[PuppetSin]

Thank you guy's for all the help so far it's been extremely helpful!

Ok I've been shopping around and slowly almost finished getting all my computer parts and I have been researching different 500gb hard drives with each their own different specifications and notice they all perform differently but have many mixed reviews from other people who used them.

-Seagate Barracuda 7200.12 500gb Sata II 16mb Cache ST3500418AS $55
-Samsung 500GB Sata II 16 mb Cache HD502HJ $56
-Western Digital 640GB Caviar Black Sata II 32 mb Cache WD6401AALS $70 (The 640gb model costs only $4 more than the 500gb)

I want to run two identical harddrives in Raid0 for the main OS and applications while having additional 1TB harddrives for storage. All of these harddrive's are in about the same price range and I plan to purchase them by this week. Which of these make and model would be best to go for installing my OS and running in Raid0? The computer will also be used for gaming and media.

Thanks I hope someone here can help me with this as I am not the best at understanding much about harddrive performance and as well as I could make a purchase by the end of this week

This is what I have so far:
-Windows 7 Ultimate
-Asus Crosshair III Formula 790FX AM3
-AMD Phenom II x4 965 BE
-Coolermaster HAF 932 Full Tower Case
-Corsair 850TX Powersupply

Next on the list:
-Harddrives
-Cpu Cooler
-Ram
-Video Card
-Optical Drives DVD/Blu Ray

Edited by PuppetSin, 16 February 2010 - 09:49 AM.

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Personally I like WD. 32mb buffer
WOW your setup looks almost exactly like mine. I have 3 hd's all wd.
500 gb for my 3 OS's
2 x 1 tb drives for storage.
8 gigs of memory
Same case, mobo and cpu

[rshaffer61]

Personally I like WD. 32mb buffer
WOW your setup looks almost exactly like mine. I have 3 hd's all wd.
500 gb for my 3 OS's
2 x 1 tb drives for storage.
8 gigs of memory
Same case, mobo and cpu

[PuppetSin]

lol I've been wanting to upgrade with a Asus Motherboard and a AMD cpu since my current computer of 4 years is exactly the same company makers.

But wow 3 OS's O_O. I don't think I would be getting 8gb of Ram for another year or so, just picking up 4gb of ram for now though.

I've been leaning towards both Western Digital and the Samsung mostly while the three I listed above are in the same performance price range but the WD one comes out on top. So the $15 Premium towards the WD Caviar Black 640gb and the 32mb cache worth it? I've been reading about the Samsung and how it uses a single platter to store information which would perform better and run more quiet compared to the WD with two platters

[rshaffer61]

I also looked at the Samsung Spinpoints and though they looked great I have been a WD user for 15 years.
I think the extra gigs and the 32 meg buffer is well worth the money. Also the black edition of the wd you reference is their workhorse model so probably a better built one.

[PuppetSin]

The added space and the doubled cache seems to be well worth the premiums. I was reading about a feature WD added to their harddrives along the lines of TLER I believe something about less time recovery but it is about 2 year's old information. Would I need to worry about any of that if I do pickup the WD's especially if I plan to run 2 of them on Raid0 setup?

[rshaffer61]

Nope no worries. I don't know much about raid configuration so it would be unwise for me to tell you anything on that.

[Ferrari]

I use a single 640gb WD Caviar Black as my main and I've had no problems. Generally speaking, you won't tell much difference in all the drives you listed really, but I would definitely go with a higher cache i.e. 32mb.

Also, in the research I did on drives about a year ago, I chose WD as Seagate has gotten a very poor response on their latest drives, (a lot being DOA), but again, it's really luck whether you are sent a bad drive or not. I don't know what your budget looks like, but their are better drives out there and I just felt like it was worth mentioning since you asked.

WD Velociraptors
SSD's (Solid State Discs) Similar to how Flash/Thumb drives work. SSD's are very new, very fast, and extremely expensive. From what I've read Corsair, Intel, and OCZ seem to be the leaders in SSD's thus far.

Just thought I'd mention them, so you know.

[PuppetSin]

Thanks Ferrari SSD's seem's to strike my interest.

My Budget is pretty flexible but maximum to spend on the whole system is about $1300 within a span of about buying each component each month (Spending at least 200$ or less)

I try to avoid spending more then 100$ on any storage HardDrives since they consistently keep dropping in price (seen some 1TB HDD for 70$ at local Frys) I live in California so tax is always a issue when I shop with Newegg or visit a electronics store so I prefer Amazon which saves me a bundle with free shipping all the time over 25$ and no tax. I've as well read good things about SSD's and I am very reserved. I mainly only use a single storage space for the OS and SSD's are seemingly more affordable nowadays and is perfect for what I want to do; have a fast drive just for the OS only.

I have been browsing around and found:
-Kingston SSDnow 40GB for 113$
170mb Read

-OCZ Vertex Agility 30GB for 119$
185mb Read

-Intel X25V Value SSD 40GB for about 127$
170mb Read

-OCZ Vertex Turbo 30GB for 137$
240mb Read

I know 2 of them are 30GB in space but what seperates them from the 40GB is the Read speed so that's causing me to wonder which one to aim for. I don't really care much about the write speed since I will not be using the SSD for anything but the OS and download's on a different HardDrive (Probably some 1TB+ Caviar Black's) On average I've mainly only used about 20gb for OS at most on even my current (but old) computer that I am using now.

Also, I've also heard bad things about Kingston SSD's specifically but I'm not quite sure but it had something to do with TRIM?

[Spyderturbo007]

My daily email from NewEgg shows that they have the 1.5TB WD Green drives on sale today for $99 with free shipping.

[Ferrari]

-OCZ Vertex Turbo 30GB for 137$
240mb Read

I'd go with this one. From everything I know about SSD's, this one is pretty nice for the price. Also, I don't know what TRIM is, just google it and do some research.