Best HDD for gaming?

Hi guys,

I'm in the market for a new HDD. I'm currently using the stock Toshiba 5200 hdd, which is.. insanely slow to say the least.

I've been pointed towards these:
- Hitachi Travelstar 7K500 - worse than Scorpio Black in any possible way and it's the same price so I'm scrapping it

- Scorpio Black - best of 7200 2.5" HDDs?

- Seagate Momentus XT - HDD/SDD hybrid, supposedly rocks? But the price is ridiculous here..


- The price is the most important factor - i need something that won't kill my savings
- as long as it's 150+ gb its fine. Obviously the bigger the better
- It's supposed to improve my gaming experience - thus 7200 at least.

Soooo, any ideas?

 

The XT won't help you load games much faster. Might as well get the WD Scorpio Black.

PS. the WD Scorpio Black may be faster than the 7K500 in synthetic benchmarks, in real life the difference isn't that significant I expect.

 

Well yeah, they might not be much different, but the reviews are much better for the Scorpio Black.. and the price is the same!

So yeah, I guess I'll be going for the Scorpio.

 

What reviews are you talking about? I've only seen the one on Tomshardware, but that solely relies on synthetic benchmarks.

As you can see in the review in my signature I wasn't impressed with the real world performance of the Scorpio Black 500GB.

Here's a review I found that measured real world performance:

Source

At the same price I'd probably also go for the Scorpio Black. If Hitachi is cheaper I'd get Hitachi.

 

Both blacks are faster than the 7k500 in our real world tests. The XT though is still my favorite platter drive for pretty much any use. In terms of gaming, it won't help a ton there I'm sure, but they're not exactly expensive.

 

Hard drives and gaming have nothing to do with each other. Hard drives will not increase your framerates, or give you better image quality. So if you're looking for a way to somehow improve those areas of gaming, then buying a is not the way to go. The only impact that a hard drive has on gaming is load times.

As for WHAT hard drive to get - I would recommend the Seagate Momentus XT. If, for some reason, you just cannot afford it, then get any modern 7200rpm drive. If you like the Scorpio Black, then get that. If you like Hitachi Travelstars, then get that. All 7200rpm drives are within the same general class of performance.

Whatever you buy will be indistinguishable from the other modern 7200rpm drives, and will all give you a nice bump coming from a 5400rpm drive. If you want more performance than whatever 7200rpm drive you buy, then you will need to go with either the Seagate Momentus XT or an SSD. Buying one 7200rpm drive over another 7200rpm drive will not give you any noticeable benefit in speed.

 

I suggest the Seagate Momentus XT for general use . . . it will give you SSD-like performance for applications and data you use frequently.

The Hitachi 7K500 would be my second choice; I use one in my notebook and have been very satisfied with the results.

This is a good review of the XT:
Seagate Momentus XT: Hybrid Drive in Action - X-bit labs

 

i suggest the Momentus XT too.. its a one off upgrade so its worth the cost for the performance.

 

Sephael,

I too suggest the Momentus XT - it is simply the best mechanical HD available right now (it even outperforms my 10,000 RPM Raptors in certain scenarios).

However, before you go down the new HD route (which I still suggest doing either way) you may want to consider the following:

If you're running Vista, consider upgrading to Win 7.

If you're running less than, or even 'only' 2GB of RAM with Vista or Win 7, I recommend 4GB to minimize the O/S's interference with the work you want the computer to do.

Do you have your current HD partitioned? Reducing the O/S partition's size to the smallest possible (with at least 20GB free space left over) will give your computer a great increase in the 'snap' it has - it will also ensure your games load as fast as that HD will allow because the files will be on the fastest part of the HD.

Note: I'll be continuing this later - got to go shoot now...

Okay, I'm back...

Even partitioning is not enough to keep the HD running optimally. I highly recommend PerfectDisk 11 to ensure that the performance stays high.

So, with a modern O/S (Win 7), 4GB RAM (whether you're running 32bit or 64bit Windows - but x64 is highly recommended), a HD that is partitioned to the smallest size your O/S and apps need (keeping adequate free space in mind too...) and on top of all this using PD11 and a 7200RPM HD (or even better an Hybrid HD like the XT), you have the best performance and HD space you can get currently.

The problem with the above (especially if you need to buy Win7 x64, 4GB RAM, etc.) is that I have totally blown your budget.

But even if you don't buy a 7200 RPM HD, I still recommend doing the O/S, RAM and partitioning first - that's how much difference they make.

For more information on how to take partitioning to the 'next' level:

See:
http://forum.notebookreview.com/har...-hitachi-7k500-benchmark-setup-specifics.html


For information on how PerfectDisk can 'equalize' to a large degree a 5400 RPM and a 7200 RPM drive:

See:
http://forum.notebookreview.com/har...-c-b-defrag-c-x-defraggler-perfectdisk10.html


Good luck.

 

Few things I haven't mentioned..

- The HDD I currently have is really old and it seems to be failing (few occurrences thus far, one of the reasons why I'm upgrading)
- I've got a windows 7 x64 and 4gb of ram, I defrag my HDD weekly and format whenever I feel that the system is turning sluggish
- i keep my HDD at least 30% free
- I've got a high speed 4gb SD card that I use for Windows ReadyBoost

All in all, I need a 7200+ rpm HDD for the whole system to be more responsive than it currently is - from what I've read, this is the last thing I can do for my good 'ol laptop.

As far as the Momentus XT is concerned.. I do realise how awesome it is, but the price is a huge turnoff for me. Unless there's going to be a significant discount anytime soon, I don't think I'll be able to shell out so much for it. I'm not in a hurry, so I'll be on the lookout for any discounts or promotions, but to be honest, I Don't think there will be any

EDIT: Oh and yeah, I was basing my opinion on the Storagereview.com Great site!

Thanks for the helpful insight guys !

 

Sephael,

Fair enough, sometimes a budget is a good thing to stick to! So, no more XT talk...

However, I would recommend you disable ReadyBoost and give eBoostr a try with your SD card - you will be surprised at how inept ReadyBoost really is.

Also, don't forget to partition the HD - this will give a very noticeable increase in the 'snap' your system has.

Lastly, all defragmenters are not created equal. Try PD11 and see what a fully defragged drive feels like. (Do an online and an offline defrag at least twice).

Good luck.

 

Thanks for the tips! Will certainly give it a shot tonight.

 

Get a 1-2 tb for 60.00 to 80.00 on sale WD Seagate
Fill only 1/4 to 1/2 max space for the best performance.
SSD are not close to perfect even the best intel one.