WD vs Seagate

A

AmonRe

Senior Member
Joined
Apr 5, 2005
Messages
535
Reaction score
6
Hi all

I am in the process of buying a new HDD and wanted some advice, i am looking at a 250GB Drive that has NCQ and atleast a 8MB cache and must be SATA II. I have no preference of WD or Seagate, but i see WD do a 16MB cache drive but not sure if its got NCQ like the Seagate's do, also WD have the RE range and seagate have a 16mb cache drive in the ST3250620AS. Any ideas what i shouls go for?

Thanks

Dylan
 
The main differences is their warranty (WD = 3y, Sea = 5y), performance wise you'd most probably not be able to tell the difference.
 
Price wise would i pay more for seagate as apposed to WD becasue of the warranty?
 
ok cool so a 250GB SATA II Drive with NCQ and 16MB Cache should be fine from seagate then?
 
Given that, from a performance POV, there's really very little in it (on account of the bus saturation and things like that), there's not much point in rabbiting on about SATA II, tho' NCQ may offer some performance benefit over a drive without it. So, aside from the fact that WD are the only bunch to have made a 10krpm SATA drive- a testament to the the quality of their engineering (even though they gyp you with the 3 year warranty on these drives).

So, at first blush the Seagate looks to be a marginally better buy ..or, as was noted there's the WD Raid Edition, something you can feel a bit more comfortable about with leaving it running/thrashing it all day long. Still only with the 3 year warranty, but let's face it: 3 years is a loooonng time in the PC hardware world - that matters a whole lot less (to me, anyway) than being able to rely on the drive NOW.
-bdt
 
bdt are the 10k rpm the same price

arent those the raptor

they something like 1-2k for an 80 gig or something?

are the raptors that much faster?
 
killadoob said:
bdt are the 10k rpm the same price
Click to expand...
Sadly, SO not! Raptors are breathtakingly more expensive: their cost per gig ratio is around TEN TIMES the cost per gig of the Caviar/7200rpm-class drives.

arent those the raptor
Click to expand...
So far we've been talking about the Caviar/Barracuda 7200rpm drives.

they something like 1-2k for an 80 gig or something?
Click to expand...
Yea, something like that, or: 74GB @ around R1600 or the 150GB @ around R2600 ..compare that against less than a grand for the 250GB drives we're talking about here...

are the raptors that much faster?
Click to expand...
definitely, that 10k rpm spindle means a seek time of HALF (4.6ms vs 8.6ms in my pricelist) that of the 7200rpm drives, which accounts for a lot more performance than whether it's SATA I or II. This means significantly lower rotational latency - and you DO notice it.

...of course, the real fun comes when you RAID0 two Raptors - hubba hubba! :D
-bdt
 
I'm also for Seagate, but I'd watch out for large SATA Disks. I lost a 160GB Baracula bout a month ago. The drive got so hot that you had to wait about 10 minutes after shutdown before you can touch the drive, nevermind handling it.

Needless to say, the drive is toast now, shaking it slowly you can hear a broken head or something falling arround inside the case... Still have to see whether or not it will be replaced due to the extensive heat...

I'd be VERY interested to see how warm these 500GB / 750GB drives get, as I'm considering to use them in a massive RAID Array I want to build. But if they get anywhere close to the heats I saw from my 160GB... Well.. Let's just say that it's not going to work to well...

My 120GBs are fine and have been fine for years now...

--
C
 
I've got a (now rather old) Seagate 40gig that was all of 6 months old when it died - by way of sacrificing one of the three spindle-motor bearings, which made the whole idea of data recovery ..expensive! As to WD, it may just be marketing, but they DO seem to be the only brand (in our market) to offer a drive that's specifically made to be run all the time. But it really comes down to not getting screwed over on the smoke-and-mirrors that is MTBF.
 
Chris, my buddy's 2 Raptors sit in front of a 12cm fan that we recently 7-volted (to cut down on noise), and even with that small breeze it's enough to significantly bring the temps down - and so quite significantly bringing the (expected) lifetime and operating stability up.
 
Ahh well then I guess in a decent rackmount case with backplanes and cooling fans for those backplanes, 8 or so of these should not be a problem...

Thanks for the heads up, I guess *if* they go, atleast I have the raid to rebuild / recover...
 
Seeeeeeeeagate! :D Never had an issue with them. Still running my system on a 20GB seagate (primary - IDE), 2x 250GB SATAII drives, 2x120GB IDE and 1x160GB IDE :) Works like a dream.
 
Seagate FTW.
I've got 4 no problems and the one is like 5 years old.
There are 10k and 15k RPM seagate cheetahs if you can find one EDIT: they are SCSI and they are verrrrrrrrrrrrrrrryyy expensive. thanks bdt:)
 
Last edited:
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top
Sign up to the MyBroadband newsletter
X