Choosing a HDD for Clevo P650SE

Hey everybody!

I'm going to buy the Clevo P650SE shortly and I'm going for 2 drive setup SSD+HDD.

SSD will be 250-500 gb for booting games and software in M.2 format and HDD will be 1TB prefferably 7200RPM for torrents, and general storage(movies photos music etc)

What would be the best 1TB drive for this purpose. Atm I'm looking at the 7200RPM Hitachi Travelstar 7k1000 .

Would there be any better alternatives out there?

P.S the laptop can hold 2x7mm drives or 1x9.5mm drive

taking this into consideration would i be better off getting 2x WD 1TB slim 7mm 5400RPM and putting them in RAID0 instead of a single 9.5mm 7200RPM drive

The main consideration would be speed when downloading torrents as i have 1Gigabit optic fiber internet

 

The more physical storage subsystem components, the better. Just a matter of logically using them so that their combined performance is additive, not subtractive to the workflow you have intended for them.

With 2x 2.5" 7mm drive options available - I would be tempted to put aside any M.2 options we currently have available (if heat, and sustained speeds are concerns at all vs. a 2.5" SSD option) and go for a 2.5" SSD and a 2.5" HDD.

The Hitachi Travelstars are the best you can get for the most balanced HDD option for the last decade or more.

With your torrenting biased workflow, consider two 1TB SSD's (SanDisk Extreme Pro's or Samsung 850 Pro) with a 30% OP on the O/S drive and a 50% OP on the data/torrent drive. You'll need to have an external HDD to save the torrents to, but this setup won't slow you down.

 

Personally, I'd go for the capacity you need. If 1 TB is going to be sufficient, I'd go for the Hitachi. If you think you'll need more go for 2x 1 TB' but I wouldn't raid them personally.

 

Agreed. Forgot to mention: no RAID0 (unless you're editing RAW 4K video, etc.).

 

Well If I could afford 2 x 1tb 850PRO I wouldn't be asking for other options right now )

I was thinking to get a 512 gb MX100 and a 500gb Travelstar Z7K500(7mm) but I'm not so happy with only 500GB conventional HDD so that's why I was exploring the m.2 route for SSD so I could get a Travelstar 7K1000

I wasn't aware that there where problems with M.2 (other than the PciEx samsung and plextor wich get excessively hot)

What are the probs for normal sata drives on M.2?

Another thought would be buying the 7k1000 now and waiting for the 850Evo or MX200 in M.2 format.

 

The main problem is that you need 2X7mm drives in P650SE... I would suggest either the following combo

1. Hitachi 7K 1000 1TB HDD + m2 SSD
2. 480GB Sandisk Extreme Pro SSD + 1TB slim HDD

 

I see everybody recommending the 850 pro and Extreme Pro but I don't believe the price for them is justified...atleast not for a home user like me.

The only time I'm going to write data on the SSD will be installing games and the OS(and any writes said OS and games might do) so I don't believe that the price is justified for a normal consumer like me. Atm the Sandisk extreme 500gb is 40% more expensive then the MX100 500gb in my country for about 10-15% the difference in speed...the 850 pro is about 60% more expensive. We can't really talk about life expectancy since before I'll use up all the writes on my SSD with my manner of using it I'll probably have grandchildren(I don't even have children yet)

I guess I'll just get the 7K1000 now and wait for a nice M.2 option to come up.

Still I'm not sure what tilleroftheearth meant when he said that M.2 don't have consistent speed. I know he's kinda the resident storage expert around here so he got me a bit worried.

P.S. I found a reasonably cheap M.2 SSD in the form of the AData SP900 256 GB wich comes with the Sandforce SF-2281 controller. I know that controller had issues with trim. Did they fix it in the latest firmware?

Would this SSD be a good option as a system drive?

