General Discussions

well it's about time that i'll buy a new storage device and i'm quite in a pickle and really could use your help.
first of all i must indicate that i'm have been a loyal customer of WD for years but all these models today really confuse me like caviar blue, caviar black etc...
the specs are the same just the name model is different, can anyone shed a light on it? and also would anyone recommend other hdd then WD like seagate or hitachi? really would like to read your exp with those and your reviews.
so my second pondering is between 1TB 64MB 7200RPM and a 2TB 64MB 7200RPM, are there any speed differences between them due storage size?
thanks to the helpers.

Answering your second question, they are both 7200RPM, and should have the same speed.

The brand you pick is going to vary based on what you're using the drive for, ie portable storage, operating system, or just desk storage (having the drive just sitting there to hold data).

I have a WD drive in my computer for my OS, a Seagate in an external dock for extra storage, another WD for media storage on my desk, and a Toshiba for portable storage (I didn't know it was Toshiba when I bought it, I popped open the case to fix a connector..).

I personally prefer my WD drives. The external on my desk I have had for years and it has never had an issue.

As to your first question, the black would be a better choice. It is supposed to have slightly faster read/write speeds, but as you can imagine some people see it, others say they have about the same speeds.
But for gaming and stuff, the Black would be a better choice than the blue.
Just don't get a green.

Also, if I'm wrong on anything, please correct me. I'm not an expert on HDD's.

[Edited by Unbreakable, 3/28/2013 4:20:57 PM]

I get WD greens. They're just fine.

thanks for the response, well i found that the intellipower(green) is really unrecommended for system or gaming purposes because it's changes the rpm speeds in order to save power which causes poor performance, it's exellent for storaging songs/movies etc...
my hdd that i'll buy is intended for games alone, for the system i already bought a ssd 128GB and the speed is insane! as up to twice then an ordinary hdd but the price is up to 5 times
anyway about the speeds of 1TB and 2TB i agree it's the same RPM but i wonder if the extra storage will cause delay in finding and retrieving data..

It will only do that if the power savings in windows is set to do that.

But it will only vary speeds when its not in full use, or its internal temp is over 50°C.

WD's are nice drives don't worry about it.

There is also no delay in finding data no matter the size, depends on how bad a file is fragmented though, hence why I always say to people at least once per month defragment your HDD/s over night.

This is how files work on a HDD, the header of a file is stored in the inner ring of a plated HDD, the header contains information on the location of the data on a HDD, the size, type etc

So when accessing a file windows will read the header first get the file locations (data can be spread into different areas if heavily fragmented) and then locates that data.

It also depends on your system set up, if the drive is in IDE mode it will be slower than AHCI mode and in turn be slower compared to a Raid 0 or 1+0.

[Edited by DABhand, 3/29/2013 4:25:17 AM]

thanks for the info, about AHCI and RAID i'm learning it right now in mcse(very intersting), anyway the price difference between WD 1TB TO 2TB is about 25$ i think it's quite worth it so i guess i'll go for the 2TB.. what do you think?
and do you think seagate and WD are at the same level quality and reliability wise?

[Edited by kingkob, 3/29/2013 4:42:42 AM]

HDD technology is pretty much standardized now so, its pretty much the same chipsets on the PCB, with some home made chips by the manufacturers themselves. But they perform close to the same.

Thanks again