Best 500GB hdd

[djisas]

Ok, here's a question for the masses:

Which is the best overall 500GB drive, speed is preferred, it's for an OS + gaming drive...
Been using Seagate for ages and even had one of the infamous 7200.11 drives die one me (t'was a raido setup with 2 single plate 320Gb disks), been slowly moving to the WD camp but they are on average 10€ more expensive or worse for 1TB drives (up to 20€ difference), but i feel they are more stable, i also have a 500GB seagate single plate on the 7200.12 generation as the Bt workhorse and it works fine...

So my doubt really is between a new 7200.12 or a nice WD black 12€ more expensive...

Cant find on the net any decent hdd roundup with recent drives, it seems hardware sites dont play much with them, it would be nice if TPU did some hdd charts using new drives including ssd's...

[Mussels]

samsung F3's are my favourite, they're up there with performance but unlike the other brands they stay very quiet as well.

[Radical_Edward]

I love my WD Blue 500GB. Once I got all the settings done right it's been nice and quiet ever since.

[djisas]

Are those samsung single plate??

[Mussels]

Originally Posted by djisas

Are those samsung single plate??

dual platter i think, but they're still very quiet anyway.

[DonInKansas]

Seagate's 7200.12 500gb drives are pretty quick as well. I bought six of them for use in our office and they're quiet and reliable.

[Soylent Joe]

I don't think there is a whole lot of difference between the Sammy F3, WD Blue, and SG 7200.12 500GB drives. I recommend going for which ever one of those 3 that is the cheapest and has the best warranty.

[djisas]

Originally Posted by Mussels

dual platter i think, but they're still very quiet anyway.

I thought so, new drives carry 32MB buffer and single plate, at least i think both Segate and WD do...

Originally Posted by DonInKansas

Seagate's 7200.12 500gb drives are pretty quick as well. I bought six of them for use in our office and they're quiet and reliable.

I have one too actually like i mentioned, mb i should just go and buy a new one to replace the old dual plate one to increase performance, efficiency and reliability...

@ Joe: If id go WD would be the faster Black, and i think warranty wise WD is better, i think i remember contacting segate when my drive died but they didnt help at all, so i sent the drive to the store for rma and it was just a bios issue...

[Hardi]

Samsung 500GB F3 is on platter.

[djisas]

Samsung drives never really atracted me, but i used hitaichi long ago, their 250GB drives where the best back then, but their drives are behind the times nowadays...

[inferKNOX]

Originally Posted by Mussels

dual platter i think, but they're still very quiet anyway.

Nope, the F3s are 500GB per platter, so it's single platter. The F1s were 333GB or so per platter.

Originally Posted by DonInKansas

Seagate's 7200.12 500gb drives are pretty quick as well. I bought six of them for use in our office and they're quiet and reliable.

-1
I bought 2 different Seagate Barracuda 7200.12 1TB HDDs and although spin-up is quiet, read/write is like a jackhammer compared to the Samsung Spinpoint F1 750GB that I had.
Also, about 3 months after getting my 2nd one, I started getting warnings from S.M.A.R.T to change it because it was becoming unstable and about to crash, so I sent it back for warranty (to Shop, not directly to Seagate) and am waiting for the new one.

I'd say undoubtedly get a Samsung Spinpoint F3 500GB. My F1 was simply excellent, and the F3s are better in every way according to all I've heard.
I'd get them in a heartbeat and sell my 7200.12s off if they were available to me, but everyone is only stocking Seagates, etc, around here...

[ERazer]

i got wd blacks and blues, black they very fast but pretty loud and the blue they okay in speed but silent, i still consider my old 7200.11 my best drive fast and silent, my 2 cents

[Mussels]

Originally Posted by ERazer

i got wd blacks and blues, black they very fast but pretty loud and the blue they okay in speed but silent, i still consider my old 7200.11 my best drive fast and silent, my 2 cents

samsung F1's and F3's are the only modern drive as quiet (or quieter) as the old seagates

[RejZoR]

Single platter 500GB Samsung's are probably the fastest drives you can get at that size. Except Velociraptor with 600GB...

[djisas]

Interesting so many samsung supporters...

inferKNOX, it happened with me before, getting smart warning from a segate drive, dont remember if the old or new generation thought, but indeed my wd drives show better reliability stats on smart using hard drive inspector...

[newtekie1]

Originally Posted by djisas

Ok, here's a question for the masses:

Which is the best overall 500GB drive, speed is preferred, it's for an OS + gaming drive...
Been using Seagate for ages and even had one of the infamous 7200.11 drives die one me (t'was a raido setup with 2 single plate 320Gb disks), been slowly moving to the WD camp but they are on average 10€ more expensive or worse for 1TB drives (up to 20€ difference), but i feel they are more stable, i also have a 500GB seagate single plate on the 7200.12 generation as the Bt workhorse and it works fine...

