New hard drive - best option?

vegasmazza3

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Jul 23, 2008
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So I'm thinking about getting a new hard drive for my desktop - mainly because it's the only thing that I can imagine that's causing my computer to run slow - occasional freezing up, REALLY slow start-up (quad core processor, 4 gb ram...) It's also kind of full so that may also be a reason (currently 500 GB). So I've been looking at a couple of options

- The first is the WD Velociraptor 600 GB - 10000 RPM... enough said
- The second is a WD Black Caviar 2TB - at first I wasn't considering something like this, since I thought the RPM would make a big difference, but I've heard that since the... density of the platters? - I'm not exactly sure - is greater on these, they are actually close in speed to the Velociraptor (I looked up a benchmark and it seems to confirm this)
- The third is a Seagate Barracuda 3TB - same reason as above... just not sure whether Seagate or WD and which one may perform better.
- The fourth is actually a hard drive I've been looking at for my laptop... which is also running slow probably because of a defective, not an old hard drive - the one I'm looking at here is the Seagate Momentus XT 750 GB hybrid drive - I was thinking I might be able to put that in my desktop too?

In general, I have a lot of stuff on my computer and I don't really want to restore + there isn't going to be a new computer for at least a year. The thing that I think would be best upgrade-able for general performance seems to be the hard drive.

If you got any other hard drive suggestions let me know. Thanks in advance!
 
You are the only one who knows how you use your system, and your storage requirements. It looks like you are considering adding 600GB-3TBs of storage. Your current storage is <500GB. How many years has it taken you to fill the 500GB? If a year, and you will build a new computer in a year, then the velociraptor or the momentus would be sufficient.

If you are still unsure, check the warranty periods for the HDDs you are considering. The WDs you are considering have 5-year warranties, and WD is very good at promptly replacing bad HDDs. I have no similar experience with Seagate, maybe someone else does.
 

vegasmazza3

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I'm more concerned about the performance and less about the space. I've read that even though the 2TB and 3TB are less RPM because they have denser platters they do just as well as the Velociraptor... a benchmark site I looked at seemed to confirm that, but I want to know if anyone has any expertise on it