What drive to buy/WD blue questions

[pyr0]

Hello.

I am wondering which hard drive to buy. I want 2+ TB at 7200rpm for a low price. Reliability, a long warranty and good customer service are something I am willing to pay a little extra for.

Which hard drive do you guys recommend? (I am in the UK)

Also, it was my understanding that WD blue drives were 7200rpm, but the 2TB WD blue seems to be 5400rpm. What gives?

Thanks in advance

[vanished]

Any particular reason you want 7200 rpm?  I assume it's for performance reasons, yes?  If so, wouldn't it make more sense to just get any drive that's over the minimum speed threshold you need, regardless of how that's achieved, rather than specifying the rpm?

[ChalkChalkson]

you shouldn't look too much for the rotation speed, there are 7200 drives that are slower and quieter than a 5400rpm WD blue

If you want reliability check the WD Green lineup out or the Seagate NAS drives 

[ARikozuM]

Drive speed is no longer a deciding factor in performance as it once was. I would concentrate on getting a well-reviewed drive with a good controller such as WD Blue or Hitachi Deskstar

[tlink]

5 minutes ago, pyr0 said:

Hello.

I am wondering which hard drive to buy. I want 2+ TB at 7200rpm for a low price. Reliability, a long warranty and good customer service are something I am willing to pay a little extra for.

Which hard drive do you guys recommend? (I am in the UK)

Also, it was my understanding that WD blue drives were 7200rpm, but the 2TB WD blue seems to be 5400rpm. What gives?

Thanks in advance

western digital red is very reliable and has a 5 year warranty i think. 

[TurtleTrain]

Hi,

For performance purposes you can always go with the WD Black, it is more expensive however is rated for better performance and comes from a solid manufacturer, I wouldn't recommend Green as they have slower access times as they are more power efficient.

[pyr0]

9 minutes ago, Ryan_Vickers said:

Any particular reason you want 7200 rpm?  I assume it's for performance reasons, yes?  If so, wouldn't it make more sense to just get any drive that's over the minimum speed threshold you need, regardless of how that's achieved, rather than specifying the rpm?

how would I find out the performance of a particular drive?

 

[Mira Yurizaki]

Higher drive capacities mean higher data density on the platter, rendering rotation speed a moot point. Given the same number of platters, a 5,400 RPM 2TB drive will perform about the same, if not better, than a 7,200 RPM 1TB drive. At least as far as transfer rate goes. Seek time might be slower, but it'll be too slow for any one to notice.

 

1 minute ago, pyr0 said:

how would I find out the performance of a particular drive?

You'd have to find someone who benchmarked the drive and recent hard drive benchmarks are about as rare as Sasquatch these days.

[pyr0]

1 minute ago, M.Yurizaki said:

Higher drive capacities mean higher data density on the platter, rendering rotation speed a moot point. Given the same number of platters, a 5,400 RPM 2TB drive will perform about the same, if not better, than a 7,200 RPM 1TB drive. At least as far as transfer rate goes. Seek time might be slower, but it'll be too slow for any one to notice.

 

You'd have to find someone who benchmarked the drive and recent hard drive benchmarks are about as rare as Sasquatch these days.

I'm actually wondering, This will be paired with a 500GB SSD, does it matter too much, or should I just go with something cheap?

[ARikozuM]

3 minutes ago, pyr0 said:

how would I find out the performance of a particular drive?

 

You can check UserBenchmark. I would advise looking at the middle of the graphs to see where your performance will most likely fall and looking through each of the points along the page.

 

Also, be sure to check the drives at equal size or platter count/density.

[vanished]

23 minutes ago, pyr0 said:

how would I find out the performance of a particular drive?

 

I guess I was too slow; you've got two good answers to that above already  

 

20 minutes ago, pyr0 said:

I'm actually wondering, This will be paired with a 500GB SSD, does it matter too much, or should I just go with something cheap?

Generally HDDs are just for mass storage at a low cost.  They do vary in performance from one to the next, but you'll likely see a greater difference between drive X empty and full than you will between drive X and drive Y anyway, so I wouldn't worry about it too much personally.  Any SSD will still beat it by at least 2 or 3x in sequential speeds and absolutely destroy it in random IO (20x or better would be reasonable)

[aisle9]

1 hour ago, TurtleTrain said:

Hi,

For performance purposes you can always go with the WD Black, it is more expensive however is rated for better performance and comes from a solid manufacturer, I wouldn't recommend Green as they have slower access times as they are more power efficient.

Greens make outstanding bulk storage devices. Black drives are hot as hell, loud as a woodpecker, expensive as a dime bag of coke and only noticeably faster than other HDDs if you happen to be using a Blue drive on the same computer at the exact same time.

 

Seriously, WD Black drives are a waste of money. You're much better off buying a Blue or a dirty-ho cheap Hitachi.

[pyr0]

13 hours ago, Ryan_Vickers said:

I guess I was too slow; you've got two good answers to that above already  

 

Generally HDDs are just for mass storage at a low cost.  They do vary in performance from one to the next, but you'll likely see a greater difference between drive X empty and full than you will between drive X and drive Y anyway, so I wouldn't worry about it too much personally.  Any SSD will still beat it by at least 2 or 3x in sequential speeds and absolutely destroy it in random IO (20x or better would be reasonable)

it seems that toshiba drives are extremely cheap

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Toshiba-P300-Performance-Internal-Drive/dp/B0151KM6F0%3Fpsc%3D1%26SubscriptionId%3DAKIAI3VLI6HITR26KCBQ%26tag%3Duserbenchmark-21%26linkCode%3Dsp1%26camp%3D2025%26creative%3D165953%26creativeASIN%3DB0151KM6F0?th=1

What is your experience with toshiba drives?

It seems that, for the price of a slower WD blue 2TB drive, I can get a faster 3TB drive if I go with Toshiba.

[vanished]

5 hours ago, pyr0 said:

it seems that toshiba drives are extremely cheap

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Toshiba-P300-Performance-Internal-Drive/dp/B0151KM6F0%3Fpsc%3D1%26SubscriptionId%3DAKIAI3VLI6HITR26KCBQ%26tag%3Duserbenchmark-21%26linkCode%3Dsp1%26camp%3D2025%26creative%3D165953%26creativeASIN%3DB0151KM6F0?th=1

What is your experience with toshiba drives?

It seems that, for the price of a slower WD blue 2TB drive, I can get a faster 3TB drive if I go with Toshiba.

Never used one myself but I don't believe I've heard anything bad.  Honestly the noisiest rumour in the drive space is that Seagate is bad, but that's based on a nonsense report and should really be ignored.