# Best 500GB hdd



## djisas (Aug 30, 2010)

Ok, here's a question for the masses:

Which is the best overall 500GB drive, speed is preferred, it's for an OS + gaming drive...
Been using Seagate for ages and even had one of the infamous 7200.11 drives die one me (t'was a raido setup with 2 single plate 320Gb disks), been slowly moving to the WD camp but they are on average 10€ more expensive or worse for 1TB drives (up to 20€ difference), but i feel they are more stable, i also have a 500GB seagate single plate on the 7200.12 generation as the Bt workhorse and it works fine...

So my doubt really is between a new 7200.12 or a nice WD black 12€ more expensive...

Cant find on the net any decent hdd roundup with recent drives, it seems hardware sites dont play much with them, it would be nice if TPU did some hdd charts using new drives including ssd's...


----------



## Mussels (Aug 30, 2010)

samsung F3's are my favourite, they're up there with performance but unlike the other brands they stay very quiet as well.


----------



## Radical_Edward (Aug 30, 2010)

I love my WD Blue 500GB. Once I got all the settings done right it's been nice and quiet ever since.


----------



## djisas (Aug 30, 2010)

Are those samsung single plate??


----------



## Mussels (Aug 30, 2010)

djisas said:


> Are those samsung single plate??



dual platter i think, but they're still very quiet anyway.


----------



## DonInKansas (Aug 30, 2010)

Seagate's 7200.12 500gb drives are pretty quick as well.  I bought six of them for use in our office and they're quiet and reliable.


----------



## Soylent Joe (Aug 30, 2010)

I don't think there is a whole lot of difference between the Sammy F3, WD Blue, and SG 7200.12 500GB drives. I recommend going for which ever one of those 3 that is the cheapest and has the best warranty.


----------



## djisas (Aug 30, 2010)

Mussels said:


> dual platter i think, but they're still very quiet anyway.



I thought so, new drives carry 32MB buffer and single plate, at least i think both Segate and WD do...



DonInKansas said:


> Seagate's 7200.12 500gb drives are pretty quick as well.  I bought six of them for use in our office and they're quiet and reliable.



I have one too actually like i mentioned, mb i should just go and buy a new one to replace the old dual plate one to increase performance, efficiency and reliability...

@ Joe: If id go WD would be the faster Black, and i think warranty wise WD is better, i think i remember contacting segate when my drive died but they didnt help at all, so i sent the drive to the store for rma and it was just a bios issue...


----------



## Hardi (Aug 30, 2010)

Samsung 500GB F3 is on platter.


----------



## djisas (Aug 30, 2010)

Samsung drives never really atracted me, but i used hitaichi long ago, their 250GB drives where the best back then, but their drives are behind the times nowadays...


----------



## inferKNOX (Aug 30, 2010)

Mussels said:


> dual platter i think, but they're still very quiet anyway.


Nope, the F3s are 500GB per platter, so it's single platter. The F1s were 333GB or so per platter.


DonInKansas said:


> Seagate's 7200.12 500gb drives are pretty quick as well.  I bought six of them for use in our office and they're quiet and reliable.


-1
I bought 2 different Seagate Barracuda 7200.12 1TB HDDs and although spin-up is quiet, read/write is like a jackhammer compared to the Samsung Spinpoint F1 750GB that I had.
Also, about 3 months after getting my 2nd one, I started getting warnings from S.M.A.R.T to change it because it was becoming unstable and about to crash, so I sent it back for warranty (to Shop, not directly to Seagate) and am waiting for the new one.

I'd say undoubtedly get a  Samsung Spinpoint F3 500GB. My F1 was simply excellent, and the F3s are better in every way according to all I've heard.
I'd get them in a heartbeat and sell my 7200.12s off if they were available to me, but everyone is only stocking Seagates, etc, around here...:shadedshu


----------



## ERazer (Aug 30, 2010)

i got wd blacks and blues, black they very fast but pretty loud and the blue they okay in speed but silent, i still consider my old 7200.11 my best drive fast and silent, my 2 cents


----------



## Mussels (Aug 30, 2010)

ERazer said:


> i got wd blacks and blues, black they very fast but pretty loud and the blue they okay in speed but silent, i still consider my old 7200.11 my best drive fast and silent, my 2 cents



samsung F1's and F3's are the only modern drive as quiet (or quieter) as the old seagates


----------



## RejZoR (Aug 30, 2010)

Single platter 500GB Samsung's are probably the fastest drives you can get at that size. Except Velociraptor with 600GB...


----------



## djisas (Aug 30, 2010)

Interesting so many samsung supporters...

inferKNOX, it happened with me before, getting smart warning from a segate drive, dont remember if the old or new generation thought, but indeed my wd drives show better reliability stats on smart using hard drive inspector...


