HDD Replacement - is there something better?

[C.A.R.]

My storage drive has given up in my desktop pc (1TB) and needs replacement.

The OS is running off the primary HDD which is a 4-year-old 500gb Western Digital item.

I was thinking of getting something newer and upgrading the primary to a 1TB drive as I run a lot more games than I originally intended to! Then using the existing 500gb HDD as a storage drive - I barely used 150gb of space on the one which has just given up the ghost.

I was talking to a mate and he said that you can get 2TB for less than £60 these days. But I wondered about performance at this price point and one thing I can't stand is waiting for file transfers and reading music from disk. I don't know a great deal about this area but the performance figures for write-read speed and cache seem better on the higher-end 1TB drives than the more budget-looking 2TB.

I've spotted this -
Western Digital 1TB Caviar Blue

And it seems pretty good, whilst being under my initial £60 budget. They do a performance model under the 'Caviar Black' label but this is exponentially more expensive still.

I want decent performance at a decent price and can't see the benefit in going up to 2TB unless it makes financial sense.

Am I missing anything? Is there a better HDD for my casual gaming / media storage PC at this price point?

Thanks in advance for any guidance.

[SlidingSideways]

How much space are you using out if the 1Tb available?

[C.A.R.]

Currently-

1TB storage drive (broken, keeps doing file check on startup) - 150gb used
500gb primary drive - 450gb used up (have to keep deleting large files to keep it usable)

I think with the 500gb as a storage drive I'll only really need a 1TB primary so my thought process was to go for performance over capacity.

I know SSDs get mentioned on here an awful lot but I didn't know if they used conventional leads / cases or if a more modern computer / motherboard was required (also not sure what capacity I'd get - pressumably not much - at my price point).

[C.A.R.]

I've just noticed this one too which has similar specs but is from Seagate and has a 2TB capacity-

Seagate Barracuda 2TB

[130R]

You can buy a 500GB Samsung 850 EVO SSD for just under £150 now ..

[MarkRSi]

C.A.R. said:

Currently-
I know SSDs get mentioned on here an awful lot but I didn't know if they used conventional leads / cases or if a more modern computer / motherboard was required (also not sure what capacity I'd get - pressumably not much - at my price point).

Unless I'm very much mistaken SSDs use exactly the same connectors (SATA) as 'normal' HDDs - the only difference between the two is one has a spinning disk inside it and another has lots of flash memory in it.

I'd certainly go for a SSD for OS/Games/Programs & HDD (or Hybrid HDD?) for everything else.

[Ste1987]

MarkRSi said:

C.A.R. said:

Currently-
I know SSDs get mentioned on here an awful lot but I didn't know if they used conventional leads / cases or if a more modern computer / motherboard was required (also not sure what capacity I'd get - pressumably not much - at my price point).

Unless I'm very much mistaken SSDs use exactly the same connectors (SATA) as 'normal' HDDs - the only difference between the two is one has a spinning disk inside it and another has lots of flash memory in it.

I'd certainly go for a SSD for OS/Games/Programs & HDD (or Hybrid HDD?) for everything else.

Spot on! If you use it for your OS you definitely notice the difference in boot time and loading stuff in general

[Ixnay]

Once you have used a SSD you'll wonder why you didnt do ages ago. Its like night and day compared to an old spinny disk. I would reco0mmend getting a 250gb drive for your C: drive containing OS and programs and then have an additional large capacity conventional drive for your documents and pictures etc.
BTW the only SSD that are consistently reliable are Samsung and Intel. Dont bother with anything else.

[LiquidGnome]

You could compromise and get a hybrid drive - a HDD with a small SSD attached to it. Although SSDs are quite good value for money now.

[LiquidGnome]

Although you should check whether your motherboard supports Sata 3, and you may need a Sata 3 cable. Otherwise you won't get the most performance you could from an SSD. You should be alright since it's been around for a while but worth checking

[C.A.R.]

LiquidKnome - that's precisely my current problem, my old motherboard isn't SATA3 - so it kind of killed this idea already. The advice received is to start over, basically

[TEKNOPUG]

2TB HDDs are more reliable than 1TB (not that I've ever had one fail).

[deckster]

C.A.R. said:

LiquidKnome - that's precisely my current problem, my old motherboard isn't SATA3 - so it kind of killed this idea already. The advice received is to start over, basically

Not at all. SATA3 is nice-to-have but honestly in everyday usage makes bugger all difference. There are still extraordinary gains to be made with an SSD over a SATA2 interface and it really is a total no-brainer in my opinion.

[mph1977]

assuming your motherbord is set up to do it

SSD for OS and commonly used applications

a 'working' Hdd for lesser used applications and your key files

' a storage' drive as you previous had ...

[MarkRSi]

deckster said:

C.A.R. said:

LiquidKnome - that's precisely my current problem, my old motherboard isn't SATA3 - so it kind of killed this idea already. The advice received is to start over, basically

Not at all. SATA3 is nice-to-have but honestly in everyday usage makes bugger all difference. There are still extraordinary gains to be made with an SSD over a SATA2 interface and it really is a total no-brainer in my opinion.

SATA2 is still has a max speed of 300MB/s, not exactly slow. Heck you'd probably still get a decent gains even with SATA1 (150MB/s) due to the much faster response times of an SSD (where it really excels over a HDD).

[TEKNOPUG]

mph1977 said:

assuming your motherbord is set up to do it

SSD for OS and commonly used applications

a 'working' Hdd for lesser used applications and your key files

' a storage' drive as you previous had ...

That's what I have done.

250GB Samsung SSD - OS and Programmes

1TB Western Digital Black Caviar - Data

2TB WD Red - Backup for all devices

Plus various Cloud backups

[C.A.R.]

Sorry for the late response - thanks for the advice.

So just to clarify, I can still plug an ssd into my SATA 2 motherboard, despite the ssd being labelled SATA 3? It'd be backwards compatible so to speak?

[james_gt3rs]

C.A.R. said:

Sorry for the late response - thanks for the advice.

So just to clarify, I can still plug an ssd into my SATA 2 motherboard, despite the ssd being labelled SATA 3? It'd be backwards compatible so to speak?

Yes.

[P-Jay]

Seagate SSHD is the best of both worlds, well unless you don't need a lot of storage, or want to pay a lot of money for it.

Even comes in on budget

http://www.scan.co.uk/products/1tb-seagate-st1000d...

[RizzoTheRat]

Ixnay said:

Once you have used a SSD you'll wonder why you didnt do ages ago. Its like night and day compared to an old spinny disk. I would reco0mmend getting a 250gb drive for your C: drive containing OS and programs and then have an additional large capacity conventional drive for your documents and pictures etc.
BTW the only SSD that are consistently reliable are Samsung and Intel. Dont bother with anything else.

This. I have an SSD that I run my OS from, and then a couple of slower spinny drives for everything else, one of which is only really used for archiving stuff so spins down to save power after several minutes of not being used.