simkiller April 14, 2006 Share simkiller Member April 14, 2006 I'm looking for a new hard drive because my old one is toast. I had a friend put my computer together for me so I'm not sure what to look for in a new HDD. I would like it to be as fast and quiet as possible for around 100 bucks or less. The amount of space isn't so crucial compared to speed and silence. But I would like it to be at least 40 - 50 gig. Any suggestions? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Preacher April 14, 2006 Share Preacher Member April 14, 2006 cheapest 250gb but only 2mb cache http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?...N82E16822144157 I would get this one: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?...N82E16822144422 or if you have SATA get this one: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?...N82E16822144013 The last one is what is in my new rig (notice the 16mb cache and 3gb/s sata ) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cujo April 14, 2006 Share Cujo Member April 14, 2006 seagate 160gig 7200.9. it's a single platter so it will be cooler and quieter. it supports sata 3.0gbs and ncq. also has a 5 year warranty. whether you get ide or sata is dependent on what your mobo can support. obviously get sata if you can. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tek-Almighty April 14, 2006 Share Tek-Almighty Member April 14, 2006 (edited) I disagree... If you are running single drive (which I think is mistake...) you should run the Western Digital Caviar SE16 400GB In most of the benchmarks I've read, this thing kicks all kinds of backside. In addition, it has a great warrantee. If you don't have the $bucks$, then go with the 250GB version. I've tried all kinds, but WD drives have been my favorite. Edited April 14, 2006 by Tek-Almighty Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest ash- April 14, 2006 Share Guest ash- Guests April 14, 2006 I would highly recommend spending more than $100 on a hard drive if you are trying to get the most gigs for the buck. Anything less and you may end up with another data loss catastrophe. I've been there and done that more times than I care to admit. You could get a smaller, faster hard drive to store Windows, games etc on and get a bigger hard drive for storage only. I have an extra HD where all my important stuff is backed up and stored in a convienant box so it will hopefully never wear out. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cobalt April 14, 2006 Share Cobalt Member April 14, 2006 I disagree... If you are running single drive (which I think is mistake...) you should run the Western Digital Caviar SE16 400GB In most of the benchmarks I've read, this thing kicks all kinds of backside. In addition, it has a great warrantee. If you don't have the $bucks$, then go with the 250GB version. I've tried all kinds, but WD drives have been my favorite. I agree with Tek about the WD SE16 400. That drive really is awesome. If you have SATA and price is an issue however I would go with a Seagate drive. I just picked up 2 250gb SATA 3gb/s NCQ drives for $99 a piece from ZipZoomFly with free shipping. It is a 7200.9 Barracuda drive that includes 5 yr warranty. It is a really nice hard drive and is good bang for the buck in terms of size. Obviously if you have the money i would go with a Raptor drive. That 250gb seagate drive is really a nice choice otherwise. The Maxtor drive is a little louder then some of the others but is still a great performer. I went with the seagate drives cause they are just storage drives and because of the warranty. StorageReview 250gb HDD Roundup Check out that URL for a roundup of a bunch of 250gb drives. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest ash- April 14, 2006 Share Guest ash- Guests April 14, 2006 (edited) ' date='Apr 14 2006, 03:34 PM' post='323251'] I disagree... If you are running single drive (which I think is mistake...) you should run the Western Digital Caviar SE16 400GB In most of the benchmarks I've read, this thing kicks all kinds of backside. In addition, it has a great warrantee. If you don't have the $bucks$, then go with the 250GB version. I've tried all kinds, but WD drives have been my favorite. I agree with Tek about the WD SE16 400. That drive really is awesome. If you have SATA and price is an issue however I would go with a Seagate drive. I just picked up 2 250gb SATA 3gb/s NCQ drives for $99 a piece from ZipZoomFly with free shipping. It is a 7200.9 Barracuda drive that includes 5 yr warranty. It is a really nice hard drive and is good bang for the buck in terms of size. Obviously if you have the money i would go with a Raptor drive. That 250gb seagate drive is really a nice choice otherwise. The Maxtor drive is a little louder then some of the others but is still a great performer. I went with the seagate drives cause they are just storage drives and because of the warranty. StorageReview 250gb HDD Roundup Check out that URL for a roundup of a bunch of 250gb drives. I