Best HDD for gaming: WD or Seagate?

[Koentro]

Hello, good evening, guys.

Currently, I've got a 8 years old Seagate HDD which has never left me hanging. It's only 500 GB, I need more storage and substitute it (I want to buy a 2TB one this Friday). So, wandering here on the site, I found that people seem to prefer WD Black over the blue one for gaming and high perfomance. Since I haven't been in touch with Seagate newest releases, I don't know how the brand is doing nowadays (meaning I don't want to rely my final decision solely on the fact I had Seagate for 8 years). So, my pc remains on for 16, 17 hours a day and I really care about durability and resistance (writing, reading). Which would you guys suggest me?

I know Firecuda is designed for gaming and such, but the fact it's got 8GB for SSD doesn't call my attention, so I need to choose one of the following models:

WD Blue
WD Black
Seagate Barracuda (green)
Seagate Purple

A Barracuda Pro would be great but the price is too high here. Additionally, I'm getting a UV 400 SSD, will it gear me nicely?

Thanks, guys!

i5 4690
z97 M-Plus
GTX 1070 Galax EXOC SNIPER WHITE
1X8 GB RAM HyperX
Corsair 650w

 

[boosted1g]

I have found that WD drives are pretty reliable for what they are. They will last 1-2 years beyond the warranty.

Seagate is an absolute crap shoot where one generation/model will be awesome, and the next completely prone to failures.

For purchases based on anything more than just price I always recommend WD.

In your case since you are looking at WD Black, that is the better drive.

Also on a side note, if you havent already purchased the UV 400, dont.
All current gen budget drives use Toshiba 3D TLC (Sandisk, PNY, Kingston, WD, Mushkin, ADATA).
In real world usage the previous generation drives actually beat the new gen drives.
Crucial and Samsung make good SSD drives, and if I had to get one of the budget ones the PNY C1311 is the "best" implementation of the 3D TLC chips.

 

[Koentro]

I researched a little bit more on Firecuda and understood how its SSD part works, which amazed me. Though I kept looking for more info and found that (not sure if it's true, but it makes a lot of sense) the hybrid device has a big flaw: if the SSD side dies, the whole thing goes along it and I lose everything, which is terrible, I believe.

Doing some research, I couldn't find any more WD black in reliable stores in my country. My options are pretty narrow now. The green Barracuda is the most popular among HDDs in general, but then I believe it's one that shows more failures as well. Then I fall into WD Blue, is it good for my purpose?

Despite the Firecuda stuff, would it combo well with a Samsung EVO 850? That's the SSD I'll definitely buy tomorrow. I think of Firecuda due to loading games and such, thing that normal HDDs wouldn't provide, such as a WD Black one, though it's good quality.

I found this SSD: https://www.terabyteshop.com.br/produto/7867/ssd-samsung-250gb-25-850-evo-sata-3-mz-75e250bam-leitura-540mbs-gravacao-520mbs?gclid=EAIaIQobChMIr8r_p8rf1QIViIGRCh1_oQefEAYYBCABEgJ2vPD_BwE

 

[boosted1g]

850 evo is a good SSD.

SSD plus a hybrid drive is almost pointless so dont bother with that.

If WD black is not available then I would get a 7200 rpm WD Blue or 7200 rpm Barracuda.
In large capacities (4TB or more) 5400rpm drives are fine because the disk density is so high it still performs well. A 1-2TB drive however will be noticeably slower with 5400 rpm vs 7200 rpm.

 

[boosted1g]

If you only have 1 game you commonly play at a time then an SSHD (hybrid drive) would be helpfull because the core files of the game would be loaded in the 8GB of cache.

However if you play multiple different games or if game has user-map larger than 8gb then that cache wont help you at all.

 

[Koentro]

If you only have 1 game you commonly play at a time then an SSHD (hybrid drive) would be helpfull because the core files of the game would be loaded in the 8GB of cache.

However if you play multiple different games or if game has user-map larger than 8gb then that cache wont help you at all.

I bought the SSD today, glad you warned me yesterday! I had to put a little bit more to get that high quality SSD, thanks.

So, I have many games but I don't play them all at once because I wouldn't be able to finish them. What I actually do is: out of 15 installed games, I do play only 3 throughout the week and play the rest randomly on weekends, so just 2 days for other games, then I restart the week playing those same 3 games until I beat them. This way, the hybrid would help me, right? I don't edit nor anything, I don't use Netflix or so as well, so it's basically gaming and gaming in that scheme, meaning the operations will be like 95% game oriented. Based on that, Firecuda would be the best choice? Just because in relation to a normal HD it would perform better due to accessing the same 3 games over the week, right?

 

[boosted1g]

If you are switching around on 3 different games then they hybrid drive wont help you much.

The ssd flash portion of the hybrid drive is only 8GB. Most games average 25GB.
The hybrid drive works by putting the most commonly accessed files into the flash memory.
It will take you playing the game quite a few times before the "logic" will even recognize that it needs this current game and not the game you beat last week, not to mention there is not enough room for all of even 1 game's files, and then when you throw in the fact that you are playing 3 different games the logic controller of the drive will do a very poor job of predicting needs to have the core files of the games in your cache.

I would give odds of only 10-15% of the files loaded from the games would be in cache and the other 85-90% still coming out of the magnetic disk.

SSHD is really only a semi-decent stop-gap (vs a more expensive SSD) as a boot drive, or 2nd drive when you have select files (or program installed on that drive) that you (over a very long period of time) are constantly accessing.

 

[Koentro]

I understand, yea, you're right. Getting the Firecuda wouldn't help me at all. Actually, I'd use it wrongly. Well, I did find today morning a WD Black one of 1TB, but I read some people reporting it's noisy. My pc is like 5 cm distant from me, which means I can hear the smallest noises. My current rig doesn't produce any sound, not even at 1, 2 am playing heavy games with low sound. So noise is something that bothers me a lot, can you confirm the issue with noise or is it just ''luck''?

 

[Koentro]

Btw, Firecuda warranty is also 5 years like WD Black

 

[boosted1g]

I have never had a Black drive to confirm from personal experience.

I personally would just get a 7200rpm Blue drive.

 

[Koentro]

Since WD seems to be more reliable, then I'll go for it, the blue one, even with 2 years warranty. I won't make use of that ssd thing properly, which means I'd pay for me and use half of the product. Thank you very much for the attention