I could only find reviews of the 2.5' SP900 which is a different thing alltogether as it uses TLC while the M.2 version uses MLC

 

Jinx, the M.2's are messed up. Sure they have the highest scores right now, but in every other aspect, they're wanting vs. what we know we do get with a 2.5" SATA3 SSD today. That AData model with SF controller? Don't do it. Nothing gets fixed on a SF ssd. As others will link/tell you - the M.2's have worse IO than SATA3. That tells me they're not only rushed to market (Look! I'm an M.2 shiver...), but the total disregard for the temps they hit are all pointing to a device to hold you over until the real thing comes out.

You may think you're just a 'home user', but with a torrenting habit along with the enabler (1Gigabit optic fiber internet) any SSD you get will be working hard.

And, it has to, of course, to keep up to your expectations.

Don't buy things twice. Save up if you have to, but buy once.

Longevity is not the problem with the middling ssd's (although they're great when matched to a moderate workflow - just that yours isn't) - when SSD's get hammered with a workload they weren't built for, they perform like HDD's from the '90's... if they work at all. And you buy one to abuse like that, you'll have the pleasure of paying for one with a 40% off price, but also buy one at full price in the near future. Along with the pleasure of re-installing everything (clean; if you don't want to do that again too).

Your call, your $$$.

Good luck.

 

Well as I said before, that's why I'm buying a 512 gb SSD for OS games and software (boot drive)and a separate classic HDD for the torrents and storage needs.

I just can't afford to put that kind of money into storage for JUST torrents. A 7200rpm HDD will work just fine for that.

In the meanwhile a regular consumer SSD will speed up my Windows experience sufficiently and will definetly not be tortured in any way.

As for the M.2 ...I'll just take your advice and wait.

What do you think about the upcoming m.2 Crucial MX200 and the 850 EVO

You think they will have the same issues as the current M.2 SSD's?

Is there any place I could read about this?

I thought that M.2 is also SATA3(as long as we're not talking about the PciEx variants)

Do SATA3 M.2 SSD really have worse performance than their 2.5' SATA3 counterparts?

Until now I always thought they where the same deal in a different form factor..just like mSATA(again just to make sure we are on the same page...I'm fully excluding PciEx SSD's on M.2 from this discussion)

 

The main problem with M2 drives is that they run hot compared to 2.5" SSD drives... Now if that isn't a problem for you (along with their slightly higher price) and you need performance, get a M2 drive.. HT's has shown that the M2 drives in P650SE/SG connected to the heatsink by thermal pads actually run at 40-50C under load which is HDD like temps so tbh, I don't buy the heat arguement... The main problem is the price as a M2 MX200 will be more expensive then the 2.5" MX200.. I would personally get the MX200 over the 850Evo simply because I don't trust Samsung's implementation of TLC in SSD's after the 840 Evo fiasco... MX200 uses MLC and it's cheaper too...

 

Yeah...I was thinking the same thing about the 850Evo but reading about it I saw it's a new 3D Nand with much higher life expectancy then even the MLC in the MX200 .

The only thing putting me on the fence right now is the previous slowdown issue with the 840EVO but now thay people are actively checking for it I'll guess it will get discovered by the time the M.2 version comes out.... if it exists in the 850EVO that is.

 

Don't worry, it's coming. Just a matter of time now.

http://www.tweaktown.com/news/42633/samsung-850-evo-msata-2-spotted/

I too am waiting for the 850 EVO but in mSATA. I was gonna pull the trigger on the 1TB 840 EVO mSATA but the performance issues put me off.

And as for the HDD, might I suggest the Samsung Spinpoint M9T 2TB. It's a 5400RPM 9.5mm drive that goes for around $100 as a bare drive, but can be found for $80 in the Seagate Backup Plus Slim or Seagate Expansion Portable (STBX2000401) external drive. There's no point in 7200RPM 2.5" drives nowadays IMO. They're louder, hotter, more power-hungry, and cost more $/GB. And the higher-capacity 5400RPM drives are just as fast.

 

No, actually there is no point in 5400RPM drives vs. the Hitachi Travelstars in 2015 forward.

They are not louder, hotter nor as power hungry as you think. But the performance from them blows away any 5400RPM drive in any use scenario - even just storing/accessing static files and especially when used as a torrenting destination.

