Mighty_Miro_WD

RAID 0 will only really improve the Sequential reads/writes, and it does nothing for access time, and since you'll read and write large files, then RAID 0 will provide some performance boost, but not as much as a SSD drive will.

Hi there @chaddesch! IMHO it depends on what are you need more - speed or capacity. If you're going for the speed performance then the SSD will suit better, and if the storage space is more needed, then a HDD will suit better. For games in particular, the only real benefit will be the reduced loading times (for instance in open world games and such that have to load often and load in objects, etc.) because the data transfer speed of a SSD is higher than that of a HDD. Cheers!

Hi there @Gego! To reduce the vibration noise you can try to put something between the 2 contacts to act as a dampener. Preferably something that can't hold a static charge, or in anyway conductive. For instance, you can use rubber cladding beneath the HDD, or you can put rubber between the HDD cage and the frame in which it goes inside the case. Hope this helps and cheers!

Hi there @dlf! Judging by your description I think it will be best to see if the manufacturer has its own diagnostic tool and try to run a test on the drive you have with it to see what the results will be. If there's any problem detected, then RMA it back to them. Meanwhile, if you're using Windows you can run diagnostics check with chkdsk /r on the drive with CMD if you want - just click on Start, type CMD, press enter, and in the black windows that will appear type chkdsk [write the letter of the drive:] /r. Hope this helps and best of luck!

Hi there @darkangelire66! Does your drive have a drive letter assigned? If not, you can try to give it one by following the steps described in this KB article: http://products.wdc.com/support/kb.ashx?id=GyqX1q Also, is this an internal or external drive? Let us know how it went.

Hi there @Appel! Most likely your boot and system partitions are located on different drive, so you'll have to reinstall the OS. In order to avoid any confusion during the fresh installation you can follow these steps: 1. First plug in only the SSD. 2. After that insert the CD or the USB stick with the copy of the OS. 3. Boot off that device and install the OS onto the SSD as AHCI (since this will give you the best performance for SSD). 4. Lastly, plug in the HDD and format it via the same menu. Hope this helps and let me know how it went.

Hi there @ColdDigital! Having an SSD will help you reduce the booting times of your computer. That being said, if you perform any operating system related task that needs to retrieve data from the drive, it will be much faster then if your OS was on the HDD. So if you're not going to use the other system you've mentioned, then you can transfer the SSD from there. As for gaming in particular, the only benefit from running a game from the SSD will be the faster loading times because your GPU and CPU will be the key components, so by swapping the drives you will be able to get a more powerful graphic card. Hope this helps. Cheers!

Hi tHi there @Maxwell! Yes, when you make a fresh installation of your OS you have to reinstall all programs, games and apps you have on the secondary HDD as well because you will have a new registry with no knowledge of your installed apps. Hope this helps and cheers!

Hi there @megatronends! Basically the mSATA is just a size reduction primarily designed for laptops or other portable devices, and mSATA will work just a little bit faster, and a M.2 can be either native PCIe or SATA. However, keep in mind that PCIe SSDs are quite power hungry, which means form factor, heat dissipation and airflow become important. The main benefit of a SSD is low latency. When doing sequential operations on SATA, the transfer rate will be capped at around 550 MB/s range, and the advantage of the newer PCIe based devices is the possibility of upping the sequential transfer rates from 550 to perhaps 1000 or more theoretically. Hope this helps. Cheers!

Hi there. Since you're looking for a secondary mass storage unit for additional capacity you can take a look at WD Green. It is an energy-efficient HDD that works cool, quiet and saves a lot of power, and it is designed for backups and secondary storage. Its features allow it to be a great choice for quiet backup builds or for archiving (for instance it spins down when it can, e.g. once an hour). It is mostly chosen for massive media storage (up to 6TB) in builds that have another drive for the OS and active programs and games. Here's a link if you want to check it out: http://products.wdc.com/support/kb.ashx?id=Am02fH Hope this helps and feel free to ask any questions you may have. Cheers!