----------



## newtekie1 (Aug 30, 2010)

djisas said:


> Ok, here's a question for the masses:
> 
> Which is the best overall 500GB drive, speed is preferred, it's for an OS + gaming drive...
> Been using Seagate for ages and even had one of the infamous 7200.11 drives die one me (t'was a raido setup with 2 single plate 320Gb disks), been slowly moving to the WD camp but they are on average 10€ more expensive or worse for 1TB drives (up to 20€ difference), but i feel they are more stable, i also have a 500GB seagate single plate on the 7200.12 generation as the Bt workhorse and it works fine...
> ...



IMO, brand doesn't really matter.  I've found that whatever you tend to use most, is also what you seem to notice fail the most.  And that makes sense really, if you've got 10 Seagate drives and only 1 WD, then you are 10 times more likely to see a Seagate drive fail.  That doesn't mean WD is better.

Anyway, I say go with whichever is cheapest.  Of course warranty is a concern also.  I believe the WD Black drives have a 5 year warranty, at least they do in the states, while most others have a 3 year.  That might be worth the extra few bucks.

Speed wise they are all going to be pretty close, the different won't really be noticeable.  It might be measurable in benchmarks, but not noticeable in real world use.


----------



## djisas (Aug 30, 2010)

Well i have 2 of which in my case, 2 different generation 500Gb seagate, one 640GB dual plate WD black and one 1TB green for storage, its slow seek time really pisses me of having to wait for the drive to wake up and speed is just average, but it'll do for now...

Further investigation proved that these samsung are neat drives being some of the fastest and efficient ones, with but one noticeable flaw in seek time...

Ill be further investigating and red you comments...

The WD is really the most expensive of the lot, so mb ill go with a different one...

Last year's chart from tom's harware, good numbers from both samsung and seagate with samsung being better most of the tests, WD drive looks bad in the picture, its 1TB drive, probably old model or just bad, no 500Gb WD for direct comparison... 

Tom's Hardware - Benchmark h2benchw 3.12: Max Write Throughput


----------



## RejZoR (Aug 30, 2010)

The more platters, the longer it takes to spin up. My WD Caviar Black 2TB (4 platters) takes forever to start from zero to 7200RPM. But once it's going, the performance is just incredible for such a massive drive.


----------



## djisas (Aug 30, 2010)

I couldnt get a dual plate green, i suppose its a 3 plater one, the green only goes up to 5400rpm, also couldn't get 1TB segate dual plater, so im stuck with slow but reliable, quiet and cool drive, if only it would be faster...
New article on HDD from XBIT lab, samsung blasts competition and 7200.12 tailing it from slight behind, WD looks slower, it looks like an old generation with those speeds, the worst thing about WD is that its not easy to know which generation from its name without going to their site...

Testing here: http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/storage/display/500gb-hdd-roundup.html

EDIT: Im surprised that by the end of the long battery of tests the seagate wins the day and WD dual plater black second with F3 probably 3rd, the Sg model is on average close to F3 is speed, but better in some other critical parameters, power consumption is slightly lower on read\write, while f3 is lower on idle, not that is really matters when both drives are lower than 7w max, while the wd due to faster heads is faster on sequential reads, etc only loosing when it comes to pure speed...

By the way can anyone tell me if those f3 are slim or regular size, like the seagate ones, they are quite thiner than dual platters??


----------



## OnBoard (Aug 31, 2010)

djisas said:


> By the way can anyone tell me if those f3 are slim or regular size, like the seagate ones, they are quite thiner than dual platters??



Normal size and I've likes Samsungs for a while now as they run so cool. 10C difference with Seagate few years back, dunno how it's currently. 23C an 26C for my drives and that's after benchmark run 

Used to have a Maxtor few years back and it wan 56C (sure case was worse in airflow then too), but anyhow hated how it heated other things as well.

Another thing is seek noise, that can be horribly metallic on some drives, F1 was already quiet and F3 is even quieter, but my F1 is 2 platter, so might be that too. Oh and it doesn't hurt that Samsung is also one of the cheapest if not the cheapest out there 

But all current perpendicular recording drives are fast and this second generation got even faster. WD has double the cache compared to Samsung, if I don't remember totally wrong.


----------



## Maban (Aug 31, 2010)

Here's a quick comparison between the F3 and 72.12. Quick edit here. Reran for 72.12 and got 115.4MB/s Random Read. Everything else was the same.


----------



## IINexusII (Aug 31, 2010)

f3's are nice and quiet. but the 1gb caviar black i had was faster


----------



## v12dock (Aug 31, 2010)

I vote samsung F3 or WD caviar black


----------



## scaminatrix (Aug 31, 2010)

Top one WDC Black SATA3 1TB 64 MB cache
Middle WDC Black SATA2 500GB 32 MB cache
Bottom WDC Green SATA2 500GB 8 MB cache (2 years old)







I'm sure I had over 150 MB/s read on the 1TB when I didn't have it as the OS drive...


