 SATA port.

Seagate ST3320613AS 320GB single platter
WD3200AAKS 320GB single platter
WD6400AAKS 640GB double platter
Samsung F1 1TB triple platter

Part 2 - reliability.

Out of the 4 drives above, which are most reliable? Searching the WWW it seems the latest batch of ST3320613AS are failing pretty often. I also find quite a few reports of issues with the Samsung F1 drives. That leaves me to believe the best investment is one of the two WD drives.

Part 3 - Performance in RAID - purely for gaming such as Flight Sim X

Would a single 6400aaks outperform a RAID0 2x3200aaks?

I would have included the F1 320GB in this question session, but it seems they are scarcer than the proverbial hen's tooth.

 

[ih8modem]

ordered Samsung 1tb and 3200aaks

I have ordered a WD3200AAKS and a Samsung 1TB F1. Will see how they pan out.

I'm half tempted to order a WD6400AAKS for the hell of it, just to benchmark it against these two.

 

[ih8modem]

FYI

Gigabyte P965 DS3 , 4GB RAM , Vista Home Premium , attached to same ICH8 port for all 3. In each case the drive is just attached, nothing on it at all. The boot drive is a WD2500
Samsung F1 1TB 3x334MB platters

WD6400AAKS 2 x 320GB platters

WD3200AAKS - 1 x 320GB platter