What about a WD 1T 64mb cache hard drive?

[Spirit Flyer_old]

Hello,

I am considering buying a 1T Western Digital (Black) 64mb cache hard drive as my new primary drive. Do you fine and gentile geeks think it will work well with my Asus P6TD Deluxe MB and 6G of 1600 mhz ram and the specs below? I was considering a 300G velociraptor but decided not to do so for now. Does anyone know if the WD 64mb cache version is much faster in reality than the 32mg cache version? Will standard cables connect it to the motherboard or do I need something different, and if so, where do I get them?

Thanks for any help or advice.

[Maurice_King]

I am considering buying a 1T Western Digital (Black) 64mb cache hard drive as my new primary drive.

Consider it all you like but I wouldn't WD have had a bad reputation in the past but have likely lifted their game, I much prefer Seagate or Samsung.

The cache plays a role but it the seek time and I/O for the Mobo and Drive aren't up to the task the cache size is not going to be terribly important.

I would NEVER use such a large drive as my main drive either HDD's of this size are for archiving IMHO.

20-60 Gb MAX for "C:\" (Makes Backups far easier)

Do you fine and gentile geeks think it will work well with my Asus P6TD Deluxe MB and 6G of 1600 mhz ram and the specs below? I was considering a 300G velociraptor but decided not to do so for now.

The Asus board have a good rep but I would use a the Velociraptor 300 as flight drive with either a smaller partition or separate physical drive as my boot.

Does anyone know if the WD 64mb cache version is much faster in reality than the 32mg cache version? Will standard cables connect it to the motherboard or do I need something different, and if so, where do I get them?

Read above , It depends on the amount of data the Asus MoBo I/O can throw at the Drive Larger HDD's like the WD 1Tb have suitable larger cache's simply because they a large drives and need the buffer space while writing to the disk.

Your existing SATA Cables should be fine

[John Dow]

"Consider it all you like but I wouldn't WD have had a bad reputation in the past"

I've had more Seagates and IBMs fail than WDs even though I bought them because people reckoned WDs were bad.  Go figure.

I recently researched the concept of getting a Velociraptor for FSX but decided against it as the latency for today's 1Tb drives is around 4.2 ms while the Velociraptor attains 3 ms.  Although it's quite a bit faster it's not enough to make me change from the simplicity of my 1Tb C Drive with everything loaded, including FSX,  backed up by a 320GB D Drive where I copy important stuff about once a month.

The only real absolute definable and visible increase in FSX performance I have seen was when I had my SSD, loading times for FSX were reduced by 2/3 and even in the densest scenery there were no scenery loading microstutters at all. 

The best I could hope for in taming the microstutters with a Velociraptor would be to reduce half a second's worth to a third of a second's worth, not a biggie in my book.

[tennyson]

Stephen,

I'm with Morrie on this one. I'm a Seagate man and have been for many years. I had a great many failures with WD, but I know they've had Company and Technical changes through the years and I think from a reliability point of view, they would all be pretty even.

I'm also not sure of the 64Mb cache, but it seems such a waste to me that you have such a great system spec and you can't afford an SSD.

I know there are some cheaper, small SSD's on the market now and would run rings around any SATA drive.

Good luck with it, mate,

Frank

[Dean (PC Aviator)]

Wow! Interesting to hear about WD drives...

Personally WD is just about the only brand I have purchased for the last 6-8 years... Had about 10 of them in that time... Not a single issue with any!

Have had failures with Maxtor (very bad failuire rate), Seagate and Hitachi... although the Maxtor drives were going back 10+ years ago...

I'd personally rather have the larger capacity of the WD than the Velociraptor considering the gain is not a whole lot more in the scheme of things.

[Guest AS355F]

I'm also amazed with the WD upset. Never had one go bad on me. I've had trouble with Seagate though. Like anything mechanical, drives are prone to failure and the only drive I have heard of that is known bad is the IBM/Hitach Deskstar (Deathstar)

I have both the WD 1Tb drive and the 300Gb Velociraptor and the Velociraptor kills it hands down, there is no comparison.

If the extra money for the Velociraptor is an issue (yep they're expensive) then I would look at the WD 640Gb Black. Last year I did some detailed speed testing with my 1Tb Black and the 640 is a decent amount faster due to smaller platters.

Also don't take much notice of programs like HD Tach, firstly the tests are synthetic and todays faster drives tend to give anomolous results. The only way to really test a drives speed is to copy files and time it.

[Spirit Flyer_old]

I would look at the WD 640Gb Black. Last year I did some detailed speed testing with my 1Tb Black and the 640 is a decent amount faster due to smaller platters.

Also don't take much notice of programs like HD Tach, firstly the tests are synthetic and todays faster drives tend to give anomolous results. The only way to really test a drives speed is to copy files and time it.

I opted for the WD Black 640G with 64mb cache for now. When the solid state hard drives are a bit better at a lower price I will pick one up but meanwhile I think the 640 will do the trick nicely (I hope).

[Tim Harris]

I use WD black 640G's for my OS (a pair in Raid0)

Had many many hard-drives over the years, urrm only one has ever gone bad...a Seagate..but only after it ran perfectly for 5 years

[Maurice_King]

I would look at the WD 640Gb Black. Last year I did some detailed speed testing with my 1Tb Black and the 640 is a decent amount faster due to smaller platters.

That's exactly why I stated that large drives like the 1 Tb should only be used for archiving and storage.

Smaller drives perform better for regular use.

Turning the PC on and off can greatly reduce the lifespan off the hardware too.

Mine are always on, and NEVER hibernate!!