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SOLVED Help wanted with HDDs - Western Digital Vs. Samsung

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BoundByBlood

Maybe Something Cool?
Joined
Sep 27, 2009
Location
MS Gulf Coast
CPU: AMD Phenom II X2 550BE
RAM: 4GB PC3-10600@1333MHz
Motherboard: Biostar TA790GX A3+
GPU: still deciding (upgrading)
PSU: Rosewill RP500 500W
O: Windows 7 x64 Ultimate

I'm going to be buying some upgrades soon and one of the things I'm looking to improve is my hard drive. My current HDD is a 160GB Western Digital Caviar which rates a 5.5 in the windows 7 experience because of the disk transfer rate (I've had this thing for a few years). I also just want more space.

I'm not really looking to get a SSD or anything over 1TB because I'm on a budget. I'm looking at two mid-range HDDs, both of which are decent prices, but I'm unfamiliar with the speed, reliability, or quality of either of these drives. Newegg customer reviews on either of these drives is a mixed bag and professional reviews state them as both being solid drives so I'm indecisive. I like to be thorough and do a lot of research when it comes to upgrading so I can make the best possible informed decision. I've including all the specs on both drives I'm considering.

[1] Western Digital Caviar Blue WD6400AAKS $70
Capacity: 640GB
Interface: SATA 3GB/s
RPM: 7200
Cache: 16MB

Newegg Customer Reviews
Excellent - 1464 Reviews (79%)
Good - 159 Reviews (9%)
Average - 61 Reviews (3%)
Poor - 56 Reviews (3%)
Very Poor - 105 Reviews (6%)

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822136218

This is the larger drive since the other specs are pretty much the same. What bothers me is I couldn't find the seek or latency times on the WD, not even on Western Digital's product page. What I gathered from customer reviews is this is a reliable and fast drive. It has a larger volume of excellent reviews, but because of more "good" and "average" reviews as well the excellent averages out slightly less than the Samsung.

Pound for pound though it has a better dollar to gigabyte ratio despite the higher price.

[2] SAMSUNG Spinpoint F3 HD502HJ $55
Capacity: 500GB/s
Interface: SATA 2GB/s
RPM: 7200
Cache: 16MB
Average Seek Time - 8.9ms
Average latency - 4.17ms

Newegg Customer Reviews
Excellent - 204 Reviews (83%)
Good - 16 Reviews (7%)
Average - 5 Reviews (2%)
Poor - 7 Reviews (3%)
Very Poor - 12 Reviews (5%)

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822152181

Due to the lack of seek and latency times info on the WD I can only assume this is the faster drive in comparison. One disturbing thing I noticed when analyzing the customer reviews is the large majority of the "poor" and "very poor" consists a lot of people complaining about DOA drives or drives failing relatively quick, which is not a complaint I saw a lot for the WD. This leads me to believe this drive is less reliable, but the question becomes how much quality is compromised with a $15 price deduction.

In essence what I have gathered is the WD is the larger and more reliable drive, but is also more expensive. The Samsung seems to be faster in terms of disk transfer rate and is cheaper.

I'm not only looking to upgrade to a drive with more capacity, but I'm looking for an overall faster drive which will also speed up my computer. So, I thought I would ask the community, maybe someone out there has experience with either one of these drives. Basically, what I want to know is what do you all think is the more solid buy? I'm leaning towards the WD, but I'm just sketchy on it because I can't make out what the seek time is on the drive.

Any and all help is appreciated.
 
i think the WD Black is more on par with the spinpoint, the wd blue is just a mainstream drive
spinpoint +1
 
HDDs

Thanks for the feedback. So, in the toss up between the WD blue and the spinpoint you would go with the spinpoint? Could you elaborate more on what you mean by the blue being a mainstream drive?

This is a tough decision for me. I looked into the WD black and it does look nice. It has the same seek and latency as the spinpoint, but it also has double the cache of both the WD blue and spinpoint. Yet, $70 is a bit steep for only a 500GB. I can possibly justify $70 for a 640GB, but when considering that 1TB SSDs are on the market I can't justify $70 for a 500GB.

I'm starting to favor the spinpoint over the WD blue. It seems to be faster and cheaper.
 
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