which harddrive you recommend the most? - Page 2

Both are great brand I'm telling you. It will be just LUCKs if you get a DOA one and etc.

Seagate 3TB in real time file transfer is actually 175mb/sec to prove that I ran SSD <-> 3TB Seagate.

On the WD side there are a lot of marketing gimmicks, dual processor and 6Gbps... like 1ms different? Real time speed is 80-125mb/sec, I've proven this because I have a WD Black Caviar <-> SSD.

Also tested with ATTO benchmarking. Not just relying on Windows speed.

True. Those new Seagates are nice performers. But the Blacks still have superior seek times and NCQ, so for multitasking they are still the kings. We need to know what he intends to use it for before recommending a drive. As an OS/Apps/Games drive the WD Black will likely still be faster - but if he has an SSD for OS/Apps and the HDD is going to be dedicated to games/storage, he will probably be better off going for the Seagate.

The new 1TB-platter Seagates dominate when it comes to sequential speeds, which are great for file copies and single-tasking situations. That's why the new Seagates are great when dedicated to games. But when you ask them to multitask (or *gasp* run an OS) it's another story entirely. They pretty much fall flat on their faces due to their slightly higher seek times and simplistic NCQ, resulting in much lower performance. Here you can see a WD Green 3TB stomping all over it, just because it's making better decisions reordering reads/writes:

http://www.anandtech.com/show/5042/seagates-new-barracuda-3tb-st3000dm001-review



Most of the drives at the tops of these graphs have sequential speeds maxing at around 120-140MB/sec rather than the ~200MB/sec of the ST3000DM001. It seems like it shouldn't be the case, but don't underestimate the importance of NCQ or seeking intelligently for a shared OS/Apps/Games drive. Dedicated to a single task at a time, the new Seagates perform much better.

So, are you planning to get an SSD any time soon? Decide on that, and then you can decide on which drive to go for.


Oh - If I remember correctly the WD Black 2TB is on par with (or slightly above) the Barracuda XT 3TB in performance.

Thanks, Kramy! I must agree.

To OP, just give you some ideas on hard drives decisions. I don't stick to 1 drive for everything.

My setup is at follow:
SSD for OS and Apps.
3TB Seagate for Storages and Games.
2TB Seagate LP (green) for backup.
WD Caviar Black - Live Recording storage.
Edited by djriful - 6/30/12 at 6:44pm

My bad - the WD 2TB Black beats the 2TB Barracuda XT rather than the 3TB. (I just looked up some old reviews.)
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/wd6000hlhx-velociraptor-600gb,2600-7.html

It should still beat the 3TB ST3000DM001 as an OS/Apps/Games drive, but not the 3TB Barracuda XT.

Hey, which of these do you care about the most?

FileCopy speeds - Seagate is higher.
Warranty - WD Black is 4 years longer.
Capacity - +50% space on the Seagate.
Edited by Kramy - 7/1/12 at 4:38am

Do WD drives have 1TB-platters ? like the 1002FAEX ?

Edit: 1002FAEX has 500GB platters... seems like there is no 1TB-Platter WD drive.
Edited by adridu59 - 7/1/12 at 4:58am

I used to recommend the seagates until all 4 of the drives I was using failed/physically broke

My HP G60-230US I purchased new from newegg had a Seagate 5400.5 fail after 15 months

I had 3 x Seagate 7200.10 when they were the fastest drives on the market (2 in raid 0 was at the top of the benchmark thread in 2007). BUT I had 2 of them fail and the third quit working when I unplugged a sata controller cable and the retention clip (the black around the pins) broke off.

Also a friend of mine had a seagate 320 gig in a Dell fail after a little over a year.

So 5 hard drives failed in a little over a year (seagate)


So I'd rather have a slower WD than a seagate.

I have 3 samsung f3's for over 2 years, probably 3 years and they have been fine and are the fastest drives I own
Edited by CravinR1 - 7/1/12 at 7:12am