Raptor X dead

[nicehat]

My gaming hard drive that Ive had since 2005 has died. Its been an awesome drive (loud, but Id recommend it to anyone). In short, Ive been out of the Mechanical Hard Drive loop for quite a ling time now and I dont have time to thoroughly research whats what these days. So I am turning to you the LTT community to help me out.

 

I need a high cap Hard Drive (@7200 RPM) that will just be used for Steam, Origin and any other misc titles. By high Cap, I mean 1 TB or so. Whats a good brand? Id prefer WD but Im a bit unsure as to which would be best. What about Hybrid Drives should I waste time with those wrt gaming?

 

Thanks 

[Excon]

Seagate Barracuda ST1000DM003. It's cheap, quiet and gets the job done.

[Sarcasm]

WD Black or Seagate Barracuda. Green 1TBs would be cheaper, but I've heard bad things about their reliability and it's 5400.

[Hans Christian | Teri]

I'd go with a WD Black.

[Bluejay0]

Baracudaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaas

 

Caviarssss

[DaftBehemoth]

Pick up a WD Blue 1TB. It's cheap and actually faster than their Black version simply because they haven't updated the WD Black SKU yet. I got 180MB/s reads and writes on the one I just picked up for my work PC (which is 80MB/s faster than my older Black drive).

[Bluejay0]

 

That's actually a sexy drive you got here..

[nicehat]

Hmm ok So Seagate Barracuda or WD Blue or Black. This narrows it down alot for me thanks abunch. 

 

How long do these HDs last you guys gander? 

[Bonsai99]

Get this seagate barracuda, faster and quieter than a WD Blue drive.

http://pcpartpicker.com/part/seagate-internal-hard-drive-st1000dm003

[Excon]

Hmm ok So Seagate Barracuda or WD Blue or Black. This narrows it down alot for me thanks abunch. 

 

How long do these HDs last you guys gander? 

I"ve had a lot more WD's die in my servers compared to Barracuda's. I only run Barracuda's now.

[DaftBehemoth]

Hmm ok So Seagate Barracuda or WD Blue or Black. This narrows it down alot for me thanks abunch. 

 

How long do these HDs last you guys gander? 

Well I've personally never had a WD drive fail on me... I know one friend who's WD Black died on him, but other than that, my experience with about 15 WD drives have been flawless. It looks like the Blue's MTBF is 750K hours.

[nicehat]

 

That's actually a sexy drive you got here..

 

Dont remind me Im so sad. I love just watching the heads hit the platter reading writing data. Too bad I couldnt find a good way of bolting it to the side panel of my case so I could see it from the outside. I was thinking of getting another Raptor but none of the new ones have the clear panel. Not that it would matter anyway  

[DaftBehemoth]

Get this seagate barracuda, faster and quieter than a WD Blue drive.

http://pcpartpicker.com/part/seagate-internal-hard-drive-st1000dm003

Do you have a source for that info? I'd be interested to see the benchmarks.

[Bonsai99]

Do you have a source for that info? I'd be interested to see the benchmarks.

Here it is, had trouble finding it. Had to go digging around in my history.

http://us.hardware.info/comparisontable/516951/snoopii/hard-disksssds-seagatevswd1tb

[Flamewalker]

Wd blue (latest revision)

 

 

Seagate

 

 

Speeds are pretty much similar (if your looking at the latest wd blue revision , the older revision was slower and had higher access times), and like DaftBehemoth said, don't get a 1tb wd black(hasn't been updated in ages and is pretty slow these days)

[DaftBehemoth]

Speeds are pretty much similar (if your looking at the latest wd blue revision , the older revision was slower and had higher access times), and like DaftBehemoth said, don't get a 1tb wd black(hasn't been updated in ages and is pretty slow these days)

That's in line with what I found when I was just recently shopping around. Are these your personal benches or did you find them online somewhere?

 

Here it is, had trouble finding it. Had to go digging around in my history.

http://us.hardware.info/comparisontable/516951/snoopii/hard-disksssds-seagatevswd1tb

Those results certainly show an edge to the Barracuda, but you should  look at Flamewalker's post as well... I wish we had a better and more standardized bench for hard drives somewhere out there. Perhaps some clearer naming schemes for drives as well. The results in your bench look like the old WD Blue while Flamewalker's look like the new one (as it's showing very similar results to what my new rev. WD Blue got in ATTO).

 

Speed aside, you should keep in mind the warranties if you're concerned about drive longevity, @nicehat. These companies don't simply assign an arbitrary amount of time to cover their drives. Choosing how long you can afford to support your product is a painstaking task that hardware providers take very seriously. The drive with the longer warranty is also likely to last longer.

[Flamewalker]

That's in line with what I found when I was just recently shopping around. Are these your personal benches or did you find them online somewhere?

