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Which WD drive to match with SSD caching?

Darkfeign
By Darkfeign
in Storage Devices
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Posted

Hi guys,

 

So I've got a couple Seagate drives (one being cached for Windows with a 64GB Vertex 4) and a WD Blue drive for my linux OS, but the seagates are getting a little shoddy and my blue drive has always been the scratchiest drive I've owned. It's also pretty slow on its own with linux.

So I've been wondering, which Western Digital drives would fit best with an SSD cache? I've been using the Seagate Barracuda Black drives so I was going to switch to a 2TB WD Black drive for the OS and a Red drive for storage, but will I actually see the performance benefits of a sped-up HDD when I'm using an SSD with the black drive, or am I better off getting another red drive to cache?

 

Thanks,

Mike.

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Hmm... I thought it was seagate barracuda and WD caviar black...

 

But anyway if you must SSD cache a hard drive, go with the WD caviar blacks.

My PC CPU: 2600K@4.5GHz 1.3v Cooler: Noctua NH-U12P SE2 MB: ASUS Maximus IV RAM: Kingston 1600MHz 8GB & Corsair 1600MHz 16GB GPU: 780Ti Storage: Samsung 850 Evo 500GB SSD, Samsung 830 256GB SSD, Kingston 128GB SSD, WD Black 1TB,WD Green 1TB. PSU: Corsair AX850 Case: CM HAF X. Optical drive: LG Bluray burner  MacBook Pro, Hackintosh

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It really won't matter. I recommend whatever HDD is cheapest at the size you want. Usually that'll be the greens.

 

The point of SSD caching is to give you better random performance. The drive will give you the sequential performance you want.

I do not feel obliged to believe that the same God who has endowed us with sense, reason and intellect has intended us to forgo their use, and by some other means to give us knowledge which we can attain by them. - Galileo Galilei
Build Logs: Tophat (in progress), DNAF | Useful Links: How To: Choosing Your Storage Devices and Configuration, Case Study: RAID Tolerance to Failure, Reducing Single Points of Failure in Redundant Storage , Why Choose an SSD?, ZFS From A to Z (Eric1024), Advanced RAID: Survival Rates, Flashing LSI RAID Cards (alpenwasser), SAN and Storage Networking

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It really won't matter. I recommend whatever HDD is cheapest at the size you want. Usually that'll be the greens.

 

The point of SSD caching is to give you better random performance. The drive will give you the sequential performance you want.

 

I don't recommend the greens due to rampant headparking issues.

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I don't recommend the greens due to rampant headparking issues.

That's mostly the old green drives. The new greens have far fewer issues with head parking. Plus, it won't be used in a RAID array.

I do not feel obliged to believe that the same God who has endowed us with sense, reason and intellect has intended us to forgo their use, and by some other means to give us knowledge which we can attain by them. - Galileo Galilei
Build Logs: Tophat (in progress), DNAF | Useful Links: How To: Choosing Your Storage Devices and Configuration, Case Study: RAID Tolerance to Failure, Reducing Single Points of Failure in Redundant Storage , Why Choose an SSD?, ZFS From A to Z (Eric1024), Advanced RAID: Survival Rates, Flashing LSI RAID Cards (alpenwasser), SAN and Storage Networking

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That's mostly the old green drives. The new greens have far fewer issues with head parking. Plus, it won't be used in a RAID array.

 

Hmmm, I haven't looked at them in a while, I'll take your word for it.

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To be quite frank with you, caching with a 64gb SSD is stupid.

 

It's not ideal, but at the time bigger SSDs were a lot more expensive, and I don't want to have an OS and just a few games on a drive when I can get almost the same performance with this Cache set up. It works well for me so I'm happy with it.

I just don't know if buying a Black drive will add any benefit given its increased cache size and dual on-board processors, because the SSD should provide that anyway.

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It's not ideal, but at the time bigger SSDs were a lot more expensive, and I don't want to have an OS and just a few games on a drive when I can get almost the same performance with this Cache set up. It works well for me so I'm happy with it.

I just don't know if buying a Black drive will add any benefit given its increased cache size and dual on-board processors, because the SSD should provide that anyway.

 

Yeah, IDT the Black will have any benefit. I say since the barracudas you have are wearing out, I say get new ones.

"If it has tits or tires, at some point you will have problems with it." -@vinyldash303

this is probably the only place i'll hang out anymore: http://linustechtips.com/main/topic/274320-the-long-awaited-car-thread/

 

Current Rig: Intel Core 2 Quad Q6600, Abit IN9-32MAX nForce 680i board, Galaxy GT610 1GB DDR3 gpu, Cooler Master Mystique 632S Full ATX case, 1 2TB Seagate Barracuda SATA and 1x200gb Maxtor SATA drives, 1 LG SATA DVD drive, Windows 10. All currently runs like shit :D 

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