Budget Drives 500gb final choice help?

[KieranD]

Western Digital WD5000AAKS 500GB vs Samsung SpinPoint HD501LJ 500GB.
This is it i know i posted another thread but these 2 dries are the final choices for a 500gb drive i can think off without going over £40-£50.

Both have
16mb cache
7200rpm
8.9 ms (average) seek times
sata 2
500gb
166gb platters 3 layers WD may differ but is said to be 160gb

The WD is a little dearer by £3

Seeing as both drives seem similar then i would like to know if anyone has any experience with the drives.

Problem is that i wanted the Maxtor 500gb 32mb cache but its curently a little out of price.

[Cybrnook2002]

Western Digi, as I have good experiences with them, cant speak much for samsung. Only problem I had with WD was the smaller 80GB sata drives

[Darknova]

I have the Samsung. It's quiet, fast.

I don't really know what else there is lol.

[KieranD]

thanks, i might get the Samsung rather than the WD becuase it is slightly cheaper and its quiet and fast the WD i think is older anyway

the samsung is also called T166

[Darknova]

Originally Posted by KieranD

thanks, i might get the Samsung rather than the WD becuase it is slightly cheaper and its quiet and fast the WD i think is older anyway

the samsung is also called T166

One thing I've found is that the Samsungs are quieter than the WDs. rig 2 in my sig uses a 250Gb WD, and it's louder than the Samsung.

[KieranD]

the wd and the samsung perform similar to each other not sure if the WD is better but the WD is slightly better performance than a seagate 7200.10 which i wanted to buy before

technically they are both good drives just not sure if the WD is faster if its around the same id go for the samsung due to its noise nad heat levels being really low

[dannylill1981]

samsung nice and quiet and cool never breaks 24 degrees celsius and have that one myself

[rampage]

i have 4 of the samsungs, fast and quiet

[farlex85]

How much is the 640gb SE16 WD over there. It's priced pretty equivalently to the Seagate over here in the states, and is faster.

[Kursah]

I have that WD SE16 640, great drive, mine runs around 29C-30C, quick...HDTach nails it in the mid 90's MB/S, it's quiet...I cannot hear it running, and last I checked in our market on Newegg it was $99.99. Excellent drive, I highly recommend it.

[ASharp]

Of those two, I'd rather go for the Western Digital drive just because they've been around longer and I would tend to believe they're more reliable.

At the same time however, I'd like to add another recommendation for the Western Digital 640GB drive. It's a lot faster than either of the 500GB drives mentioned, has more capacity, and price is quite good too. The dollar per gig is pretty good as well.