 

Those results certainly show an edge to the Barracuda, but you should  look at Flamewalker's post as well... I wish we had a better and more standardized bench for hard drives somewhere out there. Perhaps some clearer naming schemes for drives as well. The results in your bench look like the old WD Blue while Flamewalker's look like the new one (as it's showing very similar results to what my new rev. WD Blue got in ATTO).

 

Speed aside, you should keep in mind the warranties if you're concerned about drive longevity, @nicehat. These companies don't simply assign an arbitrary amount of time to cover their drives. Choosing how long you can afford to support your product is a painstaking task that hardware providers take very seriously. The drive with the longer warranty is also likely to last longer.

 

 

The pictures are from the internet (i bought a 1tb wd blue for friends pc build awhile ago and it's getting the exact same speeds as in the screenshot.) 

 

I also have a picture of the old revision (had both linked before in a different thread here) 

 

 

 

And i think the seagate warranty is 2 years and the wd blue is 3 years

 

But yer , they are pretty close in terms of speed from what i saw (wd blue latest revision vs seagate)

[Bonsai99]

Those results certainly show an edge to the Barracuda, but you should  look at Flamewalker's post as well... I wish we had a better and more standardized bench for hard drives somewhere out there. 

The problem with Flamewalker's post is that they are on different OSes (and possibly different hardware) so I would take it with a grain of salt. Especially since the Barracuda is well known to be faster than the WD Blue.

[nicehat]

 

That's in line with what I found when I was just recently shopping around. Are these your personal benches or did you find them online somewhere?

 

Those results certainly show an edge to the Barracuda, but you should  look at Flamewalker's post as well... I wish we had a better and more standardized bench for hard drives somewhere out there. Perhaps some clearer naming schemes for drives as well. The results in your bench look like the old WD Blue while Flamewalker's look like the new one (as it's showing very similar results to what my new rev. WD Blue got in ATTO).

 

Speed aside, you should keep in mind the warranties if you're concerned about drive longevity, @nicehat. These companies don't simply assign an arbitrary amount of time to cover their drives. Choosing how long you can afford to support your product is a painstaking task that hardware providers take very seriously. The drive with the longer warranty is also likely to last longer.

 

Thats a very good point DaftBehemoth. I want a drive that will last about as long as my Raptor X - 6-7 years. I had some really bad experiences in the past with Maxtor in the past (when I was first tinkering with PCs) and those drives would last a year or so, bad stuff. I have alot more faith in Seagate and WD because I own both brands in various machines and have no complaints. 

 

About your point about @Flamewalker Vs @Bonsai99 's benchmarks certainly does add alot of confusion at my end. I dont doubt either of these guys, Im sure they both own excellent drives. Google searching benchmarks pitting the two also brings conflicting info. hmmmmmmmm

 

Also, how do I know what the latest version of Blue is? 

[nicehat]

The problem with Flamewalker's post is that they are on different OSes (and possibly different hardware) so I would take it with a grain of salt. Especially since the Barracuda is well known to be faster than the WD Blue.

 

Good point, I didnt notice that. Would it make a big difference? 

[AidanJMessenger]

If all it's doing is storing games to be loaded from, then probably a Western Digital Black would be a good option as it would help keep loading times down with it's speed etc. But otherwise a Seagate Barracuda 7200rpm drive will be great, and a WD Blue would also be fine. No need to go with a hybrid drive as when all you're storing is large games, the little cache isn't going to help as much as if it was loading the OS and programs from. 

[Bonsai99]

Good point, I didnt notice that. Would it make a big difference? 

Not sure how much of a difference it would make but it definitely would affect the results.

[DaftBehemoth]

Good point, I didnt notice that. Would it make a big difference? 

 

The problem with Flamewalker's post is that they are on different OSes (and possibly different hardware) so I would take it with a grain of salt. Especially since the Barracuda is well known to be faster than the WD Blue.

Agreed and it definitely could make a difference. I think that you simply can't make a bad choice here. Seagate and WD are the companies that I would look between when choosing my next drives. The performance is close enough between these two that I wouldn't think that you'd be able to tell the difference. I'd go for whichever gets you the longest warranty. 

 

Let me go get the link for the new WD drive that I got off Amazon. That should be simple enough. There we go: 

 

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0088PUEPK/ref=oh_details_o02_s02_i00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

[Flamewalker]

The problem with Flamewalker's post is that they are on different OSes (and possibly different hardware) so I would take it with a grain of salt. Especially since the Barracuda is well known to be faster than the WD Blue.

 

 

Good point, I didnt notice that. Would it make a big difference? 

 

Like i mentioned in the previous post, i bought a wd blue 1tb awhile ago (couple months ago) for a friends pc build ran benches on it when i got it, and it got exactly the same speeds as that screenshot.( give or take 1-2 mb/s)

 

If its made after july 2013 then you got the newer revision, before that then its the old revision.

 

Either way you can't go wrong with either drive (seagate or wd) 

[nicehat]

Great, thanks for all the help fellas. Def made things easier.