[jack black]

Hi there Storage review residents. this is my first time. so please do be gentle

so I bought a new sexy case today a corsair 600T white. its a beauty and a new 8 core black edition FX 8350. so I am now about to get some new drives. So atm I have a 2tb green drive, and then a 500gb seagate 7200.11 model both fairly old now. So I am thinking about new drives.

I was thinking about getting a WD black 3TB and maybe a 128gb SSD for windows and some games. or a 700gb Velocity raptor.
are the WD blacks really worth the extra cash say over a standard barracuda? or even a WD blue or green? I looked at your reviews. I saw you had one for the blue and green. however they were the sata 2 versions. and Im wondering if they are any different now with sata 3 interface?

and then looking at SSd's im getting a little overwhelmed with all the specs. now I know that the latest ones are just blisteringly fast the samsung 840 Pro. but is there a model version, that sort of gets to cost vs performance value without spending 500 bucks on? and then there was caertain models of all brands that had lots of faults. when was this corrected on most of them? because im sure even if I got a low/ mid range ssd it would still kill velocity raptors and WD black drives right?
then in your WD green review you mentioned they really dont save that much power anyway. so maybe a black is the way to go


So I would be having a primary drive for windows etc. then another for program files and file space etc. I will put my 2tb Green drive I currently have into a caddy, for storage etc. so a 128gb ssd would be full after windows 7. 2 call o duty games, and some prog files.

Personally I know a SSD would be amazing. but It doesn't phase me that it takes my system 45 seconds to get into the load screen
what would you guys get out of these options
128gb SSD
500/750/1tb Raptor
3TB WD black
3tb WD Green
3tb Seagate Barracuda (I cant find the XT's in australia)

my uses for this is
basic computing, I play call of duty every day lol and some other racing games
I do a lot of online surfing, I watch a lot of netflix etc. I watch I tunes. so I also leave my pc on overnight to do certain things

I realize that is a lot of info. But I wanted to be thorough, and to see what you guys would do.

This post has been edited by jack black: 24 November 2012 - 07:30 AM

[Kdawgca]

Quote

my uses for this is
basic computing, I play call of duty every day lol and some other racing games
I do a lot of online surfing, I watch a lot of netflix etc. I watch I tunes. so I also leave my pc on overnight to do certain things

For that, I recommend a SSD and a a cheap HDD for storage(so likely the green).

Quote

and then looking at SSd's im getting a little overwhelmed with all the specs. now I know that the latest ones are just blisteringly fast the samsung 840 Pro. but is there a model version, that sort of gets to cost vs performance value without spending 500 bucks on? and then there was caertain models of all brands that had lots of faults. when was this corrected on most of them? because im sure even if I got a low/ mid range ssd it would still kill velocity raptors and WD black drives right?
then in your WD green review you mentioned they really dont save that much power anyway. so maybe a black is the way to go

Low/mid-range SSDs are plenty fine and will still have blazing fast access times(where you notice it in basic tasks along with how silent they are). You can even get something older if can get a good deal. You shouldn't have to spend ~110 dollars for a 128GB SSD. Popular slightly older SSDs are the Samsung 830(840s predecessor) and Crucial M4. On the more budget end, the popular choices are likely OCZ drives such as the Agility 3 and Agility 4(newest of the ones I mentioned). One of those should hopefully be available in Australia. If not, try Crosairs line-up.

OCZ drives have gotten very bad rap due to early Sandforce issues, and bad marketing and customer service. Reality is that firmware has improved and if it doesn't break within 2 months, you should be home free . Though, regardless of any drive(SSD or HDD), always backup important data.

[Bikeman]

Yes, have a backup system on your SSD`s.. When they die, they are GONE 9.5/10 times, as in undetectable by bios or uefi.

[FastMHz]

My preferred setup is a 3 drive setup, as follows:

1. Samsung SSD for Windows and Apps
2. WD VelociRaptor for swap/temp/caches/scratch disk
3. Gigantic data storage drive (True Samsung or WD)

This setup gives you the best of all worlds! Perhaps in your case a second VR or large SSD for your games.

[[ETA]MrSpadge]

My preferred option would be to get a Cuda 3 TB (not the XT - the XT with 5 platters is actually older and considerably worse than the current one with 3 platters) and an SSD cache drive of ~60 GB. The Cuda is actually not any more expensive than a considerably slower Green drive and hardly consumes any more power. This way you:

- get SSD speeds for your most-often accessed files
- get one of the fastest HDDs available, with much better price/performance than a Velociraptor
- don't care if your SSD dies, the cache can easily be rebuilt (after you got a replacement)
- don't have to worry about where to place which files / games etc.

The drawback is that the 1st access to any uncached file will be as slow as you HDD usually is (hence opt for the fast one) and that, depending on the mode of the caching, writes are not being accelerated (the safest mode). Personally I'm using a 60 GB Agility III as cache for a 640 GB HDD on my main and work PCs and like it quite a lot. Soon going to replace the HDD with a Cuda 3 TB.

MrS