Upgrade: wd green 500gb vs. seagate barracuda 500gb

[ChiSox]

So Im in the process of upgrading my friends pc

His specs:

Biostar Nvidia 6100 939 Mobo

AMD Athlon 64 x2 3800+

2 Gb DDR Gskill Ram

Waiting for Ati 4670 to get here

160gb IDE Seagate Barracuda

575w Logisys


He wants more space

Board supports Raid would he benefit from it with this system?

And I was looking at these 2 drives Seagate Western Digital

 

[kurosagi01]

if your friend can pay an extra $25 i would recommend getting the WD caviar black 640GB totally worth the money.
If not then i would get the WD green
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822136319

 

[cerver]

I had trouble with my last seagate drive. But i have never had any issues with my WD drives or mybooks. I also noticed that my seagates would wine after about 6 months of heavy use, where as my WD's did not.

how much more space does he need and what is he storing? Are the files being accessed all time or is it just needed for general space for programs, games ect?

 

[ChiSox]

Well we already dumped some money into the gpu and ram so $60 is about the max....Im gonna just clone his disk that he has...which is @ 140gb with all games/programs installed...all data is on an external...

 

[ChiSox]

Does the 32mb cache on the WD help alot in compared to 16mb?

EDIT: Sorry to double post

 

[cerver]

Does the 32mb cache on the WD help alot in compared to 16mb?

Most people claim that there is no significant advantage to a 32MB cache over the 16. they say that it does not affect the performance much at all. I have never becnch'd this so i can not tell you one way or another.

i would say if its just the base drive and your going to clone the disk to have the same 140gb image as before, then roll with WD. I found them to be the better of the two. IMO.