Hi there. Basically a clicking noise is not a good sign. Still you can run a chkdsk test on the drive and see what the results will be. Just make sure you to make a backup of your most important data a priori. If you're using Windows you can run a chkdsk /r on the drive with CMD to see what the results will be. Click on Start, type CMD, press enter, and in the black windows that will appear type chkdsk [write the letter of the drive:] /r. In case the results show there's something wrong, look for a replacement drive. Hope this helps and let us know how it went.

Hi there @ Since I'm a WD rep I can give you some input on the WD NAS devices. Depending on your budget and desired capacity, I could suggest checking out the WD My Cloud Mirror and WD My Cloud EX2. Both these are 2-bay NAS devices that are easy to set up and use, and come with WD Red drives inside. The EX2 is more advanced with features like third party apps support, and are easily controlled by the WD app and are accessible through the internet without any issue. All of them have useful features such as mobile synchronization both over the local network and over the internet. You can set it up to be scheduled or ongoing. Here are some links if you want to check them out: WD My Cloud Mirror - http://products.wdc.com/support/kb.ashx?id=Qhl8gE WD My Cloud EX2 -http://products.wdc.com/support/kb.ashx?id=jrdCbb Hope this helps. Cheers!

Hi there @experiencednoob! It depends on what are you gong to need more. If it's speed you're after, then start with a SSD since the OS will boot up faster from a solid state drive. A SSD will help boot speeds compared to a HDD and if you perform any operating system related task that needs to retrieve data from the drive, it will be much faster then if your OS was on the HDD. On the other hand if you need more space to start with, then a HDD will be my choice since it will provide more capacity. However, I personally would prefer to go with SSD+HDD configuration at some later moment if possible. That's because I like the idea of having two separate storage locations since that way you'll be able to make an efficient backup from one drive to the other, and still have your valuable information in case one of them fails. Hope this helps and feel free to ask any questions you may have. Cheers!

Hi there @Luke! Basically when a program gives you this results it's best to backup any important data you have on your drive and look for a replacement because the drive is about to fail, and all the valuable informaiton you have there will be lost. If you want you can upload a screenshot of the results so I can be more specific on the results. Hope this helps and best of luck!

Hi there. I don't think you'd have anything to worry about when RAID-ing two HDDs in the SATA 2 ports. Even the fastest mechanical drives can barely reach the speed of 200 MB/s, whereas SATA II ports are able to transfer up to 300 MB/s. So you won't suffer any loss of performance by connecting your array to the SATA II ports on your motherboard. Another thing you may consider is what @Sauron suggested and look for a SSD that will allow you fast transfer speed so you can take maximum advantage of the SATA bandwidth. However, if you decide to go with RAID 0, keep in mind that it provides no redundancy, so I would suggest to make a regular backup of any important data you store there because of the possible data loss in case of failure of one of the drives. Hope this helps. Cheers!

Hi there @Machoman and welcome to the LinusTechTips forums! You should be able to install Windows 8.1 on the new drive you've got since there's no limitations on the OS software that could be installed on a HDD. Actually, the only limitation you may have is with the MBR partitioning on a 32-bit OS because the 2-TB barrier is the result of this 32-bit limitation. Basically the maximum number that can be represented by using 32-bits is 4,294,967,295, which translates to 2.199 TB of capacity by using 512-byte sectors (approximately 2.2 TB). Therefore, a capacity beyond 2.2 TB is not addressable by using the MBR partitioning scheme. Which is why I would suggest the GPT drive format. And as for your case question, you can ask it here or in the Cases and Power Supply section. Hope this helps. Cheers!

Hi there @MinutesPerBeat and welcome to linustechtips forums! You should be able to fix this issue by manually setting the voltage and timings which is done in the BIOS. You should then be able to run it at 1866 MHz. So go into BIOS and enable XMP, it will set it to 1866 MHz and the correct timings and everything should be good to go. Auto is usually 1333 or 1600 with bad timings. Once you enable xmp things will all sort themselves out. Hope this helps. Cheers!

