Harddrive

nodeuce · Post by **nodeuce** » Mon Mar 23, 2009 12:18 am

I have a very old system, my current HD uses a IDE cable, I don't remember whether it's a 5400 or 7200 RPM. And it's only 80GB, I download a lot of movies, songs/albums, and I guess you could say games too.

I'm thinking about buying this: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6822136317 The energy efficient hard drive.

For meanings of the 'colors' refer to: http://www.thetechlounge.com/article/52 ... of+Caviar/

The HD is supposedly ranges from 5400~7200RPM, it has a lot of good reviews. Do you guys think this is a good HD?

Also remembering that I currently use an old IDE HD as my boot drive, would this new green WD HD work better as my new main drive?

I also considered one of the WD Caviar Blacks as a main drive, but for some reason I'm craving a ton of space after using an 80GB for so long, and having to delete a movie every time I want to download a new one, it's a pain. Anyway, these are the 2 'WD Caviar Blacks' that I'm looking at: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6822136319 and http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6822136320

What do you guys think?

Easto · Post by **Easto** » Mon Mar 23, 2009 12:57 am

Will your "Very old system" have native SATA support? You are aware that it is a SATA drive?

nodeuce · Post by **nodeuce** » Mon Mar 23, 2009 1:29 am

Sorry, I didn't literally mean that it's a very old system, only because in comparison to friend's computers, mine seems very ancient. But yes, it should support it. I have a mobo that supports some of the old, and some of the new parts

I bought it cheap on a small budget upgrade a few years ago. http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6813157115

Do you think I'll get an improvement by using the SATA drive as my OS system? and using my old IDE drive as extra storage or just taking it out completely

The WD 1TB Black is 119.99 on Newegg.

I was leaning towards the WD green because there's a promo code out right now for an additional 10 dollars off (making the 1TB WD green 89.99), expires on the 26th.

I'm hearing that it's not a good idea to have the WD green as a boot drive, true?

I guess one option would be... to keep my OS running off the old IDE drive and using the wd green as storage. Another could be.. spending ~30 more dollars for a 1TB WD Black.. which doesn't seem likely. Another option could also be.. buying the 640GB WD Black (the 750gb one has a lot of bad reviews)

Because I'm on a budget, and I was hoping that the SATA3.0gb/s WD Caviar Green would not only give a ton more space, but also better performance than my old IDE drive. So do you know if the performance between my old drive and the wd green will be the same or.. better/worse? I've had this WD Caviar IDE drive for.. 6 years now, and I -think- it's 7200RPM.

Post by **YeOldeStonecat** » Mon Mar 23, 2009 6:25 am

Newer drives do tend to perform better. Not only because the SATA interface has higher throughput and better CPU resource usage than PATA, but because technologies used in newer drives are better than a few years ago, larger cache, perpendicular recording, etc.

nodeuce · Post by **nodeuce** » Mon Mar 23, 2009 1:56 pm

So the WD green could be use as my replacement boot drive?

Brk · Post by **Brk** » Mon Mar 23, 2009 2:27 pm

nodeuce wrote:So the WD green could be use as my replacement boot drive?

The Green series spin up and down to save power. They really should only be used for data storage. A 7200 RPM drive should be the OS/programs/games drive.