Best 7200rpm HDD? 7200.14 vs WD black

[cravin]

I've been looking at new hard drives for my editing build and I'm wondering which ones are the best? I've seen a ton of different benchmarks and reviews saying that the 7200.14 is the fastest at the moment (in terms of sequential reads and writes I believe, Is that what video editing uses? Or is there any random reads and writes, idk). Also, I'd prefer to spend say $130 on the 3tb versions, but I'm not sure if they're slower or something.

I've heard taht the WD blacks are also really good, but they're supposed to be loud and slower. The RE4s are supposed to be much more reliable, but I'm not going to be using this THAT much. I'd like it to be as fast as possible, and last long, but I'm also on a tight budget.

So what do you guys think?

 

[tokencode]

sequential versus random for video files will really depend on how fragmented your drive is. If I were you I would go with a WD Black

 

[cravin]

sequential versus random for video files will really depend on how fragmented your drive is. If I were you I would go with a WD Black

Thanks for the reply.
So that means that the black would be better for a more fragmented drive? Or the other way around? I can always defragment it, can't I? What about in terms of reliability?

The WD black is nearly $100 for the 1tb version while you can get a 3tb 7200.14 with 1tb platters (supposed to be fastest? more densely packed I think) for $130. Seems like a much better deal, unless they will fail within like 6 months or something

Anyone else?