Which drives?

[[TW]Fox]

Hi guys,

Looking at buying a new HDD and though I'd check that I'm using my HDD's in the most efficient way before deciding which to purchase.

Currently I have..

750Gb WD Black
500Gb WD Black
300Gb Maxtor Maxline III in eSATA external enclosure.

Now the 750 is split into a 60gb Windows partition with 600odd gb for data.
The 500Gb is where all my games and applications are stored.
The 300gb contains my media etc but is full and I intend to retire it.

Current thinking is that I should buy a 1tb drive and simply replace the 300gb drive with it.

However am I missing an opportunity to boost system performance here? Would I be better off with a new drive for my Windows/Data setup and then use this to displace the 750Gb drive for media?

Which drive would you buy in my situation?

Current thinking is to just buy a 1Tb drive and replace the 300gb one with it. Looking at a WD Green but is this the best choice? I notice the green has a whopping 64mb of cache - yet the Black has half this. Why is this?

Potential spanner in works - this 2Tb Seagate LP drive. Whats all that about then? Worth considering?

Thanks!

 

[rpstewart]

I wouldn't worry about the cache size, there's little benfit in 64Mb over 32Mb.

Neither the WD Green or the Seagate would be all that great as an OS drive, they both have low spindle speeds so their random access times are relatively poor.

The question is really what you need most. If it's a performance boost that you're after than the 1Tb WB Black or a Samsung F3 would fit the bill. If you're just after more space then it's hard to argue against the Seagate LP, that's just an insane amount of space for the money.

 

[[TW]Fox]

To be honest I'm after more space. I've filled the media drive (Though I've got bags of space elsewhere but I dont want to use that) and would like to increase the size of the drive used for media.

However this got me thinking that if I can do this whilst increasing performance by buying, say, a new OS drive then why not. Would I notice any performance increase by replacing my WD Black 750 with a Samsung F3?

Or is it really just best to buy a 1tb drive, stick it in the media enclosure and forget about it? If I do this which would you go for - WD or Samsung? Samsung is a fiver cheaper at the moment.

Is RAID worth it for general gaming and suchlike these days? Perhaps I could just get another 500Gb WD AAKS (Just realised my 500 is an AAKS not, I presume, a Black), RAID-0 it with my other one and put the then spare 750 into the media enclosure? What is the risk of a broken stripe set or whatever or is it purely just the risk of a hard drive hardware failiure x 2?

 

[rpstewart]

Would I notice any performance increase by replacing my WD Black 750 with a Samsung F3?

The numbers say the Samsung will be quicker, whether it's noticable is another matter entirely.

Or is it really just best to buy a 1tb drive, stick it in the media enclosure and forget about it? If I do this which would you go for - WD or Samsung? Samsung is a fiver cheaper at the moment.

I'd probably go this way. Neither is a bad drive so save the fiver and go with the Samsung.