Which 2TB HDD?

robby2k9 · 8 Jun 2013 at 11:45

WuMyster said:
I still have no clue why external HDD's are cheaper. Do they run at 7200RPM and have the same cache?

It depends, a little research is normally needed to find the model of drive inside the caddy.
I know some WD ones have the slower 'green' drives fitted.
In my case the drive was the Seagate Barracuda 2TB 7200RPM SATA 6Gb/s 64MB Cache ST2000DM001, the same drive sold as bare OEM.

Darujhistan · 8 Jun 2013 at 14:09

robby2k9 said:
It depends, a little research is normally needed to find the model of drive inside the caddy.
I know some WD ones have the slower 'green' drives fitted.
In my case the drive was the Seagate Barracuda 2TB 7200RPM SATA 6Gb/s 64MB Cache ST2000DM001, the same drive sold as bare OEM.

I'm going to buy one of these to become my STEAM drive, bit put off my alternatives @ 5400 RPM seeing as its going to be a gaming drive.

Steampunk · 9 Jun 2013 at 20:12

I've just bought a couple of those 2tb Seagate Barracudas, and they are very quiet. I did notice one made a semi-regular (but extremely quiet) "chirp" as it parked heads when set as a secondary drive, but it's stopped when I put it as part of a RAID1 setup (probably much less parking). The drives are also very quiet while seeking/reading/writing.

SirChumpalot · 9 Jun 2013 at 20:34

Hoping they're going to arrive on Monday. I'll let everyone know how it performs. I've got a tonne of data to transfer so it'll be a good test.

Steampunk · 10 Jun 2013 at 15:20

SirChumpalot said:
Hoping they're going to arrive on Monday. I'll let everyone know how it performs. I've got a tonne of data to transfer so it'll be a good test.

You might be limited by SATA ports and bandwidth. SATA 3 drives can easily saturate a SATA 2 interface. Transferring between two SATA 3 drives on a SATA 2 motherboard is slow, because they are being choked as the system is trying to read off one, and write to the other all across the same limited bandwidth.

You need SATA 3 to get the best out of these drives.

Steampunk · 10 Jun 2013 at 15:23

WuMyster said:
HDD's making noise? It's all about the brackets you use and you'll need rubber bits. This will stop all vibrations.

It's not really vibration. Over the years, I've heard various drives have motor noise, seek noise, and head park noise, just from the normal operation of the drive internally.

These new Seagates are very quiet indeed, no matter what they are doing.

SirChumpalot · 10 Jun 2013 at 16:08

Steampunk said:
You might be limited by SATA ports and bandwidth. SATA 3 drives can easily saturate a SATA 2 interface. Transferring between two SATA 3 drives on a SATA 2 motherboard is slow, because they are being choked as the system is trying to read off one, and write to the other all across the same limited bandwidth.

You need SATA 3 to get the best out of these drives.

Thanks for the advice. Makes sense. The drive will be used as storage really. Movies, music and useful stuff I download. Not a great lot else really.