Best 320gb hard drive???

I am thinking about buying a 320gb hdd for my insprion 1520 and was curious which of these are better for the price.

SAMSUNG M6 Series HM320JI 320GB 5400 RPM 8MB Cache SATA 1.5Gb/s ($110)
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822152111

Western Digital Scorpio WD3200BEVT 320GB 5400 RPM 8MB Cache SATA 3.0Gb/s ($120)
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822136197


i was just curious mostly about the performance between the two especially the difference between the 1.5 and 3.0 Gb/s. According to the charts from ( http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/wd-toshiba-join-club,1776.html) the WD seems to be better performing, but it also mentions that the power usage is higher for the WD.


http://img.tomshardware.com/us/2008/02/18/wd_and_toshiba_join_the_club/image007.png

http://img.tomshardware.com/us/2008/02/18/wd_and_toshiba_join_the_club/image010.png

So should i get the Samsung which perfroms worse but gives better battery life, or the WD, which performs better but is a power hog? or is there a different drive you would suggest around that price range?

EDIT: So here is the hd tune results for my new WD Scorpio 320gb 5400rpm hdd (running under vista in safe mode to prevent as many spikes as possible)



compared to my old Seagate Momentus 5400.3 160gb hdd that came standard on my inspriron 1520



it's a pretty nice increase i would say. fastest vista premium boot time is from completely off to log in screen in 30 seconds compared to about 36 or 37 on the old drive.

 

If you check these benchmarks, it seems Hitachi 5K320 performs better and takes less power than the Samsung.

The extra power the WD 3200BEVT takes (0.5W average link) it not really going to make much of a difference. Maybe you'd get 5-10 minutes less battery life. Maybe that is important to you, I don't know.

By the way for an indication of real life performance select the 'XP startup performance', 'Webserver' and 'Database' benchmarks. Transferrates are nice to know but they don't show the whole picture.

At the moment also some 320GB 7200rpm drives have arrivied to the market. I think the current lowest price is $179. They offer an increase in speed over the 5400rpm drives.

 

I can't really give an accurate response to the start up time question...........it seems faster, but I haven't finished installing the SP and upgrades to Vista yet, I just wanted to get the tune results up for PhilFlow since I know he's been interested.

Battery life is not a concern to me as the only time I'm on battery power is the occasional hour or so in the airport when someone has already taken the only power connection point............overall I'm happy with the drive, considering buying a second and coming on here to get some help setting it up in a Raid configuration. hehe

 

well i don't want to get a 7200rpm since they are so much more expensive. also i saw the hitachi on newegg, but it was $130 plus $8 for shipping (the others both had free shipping) so it was $20-30 more than the other two i was considering. so in your opinion should i spend the extra $10 for the WD or just get the samsung? (oh and i didn't realize that the battery life would just be like 5-10 min shorter so that doesn't make a difference since i don't use it with battery for extended periods of time often)

EDIT: oh and also i play cpu/gpu intensive games on my laptop every once in a while, so do you think the WD would give better performance for loading and whatnot on the games?

 

I HIGHLY recommend the WD Scorpio. I had an M6 in a work laptop and had to replace it twice and the laptop never left the desk. Also the performance of the Scorpio is second to only the 7200RPM version.

 

If battery life is not very important to you go with the WD. It's the best performing 320GB 5400rpm.

 

Do not get the Samsung, I have it stock in my laptop when I order it and it is really slow and definitely get the western digital one you will be happy you did in the end.

 

Hate to threadjack but to piggyback on the ops post, Will I see any slowdown going from a 7200rpm 250GB drive in my G1S to the 5400rpm 320GB Scorpio? I could get the 7200rpm Scorpio but I would rather save if the performance impact is negligible.

 

Probably not but run HDTune and post your results here, then we can make sure.

 

A 250 gb 7200rpm drive is going to run a bit faster than a 320gb 5400rpm drive. I presume you are going 320gb for more space. If so, you should look at the Samsung 500gb notebook drive, so you are getting a very high capacity drive.
You will not be gaining much space by going to the 320gb drive since 320gb formats to 298Gb, so 234Gb to 298 isnt that much.
If you are downgrading cause of heat issues, than its a good idea cause the 320gb drives do run much cooler than 7200rpm drives.