So my doubt really is between a new 7200.12 or a nice WD black 12€ more expensive...

Cant find on the net any decent hdd roundup with recent drives, it seems hardware sites dont play much with them, it would be nice if TPU did some hdd charts using new drives including ssd's...

IMO, brand doesn't really matter. I've found that whatever you tend to use most, is also what you seem to notice fail the most. And that makes sense really, if you've got 10 Seagate drives and only 1 WD, then you are 10 times more likely to see a Seagate drive fail. That doesn't mean WD is better.

Anyway, I say go with whichever is cheapest. Of course warranty is a concern also. I believe the WD Black drives have a 5 year warranty, at least they do in the states, while most others have a 3 year. That might be worth the extra few bucks.

Speed wise they are all going to be pretty close, the different won't really be noticeable. It might be measurable in benchmarks, but not noticeable in real world use.

[djisas]

Well i have 2 of which in my case, 2 different generation 500Gb seagate, one 640GB dual plate WD black and one 1TB green for storage, its slow seek time really pisses me of having to wait for the drive to wake up and speed is just average, but it'll do for now...

Further investigation proved that these samsung are neat drives being some of the fastest and efficient ones, with but one noticeable flaw in seek time...

Ill be further investigating and red you comments...

The WD is really the most expensive of the lot, so mb ill go with a different one...

Last year's chart from tom's harware, good numbers from both samsung and seagate with samsung being better most of the tests, WD drive looks bad in the picture, its 1TB drive, probably old model or just bad, no 500Gb WD for direct comparison...

Tom's Hardware - Benchmark h2benchw 3.12: Max Write Throughput

[RejZoR]

The more platters, the longer it takes to spin up. My WD Caviar Black 2TB (4 platters) takes forever to start from zero to 7200RPM. But once it's going, the performance is just incredible for such a massive drive.

[djisas]

I couldnt get a dual plate green, i suppose its a 3 plater one, the green only goes up to 5400rpm, also couldn't get 1TB segate dual plater, so im stuck with slow but reliable, quiet and cool drive, if only it would be faster...
New article on HDD from XBIT lab, samsung blasts competition and 7200.12 tailing it from slight behind, WD looks slower, it looks like an old generation with those speeds, the worst thing about WD is that its not easy to know which generation from its name without going to their site...

Testing here: http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/sto...d-roundup.html

EDIT: Im surprised that by the end of the long battery of tests the seagate wins the day and WD dual plater black second with F3 probably 3rd, the Sg model is on average close to F3 is speed, but better in some other critical parameters, power consumption is slightly lower on read\write, while f3 is lower on idle, not that is really matters when both drives are lower than 7w max, while the wd due to faster heads is faster on sequential reads, etc only loosing when it comes to pure speed...

By the way can anyone tell me if those f3 are slim or regular size, like the seagate ones, they are quite thiner than dual platters??

[OnBoard]

Originally Posted by djisas

By the way can anyone tell me if those f3 are slim or regular size, like the seagate ones, they are quite thiner than dual platters??

Normal size and I've likes Samsungs for a while now as they run so cool. 10C difference with Seagate few years back, dunno how it's currently. 23C an 26C for my drives and that's after benchmark run

Used to have a Maxtor few years back and it wan 56C (sure case was worse in airflow then too), but anyhow hated how it heated other things as well.

Another thing is seek noise, that can be horribly metallic on some drives, F1 was already quiet and F3 is even quieter, but my F1 is 2 platter, so might be that too. Oh and it doesn't hurt that Samsung is also one of the cheapest if not the cheapest out there

But all current perpendicular recording drives are fast and this second generation got even faster. WD has double the cache compared to Samsung, if I don't remember totally wrong.

[Maban]

Here's a quick comparison between the F3 and 72.12. Quick edit here. Reran for 72.12 and got 115.4MB/s Random Read. Everything else was the same.

[IINexusII]

f3's are nice and quiet. but the 1gb caviar black i had was faster

[v12dock]

I vote samsung F3 or WD caviar black

[scaminatrix]

Top one WDC Black SATA3 1TB 64 MB cache
Middle WDC Black SATA2 500GB 32 MB cache
Bottom WDC Green SATA2 500GB 8 MB cache (2 years old)




I'm sure I had over 150 MB/s read on the 1TB when I didn't have it as the OS drive...

[brandonwh64]

Originally Posted by Radical_Edward

I love my WD Blue 500GB. Once I got all the settings done right it's been nice and quiet ever since.

+1

Got two blues in raid 0 and they are peppy!