Which HDD from "this week specials"

SkeeterUK · 3 May 2007 at 11:45

On "this week specials" there is a

Seagate Barracuda 7200.10 320GB ST3320620AS SATA-II 16MB Cache - OEM

or

Samsung SpinPoint T HD501LJ 500GB SATA-II 16MB Cache - OEM

Both sound tempting. But which should i go for. I like quiet drives and fast drives.

Which would you recommend? As im planning on buying a hdd and moving my os partition from a old maxtor ide drive 30gb to this new drive so want it for OS, gaming and storage.

I have enough "i think" for the 320gb segate but i really dont want the slower noisier drive (non pink glue). Tho might be able to buy the samsung next week sometime as i get paid on monday.

My motherboard is a A8v Deluxe rev 2.0 so im stuck with sata 1 for now. Also i duno much about which sata controller to use as my board has 2 of em to pick from. Also When cloning my c: drive to the new drive will there be any probs with it being IDE - SATA? As i am confused if i would need a sata driver since its a clone and not a fresh install. As i was thinking i could download a sata driver and install it then clone it??? I did ask the clone question in another topic but wasnt answered so said to myself well might as well ask here while im asking about which hdd to get.

SkeeterUK · 3 May 2007 at 11:50

Oh yeah i forgot to ask. How important are warrentys for hdd for these drives. And what are the RMA like with these 2 companys. Oh and does the samsung have that percundicular (sp) technology?

Tute · 3 May 2007 at 12:01

I don't own either but the Seagates apparantly have the best balance of speed and silence. Personally I would go for that one.

semi-pro waster · 3 May 2007 at 12:17

I've got a 250gb 7200.10 and it is inaudible but I didn't actually check which glue was used before installation and I've subsequently heard that it might be a bit of a red herring anyway.

I'd be happy to recommend the 7200.10 as they are good fast drives although not all are entirely silent. Samsung don't use perpendicular technology at present so data density and therefore speed aren't quite as high as that of the 7200.10 and Western Digital AAKS drives. I don't tend to worry too much about warranties myself but Seagate do have the longer of the two.

Finally in theory at least you could clone your drive after installing the SATA drivers onto your current install but it isn't guaranteed to work and is probably more hassle than it is worth. A fresh install is easier and neater in almost all cases.

jbloggs · 3 May 2007 at 12:30

I have 2 x 320GB Seagate 7200.10's, excellent HDDs, the only other series of HDDs to match them is the WD..AAKS, however, these are not on Special Offer, so I would therefore choose the 7200.10 over the Samsung.