K-TRON

 

Due to price constrictions, I recommend not getting the 500GB samsung as it will cost you at least 229 dollars.

 

WD3200BEVT is good, installed it today....way quieter than the 7K200..

 

Does not seem like a good idea K-Tron, Tom's Hardware tested it and it's got the slowest access times for 2.5" drives and the highest power consumption.

Besides that a german reviews says it gets very hot, which makes sense at that powerconsumption.

 

I miss-typed. I have a 200GB currently, not 250. I am wanting to increase capacity.

 

If yours is a Hitachi 7k200 you will loose a little performance.

If yours is a Seagate 7200.2 performance will be similar.

 

def the 320gb wd is the winner for 320gb drives at 5400 rpm and even some at 7200 rpm.. its a fast drive and i own a few of them now with 0 issues unlike some other brands

 

i just purchased the WD Scorpio 320GB last night and they put it on sale for $110 ($10 off). i'll try and post some hd tune benchmarks of it under vista for others to see (after i recieve it tomorrow), also i will post hd tune scores for my old seagate momentus 5400.3 160gb that came standard in my inspiron 1520.

EDIT: here is the 160 gb seagate in vista premium (seems pretty bad compared to some of the hd tunes i saw of the wd scorpio)

EDIT 2: Check the first post or here to see the new WD results.

Old Seagate Momentus 5400.3 160gb
http://i278.photobucket.com/albums/kk100/theb1rdm4n/HDTune_Benchmark_ST9160821AS-1.png

 

Probably running a bunch of processes in background.

 

nope. i optimize my vista to run about 37-42 processes at all times. compared to other people who i see who get well over 80 processes! Also, i checked the resource manager to see how much the hdd was being used and it was very low (so no indexing and whatnot at the time.) if i get around to it, i might install xp or a clean version of vista to see what scores it might get, but i doubt it will be much different. its just probably a slow hdd. and just wanted to point out that this is my old seagate hdd, not the new wd scorpio that im getting tomorrow.

 

The downward spikes in the HDtune graphs are caused by other processes accessing the HDD. It's not simply the number of other processes. Make sure that indexing is off and there's no background scan by anti-virus, etc. Or just ignore the spikes.

John

 

I'm thinking about getting 320Gb as well. Even a 500Gb if the price is worth it. And 7200rpm, if possible. Which has the best bang for the buck?

 

Western Digital 3200BEKT 7200rpm seems to be the best performer sofar.

http://techreport.com/articles.x/15079/4

 

What's the difference between the WD Black and Blue?

 

WD product names for 7200rpm (black) vs. 5400rpm (blue).

 

theres only a diff of 1-2 points between 7200 and 5400? wtf? I'm deciding between 320gb 5400rpm or 320gb 7200rpm for my clevo 570tu and theres a 80 dollar difference. I've got a raptor right now, so I like the speed, but...2 points seems kinda not worth 80 bucks. Thoughts?

 

Check out the other benchmarks too. I've only posted one. Here's another one:


Others: http://techreport.com/articles.x/15079/6

You really need to know what brands they are offering. For example the WD 320GB/5400rpm is quite fast, the Seagate 320GB/5400rpm is slower.

But why not do these upgrades yourself. Probably cheaper.

 

Still... it seems like the difference is only about a few second difference. I was sort of expecting a 33% difference based on the rpm of the hard drive. From the stock option, the 320gb 7200rpm is only 140 more which is better then the scorpio black at 180 on newegg. Since I don't have another laptop to put the stock in anyways, I'll probably stick with buying it from manufacture. I just sent the company a message on the company of the hard drive. I suppose if they have the WB blue one, I'll stick with the 5400rpm. I'm pretty sure the 7200rpm is Seagate though...

 

Yeah man you're right, the differences are quite small

Especially when the benchmark is displayed in seconds.

