Which of These 3 HDD's for Best Write Speed?

[paradoxeternal]

I'm looking for the HDD under $200 (preferably the closer to $100 the better) that has the fastest write speed. This is because I record gameplay footage on my PC, and obviously screen capture of that nature takes a massive amount of effort from both the CPU and HDD. I don't have enough money to upgrade to a better CPU and entire new platform, but I can spare some cash for a better HDD so that it's write speed can help improve the FPS I get in games while recording them (i use Dxtory).

This drive would serve ONLY to write the screen capture raw videos to, nothing else!

I googled the fastest write-speed HDD's and found a list on Tom's, which is always a helpful source, and narrowed my choices down to these three:

Samsung Spinpoint F3 1 TB: http://www.amazon.com/Samsung-Spinpoint-Cache-Desktop-HD103SI/dp/B001U3S5S0/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1337663202&sr=8-2

Seagate Barracuda 3TB http://www.amazon.com/Seagate-Barracuda-3-5-Inch-Internal-ST3000DM001/dp/B005T3GRLY/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1337664074&sr=8-1

Western Digital Velociraptor 600GB: http://www.amazon.com/Western-Digital-Velociraptor-10000-Desktop/dp/B003FW9T0M/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1337664211&sr=8-1

Obviously i think the velociraptor would seemingly be the fastest, and even though it has smaller storage (the raw video capture files take up massive amounts of space) it would be enough for me, as the compressed finished videos would be stored on a seperate HDD.

Or is a 500GB SSD Worth the extra $150-$200 i would be dishing out? Would the performance justify it? I know it would be better, but is the $/performance ratio that much greater? Any other suggestions? Thanks for your help!

 

[rolli59]

Well the raptor is fastest and it is up to you to decide what is more important $/GB or $/performance. If performance is what you are after I belief the raptor might be the right choice.

 

[RetiredChief]

SSD would be MUCH faster. Two problems -A) 500+ gig is EXPENSIVE and B) wirth such a high volume of writes/deletes you may burn up the 10 K wrties per cell quickly and this is the reason not recommended.

1st choice: Fastest would be two HDDs in a shrt stoked raid0 configuration. Caution you need a HDD that is raid0 compatable - WD RE series drive. Would not recommend the normal WD green/blu/black drives, and Not sure about the Samsung F3 (might be OK). For the large file formats you will be dealling with, High sequencial performance is the main concern, which Raid0 does increase eseacilly when short stroked.. Small 4 K performance least import, Which the raptor is great at. The arguement against Raid0 is that you lose all data if one drive fails, I've been using raid0 since mid ninties and not had a failure, But as I sataed, need raid certifed drives.

2rd would be the raptors.

3th a Single 7200 RPM HDD.

PS
Short stroke is when you take a pair of drives (ex 1 TB). when you set up the raid you Only select say 40 % of the drive (.4 x 2 TB = 800 Gigs). and DO NOT use the remaining 60 % of the drive. This will decrease access time (ie wd 640 gig w/12.6 mSec access time would be about 9.5 mSec). Also you limit data storage to the outer 40 % of the disk where angular velocity is Highes.

 

[paradoxeternal]

SSD would be MUCH faster. Two problems -A) 500+ gig is EXPENSIVE and B) wirth such a high volume of writes/deletes you may burn up the 10 K wrties per cell quickly and this is the reason not recommended.

1st choice: Fastest would be two HDDs in a shrt stoked raid0 configuration. Caution you need a HDD that is raid0 compatable - WD RE series drive. Would not recommend the normal WD green/blu/black drives, and Not sure about the Samsung F3 (might be OK). For the large file formats you will be dealling with, High sequencial performance is the main concern, which Raid0 does increase eseacilly when short stroked.. Small 4 K performance least import, Which the raptor is great at. The arguement against Raid0 is that you lose all data if one drive fails, I've been using raid0 since mid ninties and not had a failure, But as I sataed, need raid certifed drives.

2rd would be the raptors.

3th a Single 7200 RPM HDD.

PS
Short stroke is when you take a pair of drives (ex 1 TB). when you set up the raid you Only select say 40 % of the drive (.4 x 2 TB = 800 Gigs). and DO NOT use the remaining 60 % of the drive. This will decrease access time (ie wd 640 gig w/12.6 mSec access time would be about 9.5 mSec). Also you limit data storage to the outer 40 % of the disk where angular velocity is Highes.

thanks, RetiredChief. I will look into the raid stuff, but i'm not quite sure i can do it-- it looks like one of those WD RE drives costs about 120 dollars (the RE4 on amazon) and two might be out of my price range at the moment. If i will only be using 40% of the storage space the 500 gb's aren't an option because 400 gbs would be under the 500 gb minimum space i want to work with.

I'll most likely wait and save up some money to purchase two, or if that's not a possibility i'll go with the raptor, since you say that's a decent second choice. Thanks for your help!

 

[RetiredChief]

You could boost the space to 60 % (500 x 2 x .6 = 600 gigs). The performance would be less than the 40%, but greater than if used 100%.

Without using short stroke, and using 100 % (2 x 500 = 1 TB), Sequencial performance would still be Higher than a single drive. This is fine for a storabe drive working with large file structures. Smale file random performance is the primary factor when using the drive as OS + Programs) But this mainly boosts OS load time (only important when booting the computer) and program load times.

Remember the HDD, or an SSD, do NOT increase the speed that a program runs at (EX Games will NOT see a FPS increase). The HDD/SSD only effects load time.