Anything faster/quieter than my WD6400AACS-00G8B1?

_MarcoM_ · Post by **_MarcoM_** » Sat Jan 02, 2010 3:20 am

Hi all my friends!

I need a new external drive for my enclosure, my "old" Samsung died past week.
I want to use my actual WD hdd in rig with the enclosure, but i need a new drive as a os/data/apps drive, of course.

Greenest HDD's speeds are fine for my need, but i'm wondering if exist a disk quieter and/or faster than mine. Maybe a single 500GB/platter would do the job, but what model/brand? Samsung is hardly available here, almost no problem for Seagate and Hitachi, no problem at all for Western Digital. Any suggestions?

psiu · Post by **psiu** » Sat Jan 02, 2010 6:34 am

I like the 6400AAKS so far

One in my PC, the HTPC, and the WHS.
And little brother 3200AAKS in my wife's PC.

Might be a bit noisier than the Green model, the P150 has suspension though right? Should be nice and quiet and faster then.

dhanson865 · Post by **dhanson865** » Sat Jan 02, 2010 8:27 am

Faster and quieter would be an SSD with an Intel or Indilinx controller. The 40GB Kingston is reasonably priced now and if you wait a bit the prices will drop on the other better SSDs.

Rotating disk Green option for "faster" would be the Seagate LP series since it is 5900 RPM instead of 5400 rpm of the Samsung/WD green drives. Just don't get the 1.5TB version, stick with the 1TB model.

Maybe the best plan is to get a cheap drive now and an SSD later (as soon as you can afford it). At that time you can use Acronis trueimage to copy the OS from the cheap hard drive to the SSD. But if you plan to do this make sure your C: drive is just the OS and applications. Put your data on another partition.

_MarcoM_ · Post by **_MarcoM_** » Wed Jan 06, 2010 1:41 pm

Thank you for the help m8s.
The Barracuda LP, single 500GB platter@5900rpm seems interesting. A space of 500GB is enough for me, unless you tell me that for some technical reason it is preferable the 1TB model.

Model ST3500412AS, datasheet here: http://searcheng.seagate.com/cs.html?ch ... l=en-GBall

If you are not aware of any problems, and if you do not have nothing against it, i want to order it. I'll try it and then you'll know how is this puppy

porkchop · Post by **porkchop** » Wed Jan 06, 2010 2:58 pm

from the last few performance based reviews i've read (maybe 3 months old?), the seagate hdd remained near the back of the pack for 'real world' benchmarks. 7200rpm seagates were losing to 5400rpm wds in some tests

you might want to take some time to read some recent reviews, just to make sure that it is indeed faster, and not just in sequential read/write tests.

i went through the same thing recently, moving from a 2 platter green, my choices were a single platter 5400rpm, laptop hdd or ssd. i ended up going with a budget ssd (kingston 64gb v series, 155aud) and so far it's been a revelation in terms of noise, i never realised how annoying hdd sounds can be, no matter how quiet they are... though i wouldn't be surprised if its just a placebo thing

_MarcoM_ · Post by **_MarcoM_** » Wed Jan 06, 2010 3:29 pm

What about stuttering and performance restoration? SSDs are expensive, but a "cheap" 128GB SSDnow seems a nice toy for a fast and silent rig...

SebRad · Post by **SebRad** » Wed Jan 06, 2010 4:03 pm

I believe the Kingston SSDnow V series to be based on a revised version of the infamous JMicron controller. The review I read suggested that it's not bad at all, in worst case senario it's similar to menical HDD but most of the time it pretty good, with no "stutter". Not in the same league as Intel for example but it's priced much lower for it.
There is also a new SSDnow V+ series and this is just a rebranded version of the Samsung drive. It's much faster, near enough equal to the Indilix based drives. The Samsung drives have 128MB cache, the Indilinx ones have 64MB and the JMicrons (I think) none!
Hope this helps, Seb

dhanson865 · Post by **dhanson865** » Wed Jan 06, 2010 7:01 pm

_MarcoM_ wrote:Thank you for the help m8s.
The Barracuda LP, single 500GB platter@5900rpm seems interesting. A space of 500GB is enough for me, unless you tell me that for some technical reason it is preferable the 1TB model.

Model ST3500412AS, datasheet here: http://searcheng.seagate.com/cs.html?ch ... l=en-GBall

If you are not aware of any problems, and if you do not have nothing against it, i want to order it. I'll try it and then you'll know how is this puppy

ST3500412AS would be great but I've never seen one in stock on any web site I order from. If you can get your hands on one go for it!

dhanson865 · Post by **dhanson865** » Wed Jan 06, 2010 7:13 pm

_MarcoM_ wrote:What about stuttering and performance restoration? SSDs are expensive, but a "cheap" 128GB SSDnow seems a nice toy for a fast and silent rig...

Cheapest SSDs I'd consider in order of price shipped to my door are:

Kingston SSDNow 40GB (snv125-s2/40gb or snv125/40gb) (S2 in the model adds a 2.5/3.5" drive adapter kit and a copy of Acronis Trueimage).

Intel X25V 40GB SSD SSDSA2MP040G2R5

Crucial M225 64GB CT64M225 (only Indilinx based 64GB drive with 64MB of cache instead of the 32MB the others use.)

Intel X25-M Gen2 80GB SSDSA2MH080G2R5 or SSDSA2MH080G2C1 (retail or OEM)

The first two are basically the same drive and are about $125. The Crucial is about $200. The 80GB Intel is about 250.

I won't even look at the ones with Samsung or Jmicron controllers at this point.

http://www.legitreviews.com/article/1005/7/ shows the poor write speed of the modern Jmicron controller.

The write performance test results of the Kingston SSDNow V Series 128GB MLC SSD were a little alarming. The average access time ranged from 127ms to 203ms, ... Even though the drive doesn't stutter in the real world these benchmark numbers are flat out ugly to look at and are the worst scores that we have ever seen in the Random Access Write test!