750GB Drive Recommendations

[DanishDevil]

Planning on getting one or more 750GB drives for my system (as they seem to have the cheapest price/GB ratio of just over 20 cents per).

I'll still be running my Raptor as my main and maybe for a few of my games, but everything else goes on the 750(s).

Wondering about 16mb cache vs. 32mb cache and the real-world performance benifit. Other than that, brand recommendations for warranties and reliability, performance, and noise would be my only real worries.

[ShadowFold]

Defanantly go with Western Digital!

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822136222

I got the 250gb model and its great :)

[Paulieg]

Defanantly go with Western Digital!

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822136222

I got the 250gb model and its great :)

I'd beg to differ. I've had 2 WD drives fail on me. I never buy anything but Seagate now.This is what I would choose:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822148298

[fitseries3]

seagate for sure. WD has the greenpower 750gig's now though. i have a 1tb WD greenpower and i LOVE it.

[ShadowFold]

I'd beg to differ. I've had 2 WD drives fail on me. I never buy anything but Seagate now.This is what I would choose:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822148298

Wow that sucks :( I got nothing but western digital thats all my family uses so thats what I usually recommend ;)

[farlex85]

I've heard of drives failing from both brands, and whenever they do the person moves to the other brand. This forums seems to contain more pro-seagate people, although from reviews and such elsewhere it seems like it could go either way. I would say just do newegg and see what the best deal is with the least amount of reviews talking about it failing.

And I don't know for sure, but I would think 32mb cache would certainly improve your performance, but if its priced over $40-50 more it probably isn't worth it.

[Paulieg]

Wow that sucks :( I got nothing but western digital thats all my family uses so thats what I usually recommend ;)

Yeah, it did suck. Not saying WD is bad. I've just had better luck with Seagate. Their Barracuda drives are fast, quiet and reliable.

[DanishDevil]

Good deal guys. Seagate or WD sounds good to me. I've been a WD guy, but WD doesn't have any 32mb cache drives, so that might push me toward Seagate. From Newegg specifically, a 32mb cache drive runs about $20 more.

Any more comments on 32mb cache vs 16mb cache? I'll probably leave performance and noise up to luck, as I'm not gonna finick about minor differences. Just as long as nobody's had a super-noisy 750GB drive.

The WD Greenpowers seem to really only be 5400RPM drives.

It's either gonna be a Seagate Barracuda 7200.11 or a WD Caviar SE16. You guys think the 32mb cache is worth the extra $10? Anyone have a 32mb cache drive that can let me know if the performance is noticeable?

EDIT: These (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Productcompare.aspx?Submit=ENE&N=2000150014%201035915133%201035507776%20103542434 0&bop=And&CompareItemList=N82E16822152100%2CN82E16822145166% 2CN82E16822148298)are really my 3 choices from Newegg with a 32mb cache. Anyone have a bad experience/recommend against Hitachi or Samsung? I don't mind a MIR.

[Ehstii]

im going to be the oddball and say go with one of these Hitachi's =]]

Both are cheaper or the same price with mail-in rebates...


http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822145140

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822145166

[DanishDevil]

Thanks for the recommendations guys. I went with the Seagate 7200.11 with 32mb cache, mainly for that reason, and because I kinda wanted either WD or SG, and WD doesn't make 32mb cache HDD's yet. Also, SG versus Hitachi because of the 5yr warranty, and although I've never had a HDD fail, the warranty is appreciated on a $150+ drive.

It's @ my house now and I'll be talking about it in my project log that's soon to be created, in case anyone's interested.

[lemonadesoda]

Samsung F1 http://techreport.com/articles.x/14200

Its even faster than your Raptor... which you can then ebay and get a few pennies back.

[DanishDevil]

Little late. I got kinda scared by that one because of the bad reviews on Newegg. Not sure if I want to give up on the raptor yet, though. It's been really good to me, and it's survived at least 50 reformats :)

[[I.R.A]_FBi]

Samsung or Seagates

[DanishDevil]

I already bought my Seagate!

:D

Edit: Wow. Just realized that if you type in all caps, it forces caps on first letter of every word. Clever, but caps on every word IMO is worse than all caps.

[[I.R.A]_FBi]

how is it

[DanishDevil]

It's @ my house now and I'll be talking about it in my project log that's soon to be created, in case anyone's interested.

^^

I'm @ school until Friday, and I'll be messing with my case for the better part of next week. I'll let you guys know in a new thread in the project log forum.

[DanishDevil]

Got another question for you guys.

For now, I'm going to be running my 74G Raptor and the 750G SATA.

I'll be running both Vista 32 and XP Pro 32. How do you think I should partition my drives?

I was thinking a half and half on the raptor for the OS's, 250G Games, 400G Videos (recording with BeyondTV), and 100G for pictures, music, and other files.

I've heard that keeping the OS's and the games on seperate drives or partitions is a good idea. I'd love some confirmation. Also, where should I install the benchmarks to on this setup? The Raptor for better scores, or would the 250G partition of the 7200.11 suffice?