Quiet harddrive for gaming and storage
Posted: Fri May 04, 2012 1:55 pm
My good old WD 640AAKS seems to be entering its dying state.
Last two days it has sometimes disappeared in Windows, and when scanning for errors with WDs diagnostic tools it find bad sectors, but then gets an error when it tries to fix them.
So I'm now looking for a new drive with the following criteria:
1) Reasonably fast. I use it for both games and storage. I have a 128GB SSD for windows, apps and a few games, but it cant keep everything. The HDD doesn't have to be top speed though, just fast enough that games won't suffer from it.
2) QUIET! I was happy with the 640AAKS, so anything on the same level as that is acceptable! I'll suspend it with NoVibes. Since the drive is not only for storage, the seek noise of course matter a great deal.
3) Reliability. Obviously important. I'm a bit scared away from Seagate due to it formerly having a bad reputation here. But I guess all drives can fail. And my own WD is of course an example of that, even if it is nice enough to be failing so slowly that I can back it up
Size is not very important. 1TB is perfectly fine. More is fine too of course, but the above 3 areas are each much more important.
Reliability > Acoustics > Speed >>> Size
I have been reading the more recent reviews on SPCR, reading the forums and reading up on hard drives elsewhere. Everyone are understandably so focused on SSD these days that it feels much harder to find reliable information about HDDs though.
Which is why I'm going to ask for some feedback here.
I have been looking at
Hitachi 7k1000 - Seems pretty good. SPCR notes that it got high vibration (although NoVibe should be able to take care about that part). The review is of the older C revision, newer one is D, so not sure if the conclusions are still true for the new one. Reading on other sites it seems like the Hitachi drives in general can have pretty slow seek times though, which can easily have more influence on speed than the RPM and platter size.
Hitachi 7k3000 - Seems a bit more noisy, and lots of vibrations again of course.
Hitachi 5k3000 - Maybe not speedy enough as a gaming HDD.
WD Caviar Black - various sizes and revisions - They seem pretty noisy in general (being some of the fastest HDDs after all).
Seagate Barracuda 3TB - Got a glowing review here, but it is Seagate. Which makes me skeptical.
WD Green&Blue - Good acoustics I believe, but green still got the "head parking issue"? And also a tad slower than the others of course.
All in all any feedback, advices etc. would be very appreciated, so I can find myself a backup drive as fast as possible.
Last two days it has sometimes disappeared in Windows, and when scanning for errors with WDs diagnostic tools it find bad sectors, but then gets an error when it tries to fix them.
So I'm now looking for a new drive with the following criteria:
1) Reasonably fast. I use it for both games and storage. I have a 128GB SSD for windows, apps and a few games, but it cant keep everything. The HDD doesn't have to be top speed though, just fast enough that games won't suffer from it.
2) QUIET! I was happy with the 640AAKS, so anything on the same level as that is acceptable! I'll suspend it with NoVibes. Since the drive is not only for storage, the seek noise of course matter a great deal.
3) Reliability. Obviously important. I'm a bit scared away from Seagate due to it formerly having a bad reputation here. But I guess all drives can fail. And my own WD is of course an example of that, even if it is nice enough to be failing so slowly that I can back it up
Size is not very important. 1TB is perfectly fine. More is fine too of course, but the above 3 areas are each much more important.
Reliability > Acoustics > Speed >>> Size
I have been reading the more recent reviews on SPCR, reading the forums and reading up on hard drives elsewhere. Everyone are understandably so focused on SSD these days that it feels much harder to find reliable information about HDDs though.
Which is why I'm going to ask for some feedback here.
I have been looking at
Hitachi 7k1000 - Seems pretty good. SPCR notes that it got high vibration (although NoVibe should be able to take care about that part). The review is of the older C revision, newer one is D, so not sure if the conclusions are still true for the new one. Reading on other sites it seems like the Hitachi drives in general can have pretty slow seek times though, which can easily have more influence on speed than the RPM and platter size.
Hitachi 7k3000 - Seems a bit more noisy, and lots of vibrations again of course.
Hitachi 5k3000 - Maybe not speedy enough as a gaming HDD.
WD Caviar Black - various sizes and revisions - They seem pretty noisy in general (being some of the fastest HDDs after all).
Seagate Barracuda 3TB - Got a glowing review here, but it is Seagate. Which makes me skeptical.
WD Green&Blue - Good acoustics I believe, but green still got the "head parking issue"? And also a tad slower than the others of course.
All in all any feedback, advices etc. would be very appreciated, so I can find myself a backup drive as fast as possible.