do not trust maxtor anymore. I've had two 30GB HD's fail on me within a year from them. This was a few years back though so they may or may not have cleaned up their act. My old compaq has an OEM seagate drive that has been kicking butt and taking names since 2000. I currently use this computer as a file server. I've never bought a boxed seagate drive before but they will be my first choice when the time comes as all hard drives fail eventually. Also, it's a good idea to check the warranty on any hard drive. This usually tells you how long the manufacturer expects the HD to last before it fails. Edited April 14, 2006 by ash- Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cobalt April 14, 2006 Share Cobalt Member April 14, 2006 Except for some manufacturers enterprise drives (raptor and server drives most notably) Seagate is the only manufacturer to offer a 5 year warranty on all their hard drives. Most retail drives have a 1 yr warranty and most OEMS have a 3 year warranty. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cujo April 14, 2006 Share Cujo Member April 14, 2006 (edited) everyone has good and bad experiences with each of the brands. if you want quiet and reliability then go with a seagate. wd and maxtor offer more performance. obviously raptors are the best. Edited April 14, 2006 by Cujo Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
NOFX April 14, 2006 Share NOFX Member April 14, 2006 ive been wishing for a pair of raptors forever, but from what I hear if I dont have a good raid card, then theres not really much use in setting up a stripped array. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
igloo April 14, 2006 Share igloo Member April 14, 2006 Sim. 74GB Raptor. It's nice when you can record a demo and not notice any chugging. It's also kinda nifty when your computer takes less than 10 seconds to boot up. :] Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cobalt April 15, 2006 Share Cobalt Member April 15, 2006 ive been wishing for a pair of raptors forever, but from what I hear if I dont have a good raid card, then theres not really much use in setting up a stripped array. That is most definitely true. There are some sites that did some benchmarks and found that the 74gb ones didnt see much benefit from RAID0. I think it was Cujo who said he RAID0'd some of the 150s and found that CS loads faster and archives process faster. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cujo April 15, 2006 Share Cujo Member April 15, 2006 archives are definately at least twice as fast. loading times are also reduced but it's in the 10-15% improvement range. not really worth it but i only need 300gig so these 150gb raptors in raid 0 are perfect. btw, onboard nvidia or intel raid controllers are actually really good. as are the sil raid chips that come with most deluxe and premium boards. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
NOFX April 15, 2006 Share NOFX Member April 15, 2006 they are software driven thought correct? And use your CPU to do the processing, I think what you need is a raid controller with its own processing power. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DNA April 15, 2006 Share DNA Member April 15, 2006 no matter what WD is the only way to go... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cobalt April 15, 2006 Share Cobalt Member April 15, 2006 no matter what WD is the only way to go... Eh. I have had a mixed bag of results with WD drives. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
simkiller April 15, 2006 Author Share simkiller Member April 15, 2006 Sim. 74GB Raptor. It's nice when you can record a demo and not notice any chugging. It's also kinda nifty when your computer takes less than 10 seconds to boot up. :] Does it matter much if I go with 8mg cash over 16mg? I'd prefer the 8mg if you don't think I really need 16mg because the price seems to double. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
igloo April 15, 2006 Share igloo Member April 15, 2006 Western Digital 74Gb, 10000rpm, 8Mb SATA Hard Drive - WD740GD You won't regret this purchase. Especially for CSS. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tek-Almighty April 15, 2006 Share Tek-Almighty Member April 15, 2006 everyone has good and bad experiences with each of the brands. if you want quiet and reliability then go with a seagate. wd and maxtor offer more performance. obviously raptors are the best. True that... I've had bad WD drives too, and for a while that's all I used. I laid my opinion on the table about the brand I thought was best for performance/price/capacity. I have a work buddy that uses Seagate exclusively and says their 250 is the best thing since sliced bread. One comment I would make however, is that all this talk about the SATAII (3.0 G interface) and true NCQ is not really relevent. Here's why: 1) Processors, northbridge chipsets, and desktop PCs in general CANNOT saturate that 3G interface...they just cannot put enough data through them...proof of this is in that a linear data read speed (as much data at one time as a system can handle) a true SATAII 3G drive was outperformed by SATAI What really matters is head read rates and the density of the platters. 