Hi there @Rob200088 and welcome to LinusTechTips forum! All the parts look compatible to me and I agree with the others that the build should work fine. I don't know for what are you planning to use the rig for, but if it's for gaming you may consider what Infernal Burrito suggested and look for a stronger GPU, and if you swap the video card you can look for a slightly more powerful PSU as well just to have few additional wattages aside in case you want to make any future upgrade on the machine (something like 500-550W will be enough, golden certified for additional efficiency). Hope this helps. Cheers!

Hi there @kyo09munichfc! Are you looking for a portable or desktop external drive? For a portable external drive I can recommend WD Elements and WD My Passport Ultra. They both are very good and reliable drives, and the only difference between them is that the second one is hardware encrypted and password protected while the first one is not. As for the maximum capacity, WD Elements comes with maximum available storage space of 2TB while WD My Passport is up to 3TB. Here's a link you if want to take a look: WD Elements - http://products.wdc.com/support/kb.ashx?id=dhOJDN WD My Passport Ultra - http://products.wdc.com/support/kb.ashx?id=astczY On the other hand, in case you're after a desktop external drives you can take a look at WD My Book which is also hardware encrypted and password protected and comes with backup program SmartWare Pro 3.0 that you can use for automatic backup. As for the storage space available, it's up to 6TB. You can check it out here: WD My Book - http://products.wdc.com/support/kb.ashx?id=vPhck5 Hope this helps and feel free to ask any questions you may have. Cheers!

Hi there @Gamin_M@t! The rig looks solid, but I would suggest few optional give and takes. I see that you haven't specified the exact model of the motherboard I would suggest to get one which is suitable for overclocking (since you got an unlocked processor and you may plan to overclock it), as well as a CPU cooler if you're going to overclock the CPU. However, if you don't intend to do so you can go with the locked version of the same processor. As for the PSU, if you're not going to upgrade the parts in the near future (like adding another video card for instance) this will be kind of an overkill in my opinion. You can easily go with a 550W PSU, golden certified for more efficiency, for the current configuration. And lastly, what are you planning to use the secondary drive for? Because WD Black is a very good drive designed for performance (heavy gaming, big workloads and intensive file usage for instance), but if you just want to have some additional storage you can take a look at WD Green which is meant for backups and secondary storage usage and is mostly chosen for massive media storage (up to 6TB) in builds that have another drive for the OS, active programs and games: http://products.wdc.com/support/kb.ashx?id=jZuKSj Hope this helps. Cheers!

Hi there. I know how unpleasent such situation could be, so I would suggest to make a backup of the most important data you have stored on the device while you still have access to it and look for a replacement HDD, especially since there are constantly growing number of bad sectors on the drive. However, if you don't manage to take everything from the drive you can contact some data recovery company in order to extract the information: http://products.wdc.com/support/kb.ashx?id=Ta8xfZ Hope this helps and best of luck!

Hi there @pix-! I personally would prefer the second option because with that you'll have enough space for apps and games on the SSD, and plenty of space for mass storage as well. Furthermore, you can also install and run games from the HDD since the only benefit from running them on SSD speeds will be the faster loading times which will be a big plus for open world games and such that have to load often and load in objects. Hope this helps and feel free to ask any questions you may have! Cheers!

Hi there @lcfz86! 1. Of course you can install any kind of apps on the secondary drive, but they will run at the normal HDD speed. This is the reason why some people install their programs, as well as the most used and demanding apps, on the SSD so they can take advantage of the fast loading times, and leave the games on the HDD since the only benefit you can get by running a game from an SSD is the fast loading times. 2. Yes, you can do that, and it's called ReadyBoost, but I would suggest to simply upgrade your system memory if you want to get a performance boost because it will be easier and more beneficial. Lastly, there's nothing bad with having more than 1 or 2 hard drives in your system, and I also think that you have a pretty good configuration set up. Hope this helps. Cheers!

Hi there @Motorcate! For the files you can set your browser/torrent client to download to the HDD. As for the program installations, I don't think it can be done automatically. You just have to manually set the install location every time you install a program or game - when installing programs/games always select the "custom install" option when installing and change it to the drive/folder you want to install it on. Hope this helps and cheers!