 

Maybe the 7200 RPM has a third platter? I'm not sure and I'm not looking it up, heh...but obviously a 2 platter 5400rpm drive will do better in many aspects than a 7200rpm with less data density.

 

it seems like the 5400rpm HDD is from Fujitsu. So I'm going to assume the worst since I couldn't find any benchmarks on that (are maybe I'm not trying hard enough)... I don't think they make 3 plattered hdd for notebooks so I don't think thats a factor. Do you guys think the difference from 5400 to 7200 is big enough of a diff to justify 80 bucks? If not, I'm probably going to get a sound card.

 

If it's Fujitsu 320GB 5400rpm it's not the fastest one but it's ok. I own one. Comparable to Seagate 5400.4 in the benchmarks.

You'll notice the difference especially with loading games and applications.

If it's worth 80 bucks.. tough call.

 

I'm going to assume these are SATA II drives (SATA 300). Would using these drives in a SATA I connection just run at the limited speed or would buying SATA I specific drives save some money in the end?

 

Guys, what do you think about Samsung 320Gb 5400rpm? Is it a good disk, how is it comparable with WD Scorpio 5400rpm, is it much slower than WD? I've heard that Samsung is SATA150, no SATA300 like others. My HD Tune results are: Max-61Mb/ Min-34Mb/ Avg-51Mb, 18,4ms and 61MB Burst rate, is it OK? Thanks in advance!

 

The Samsung gets excellent read and write speeds, but the acces time is quite high: 18.4ms.

You can check all the different benchmarks here.

The WD scorpio is a bit faster, but it will not be easy to notice that in everyday use.

 

... The simple answer is no. There are no sata hds that can max the 150mbs bandwidth of a sata 1. In retrospect, sata II is consumes more power than sata I, so.... tbh you're better off sticking with the sata I

 

Is it worth to change my Samsung 320Gb with WD Scorpio 320Gb? Am I going to notice difference at startup and other places?

 

For comparison, in overall performance your Samsung is just a little bit slower than the Seagate 5400.4. Benchmarks in booting and loading between the Scorpio and Seagate can be found here: http://techreport.com/articles.x/15079/6

On a Vista boot of 40 seconds, you may see a difference of 2-3 seconds.
Same for loading a level of Farcry.

 

I have the Seagate Momentus 7200.3, it is very speedy, silent, and I love it! It uses 2 160GB platters. I highly recommend it. Unless you want to get a SSD.

 

Forte,
How much did you pay for your drive, over $200 USD?

 

Thanks!!!
If you were me, would you change your Samsung with WD?

 

Whats better out of toshiba 320gb 5400rpm, samsung 320gb 5400rpm, and western digital 5400rpm??

Are they all sata300?

What drive is the quietest out of these? Does the wd make a clicked noise i heard?

How much battery would you loose getting the wd over the others?

 

Western Digital is the best performer of the 320Gb/5400rpm drives.

Power consumption or noise diffrences are not big enough not buy the WD in my opinion.
You can find the details here.

At what price could you do it?

If it's for free sure.

 

Unfortunately my Samsung is covered by warranty with my XPS system, so my idea is to buy new WD Scorpio and put in my laptop, but Samsung I will use like external drive, I have box from WD passport and already extracted 160GB disk inside, so I cuold hold my Samsung until the warranty of the XPS ends up.

 

without taking into performance, whats the quietest ?

toshiba 320gb 5400rpm, samsung 320gb 5400rpm, and western digital 5400rpm ?

 

There should be barely any difference between them.
It depends a bit from drive to drive and laptop to laptop.

 

Yeah I agree, under normal circumstances there's not much difference.

You do want to avoid a clicking harddrive, because the clicking can be quite loud. I don't know which drives are most likely to get the clicks.

 

I heard western digital drives click alot ?

 

I heard Samsung does... link.

I have a Samsung here that doesn't click. My Fujitsu clicks occasionally but it's not a problem.

 

WD is very quiet. Samsung is also very quiet also, but has more vibration

 

So, all in all, if I'm going for a 7200rpm 320Gb drive, the best one to get is... any one of them?