Member Avatar for forumdude123

Which one of these hard drives would you recommend:

Samsung SpinPointF1 1000GB, 7200rpm, 32MB cache, SATA-300 ($300 est.)

Western Digital Raptor 150GB, 10000rpm, 16MB cache, SATA-150 ($179 est.)


Online @ tomshardware.com, the majority of the benchmarks were ruling in favor of the samsung, but i don't get that!! how did the 7.2k disk beat the 10k disk on most of the benchmarks. Many people who review the raptor claim that it's a waste of cash, and the performance is not much compared to the samsung and related drives!! but, the raptor does beat the samsung in access time and vista start up time (which isn't showing on the benchmarks and other's reviews). Has the time come for the 7200rpm disks to out-speed the 10k raptors? Please recommend one and EXPLAIN WHY. thanks for those who can help.

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Benchmarks look conflicting because they measure different things. noticed a 7200-class drive beating a 10k-class drive in many tests; and focused on cache and warranty. Both observations are useful, but incomplete. A buffer helps some workloads, and spindle speed helps others. Which metric matters depends on the workload being tested.

Mechanical drives trade off latency (seek + rotational delay) and sustained throughput (MB/s) in ways that depend on platter density, firmware and cache behavior. Small random reads/writes and many tiny file opens emphasize latency and IOPS; higher spindle speeds and lower seek times win here. Large sequential transfers and bursty reads favor high areal density and a bigger DRAM buffer, because the drive can stream more data per rotation and cache can smooth bursts. Interface bandwidth (SATA) rarely is the bottleneck for single mechanical drives.

Recommendation: pick for the workload. For media libraries, backups and large copies, the higher-capacity, high-density 7200-class drive gives better cost/GB and often better sustained throughput. For OS, applications, database or anything that does lots of small random I/O, a low-latency drive (or better: an SSD for the OS) gives the biggest real-world responsiveness gain. A practical compromise is a fast small drive for OS/apps and a larger drive for bulk data. Verify vendor warranty/reliability and check power/noise if those matter.

When comparing drives yourself, use tests that reflect your use: 4K random read/write and IOPS, sequential 64K–128K throughput, and access/seek times (tools: CrystalDiskMark, HD Tune, Iometer). That will explain why different reviews favor different drives and help choose the right one for the actual job. For background on mechanical limits see Hard disk drive.

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Member Avatar for humbll

the higher benchmarks for the samsung drive are likely due to the 32MB cache which is double that of the WD Raptor.. Seeing as how you will be getting 10 times the storage space and double the cache for only a little over $100 more I would go with the samsung.

Western Digital does produce some hardy drives, though. Compare the warranty period, if I am not mistaken the WD has a 5 year warranty, if the samsung drive is comparable in that area as well then I would go for it.

as far as the vista startup time, what are we talking here? seconds? i wouldn't even use this stat as a factor in my decision.

Good luck!

Member Avatar for jbennet

Samsung

cache is the mst important

Member Avatar for forumdude123

Samsung

cache is the mst important

really!! i thouhgt it was rpm

Member Avatar for jbennet

nope

same with cpus

if you get 2 cpus of the same model and speed, except one has 1mb cache, and the other has 2mb cache - the 2mb one will be significantly faster

thats why high-cache cpus are really expensive and only usually found in gaming pcs or servers

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