2) NCQ has proven itself to be a performance gain in SERVER environments only to this point...usually in a RAID 5 or RAID 1. That is where you have multiple operations (requests for data reading and writing) being done and ordered by the logic board on the drive so as to make getting the data a efficient as possible with regards to the data position on the platters. In a gaming environment (unless you are multitasking while playing games with a dualc-core) NCQ will not help at all, until developers take advantage of that ability...Since we are just seeing desktop level drives with that capability (last 1.5 years) developers have not done that...hence NO GAIN from NCQ at this time. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cobalt April 16, 2006 Share Cobalt Member April 16, 2006 1) Processors, northbridge chipsets, and desktop PCs in general CANNOT saturate that 3G interface...they just cannot put enough data through them...proof of this is in that a linear data read speed (as much data at one time as a system can handle) a true SATAII 3G drive was outperformed by SATAI The big thing with that is the "true SATAII" part. The sata 3gb drives that are out right now are not actually sataII drives. They are misclassified as that in a lot of situations. The computer naming convention people (can't think of the name right now) are actually in the process of redefining SATAII. It is going to have a different connector (supposedly not so prone to falling out) and some other interesting features. The other thing to take into account is that you aren't going to get to the 3gb theoretical speed unless you setup a raid with a non software based processor. In the end, the best single drive is a raptor. No one will argue that. If you want a drive you might be able to swap into a system in 3 yrs and get better performance with something with the added NCQ and 3gb features would be nice. Also keep in mind what Tek said about the sataI drives. The raptor and, in particular, the WD SE16 400 (both sata 1.5) outperform SATA 3gb drives. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tek-Almighty April 16, 2006 Share Tek-Almighty Member April 16, 2006 ' date='Apr 15 2006, 07:08 PM' post='323536']1) Processors, northbridge chipsets, and desktop PCs in general CANNOT saturate that 3G interface...they just cannot put enough data through them...proof of this is in that a linear data read speed (as much data at one time as a system can handle) a true SATAII 3G drive was outperformed by SATAI The big thing with that is the "true SATAII" part. The sata 3gb drives that are out right now are not actually sataII drives. They are misclassified as that in a lot of situations. The computer naming convention people (can't think of the name right now) are actually in the process of redefining SATAII. It is going to have a different connector (supposedly not so prone to falling out) and some other interesting features. The other thing to take into account is that you aren't going to get to the 3gb theoretical speed unless you setup a raid with a non software based processor. In the end, the best single drive is a raptor. No one will argue that. If you want a drive you might be able to swap into a system in 3 yrs and get better performance with something with the added NCQ and 3gb features would be nice. Also keep in mind what Tek said about the sataI drives. The raptor and, in particular, the WD SE16 400 (both sata 1.5) outperform SATA 3gb drives. I would agree...I checked out the benchmarks on several sites and without a doubt the new 150 GB raptor takes the cake. It is faster than the 74GB raptor (which runs TCQ)...The only problem is storage is limited, but 150 is pretty good. If I could afford it I would run 2 X raptor 150GB in Raid 0 for my OS and games. I did run the previous generation of Raptors in a Raid 0 but actually did not notice a significant difference in load times, boot times, etc... VS. one raptor... Maximum PC mag and AnAndTEch did some benchmarking too and found that Raid 0 with the raptors was not markedly faster than non Raid with 1 raptor. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cobalt April 19, 2006 Share Cobalt Member April 19, 2006 Yup. Raptors drives are definitely aimed at gamers. They are expensive but not as much as the only quicker alternative, the SCSI drive. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
EbilDustBunny April 20, 2006 Share EbilDustBunny GC Alumni April 20, 2006 I love my raptor drive... I don't download alot of junk though, raptors are pretty much was you want if you use alot of programs. It's kinda a waste to use it to store stuff like movies and music... they aren't that big. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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