----------



## brandonwh64 (Aug 31, 2010)

Radical_Edward said:


> I love my WD Blue 500GB. Once I got all the settings done right it's been nice and quiet ever since.



+1

Got two blues in raid 0 and they are peppy!


----------



## scaminatrix (Aug 31, 2010)

I vote WDC Black for the 5 year warranty.

EDIT: I've got 4 of these coming as soon as they're in stock. For me, it's all about cache, speed and warranty.


----------



## shevanel (Aug 31, 2010)

DonInKansas said:


> Seagate's 7200.12 500gb drives are pretty quick as well.  I bought six of them for use in our office and they're quiet and reliable.



these and f3's are good picks.


----------



## inferKNOX (Aug 31, 2010)

djisas said:


> Interesting so many samsung supporters...
> 
> inferKNOX, it happened with me before, getting smart warning from a segate drive, dont remember if the old or new generation thought, but indeed my wd drives show better reliability stats on smart using hard drive inspector...



A friend of mine reported having Samsung F1s have an either 100% or practically so, whilst for both him and I the Seagate 7200.12s stay at 95% in Hard Drive Inspector.
Another reason to get F3s is that they're actually cheaper than the SG and WD drives on average (or at least that's what I had seen).


----------



## djisas (Aug 31, 2010)

The shit hit the fan today!!
Ironically, the hdd that was to be replaced decided to die one me without any warning, one day works, the other doesnt, so i went to my favorite store and bought me a brand new seagate 7200.12 in which i just installed the window, but now im running a complete restore from Sunday's backup (good thing i had it backing up shit automatically...

So whats lost??
From c: nothing, from the other partitions shitty backups of backups and most of the installed games...
Whats lost probably the only important thing was my borderlands saves that where on the game dir because the shitty game could not save anywhere else, i had finished the game and first dlc, was starting on the 3rd dlc, so i either give up on the game or "borrow" some lvl 40+ save from someone and keep having fun, or wast another 48+h playing it allover...

Damn, i wanted to install the new drive and leave the old one as a backup of everything...
And i was thinking on actually buying the new drive today...

Ill send the old one for rma and see if they send me a brand new one, it would be great to get a new model...


----------



## hat (Sep 20, 2010)

What about the WD6402AAEX? 640GB WDC Black drive with 64MB cache, SATA 6.0Gb/s and advanced format.


----------



## djisas (Sep 20, 2010)

i have one of those, well an older version...
But that one isnt single plate...

What u guys think of the 1TB F3??
They are 20$ cheaper than the wd black, ppl seem to like those...


----------



## Mussels (Sep 20, 2010)

djisas said:


> i have one of those, well an older version...
> But that one isnt single plate...
> 
> What u guys think of the 1TB F3??
> They are 20$ cheaper than the wd black, ppl seem to like those...



i'm a big fan of the samsung F1's, F3 (non green) and F4's


----------



## djisas (Sep 20, 2010)

f4 already??
Havent seen those yet...


----------



## Zen_ (Sep 20, 2010)

My WD Black is really noisy, not something I would ever buy again. 4 year old 500GB Samsung Spinpoint T on the other hand is still going strong and quiet in my HTPC. The 320GB Samsung F4 looks like a really nice primary drive and it's cheap too. 

Samsung F4 320GB.


----------



## Mussels (Sep 20, 2010)

djisas said:


> f4 already??
> Havent seen those yet...



i've only heard of them, but the things i've heard were good.


----------



## djisas (Sep 20, 2010)

Im trying to get rid of 2 320Gb barracudas old generation, i know they can die, so i only use them as back up for now...

Incidentally i had one 80GB IDE 2.5 Hitachi die on me a couple days ago, and i had bought a 320GB WD to replace it before, the problem is i bought a sata disk for an ide interface and the disk died before i could replace it...

Thats the 3rd one to die 

I think i might start to move on to samsung, i wont buy Seagate for my next TB drive, thats for sure...


----------



## djisas (Sep 23, 2010)

Well, i just went and bought myself an 1Tb f3, its connected to an external eSATA dock right now backing up nearly 1TB of critical data, including my precious mp3 collection...
The performance numbers are as follows:
Copying docs and images to the first partition, mostly files from a few KB to a few MB, max stable transfer speed around 53MB/s, copying thousands of small files is quite a job...
Copying mp3 and other audio files only speed goes up to 85-87MB/s thats better...
Copying videos (part of my anime collection), files ranging from 100MB up to 500MB or even more with movies speed goes up to a max of 103MB/s, good figures for big files...
It is nearly silent, but when its seating right next to the screen without any case i can still hear it working, but inside a case should be silent...

The disk packaging is the best i have seen on any drive, it features a plastic case with an instruction manual supplied and even screws, all this for less 30€ compared with a WD black...
And the good thing is the drive not being made in china, where all my dead drives where made...


----------

