New Harddrive Question

[hellnova]

Hey guys kinda new to the forums.

Ive finnally upgraded everything in my system besides the harddrive which ive been holding off for a while. However now i really want to do it, so i went to newegg and there is just SO many choices, and SO many bad reviews.

I never knew that a harddrive would be harder to pick out then a video card or w/e.

Since i really dont know anything about harddrives i was hoping someone on here knew of a good harddrive.

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I want it to able to be purchased on NewEgg (or tiger direct if newegg doesnt have it)
I want it to be at least 1TB
And have a good RPM speed.
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If possible i would like it have atleast a good amount of reviews that are positive


As far as i know (which isnt very much) you dont need anything specific to plug in a new Hardrive and most modern motherboards/PSU should beable to use em as default....... BUT if im missing something drastic here please let me know!

Thanks for the help!

 

[varis]

I don't know if user reviews at newegg would be worth any when it comes to HDDs. Usually I've taken a look at storagereview DB (unfortunately outdated now) and chosen the one that has the best measurements for me. I suppose nowadays it's idle noise and throughput (mostly read) that are the paramount things. Games used to load lots of small files but I take now they are packed into big datafiles so random access times are less relevant. RPM speed doesn't tell much - it's kinda like the CPU clock multiplier and there's other factors like density which make a big difference as well.

You'll probably get some suggestions, but you could go with any of these 3 I guess: http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/HDD-6Gbit,2528.html

I kinda agree, the choice of a HDD is pretty complex and confusing considering that the component itself doesn't make that much of a difference - drives from the same generation and market segment are fairly similar and the other bottlenecks are more important.

Can you tell us a bit about how you use the computer? Is it a gaming rig... or do you do heavy data processing like video editing... do you leave it on and running for hours and hours?

 

[varis]

I'm in a bit similar rut myself - built a new system lately but it only has a small SSD so far, so a new HDD is a necessity

It seems the mainstream segment of HDDs is currently getting upgrades from some vendors - at least Storagereview says they are reviewing them. The article I linked reviews drives that were out over a year ago - might have gone with the Spinpoint due to brand loyalty (I've liked the quiet drives), but if new (or cheaper) stuff is soon available... I also need about 1TB, and a quiet drive. Performance is a nice plus, but I have SSD(s) for the critical applications so performance is not the first deal-breaker.

There are the low-power drives which have been coming out lately, don't think they generally make much sense because the difference in watts is very small while performance suffers. However latest technology offers more performance so for example the recent Barracuda Green could be a nice choice? Would be available in 1.5TB format as well.

http://www.storagereview.com/seagate_barracuda_green_2tb_review_st2000dl003

Compare that with Samsung's F4 which is apparently based on an older generation of technology, while being a drive that targets high performance and a low price point (with single platter and total capacity of 320GB):

http://www.storagereview.com/samsung_spinpoint_f4_review_hd322gj

 

[varis]

Well, the Barracuda Green seems to be a very nice option in terms of noise and performance. The next question is that since SR tested 2 TB version and the 1.5 TB is the one I'm drooling after, what is the difference in number of platters etc and how does that affect performance?