 

Can we get an answer for this? I've heard this same thing about how M.2 drives have all these issues, but they always seem to be talking about how they get too hot, and have performance issues. These complaints always seem to be directed at the PCIe M.2 drives, which apparently do have issues with getting extremely hot under sustained use, and despite their excellent read/write speeds, they aren't much better in ways that matter for everyday use. But I have not seen anything that shows that M.2 versions of standard SATA3 drives have inferior performance or anything. I was under the impression that the M.2 versions of drives such as the M500/550, and the upcoming 850 Evo and MX200, were using the same hardware, just in a different form factor. I don't see why the same controller, using the same interface, would perform worse in this format than in 2.5" or mSATA.

 

Take a look at this thread:

http://forum.notebookreview.com/threads/crucial-m550-512gb-m-2-temps.770697/

The "why" portion would be for Crucial/Micron folks to answer, but these temps are unacceptable and I'd bet my last penny that the SSD is throttling to save itself from melting at that point in the game.

 

Cool story, bro. Now show me a 2.5" 9.5mm or thinner 7200RPM HDD that is above 1TB. Oh wait, that's right, you can't. And while you're at it, show me some benchmarks of a Travelstar 7K1000 1TB "blowing away" a Spinpoint M9T 2TB, or did you make that up too like everything else that comes out of you?

 

Ok, that is... absurd. How did M.2 ever get rolled out if it has these kinds of issues? Really glad I didn't opt for any of the M.2 options when I purchased my NP8651. Hopefully the next-gen of M.2 SSDs (principally the 850 Evo and MX200) will address these issues.

 

Yeah...that's the very same article that got me drooling a few weeks ago and is making me wait rather than buying some other M.2 now

I actually have a 2tb "seagate backup plus slim" and knew about breaking it open but I'd rather buy a separate 2Tb Samsung drive if I decide on it because of the loss of warranty and the small price difference in my country(only 10$)

Well here's a review...though it's not so clear cut.

The Samsung takes the lead in most situations except where it actually matters for torrents...small file writes/reads

I have a habit of downloading up to 10 torrents at the same time while also seeding so data is being written/read out in small chunks randomly across the drive and in this case the Samsung actually blows.

For a normal HTPC with 1-2 download streams you can see that the Samsung actually comes ahead.

Probably due to the platter density.

So while I do agree that the Samsung would be a better option for 90% of the population especially due to it's capacity wich can't be equaled as of yet , it isn't really the best choice for me.

 

Yeah, that's a good idea. I've ripped both the Backup Plus Slim and Expansion Portable drives out of their enclosures and the latter is much easier to do without trashing the enclosure. I was able to preserve the enclosure on the Expansion Portable well enough to repurpose it for my 1TB drive.

 

lol... nothing is made up. Experience. Any same gen drives 5400RPM vs. 7200RPM even with different capacities/platter densities won't give the advantage to the dog slow (in responsiveness) 5400RPM version. Ever.

You keep comparing 'scores', I'll stick with what I know. A (same gen...) faster spinning drive is the faster drive. And if that drive is a Travelstar, it is also balanced for the most performance (real world) at the lowest noise and power requirements too.

 

Your so-called experience means nothing to me or anyone else in this forum since you have proven time and again to be extremely biased and lacking for credibility. That and your penchant for commenting on things of which you lack experience and know little to nothing of (e.g. gaming software and hardware) means that a lot of what you say is in fact made up.

 

Keep attacking me personally instead of facing the facts others have provided to prove my points. I still see you ignoring the facts I'm presenting and you're quoting too.

I don't comment on what I don't know. Gaming software? You mean games? Yeah; I always state I've never gamed or ever will for that matter (boring). Gaming hardware? Oh, you mean computers with some kick to their performance? Yeah; that I have experience with. GPU's, not so much, but never really lost anything by ignoring them for my workflows. (Before igpu's, I needed discreet gpu's of course, but now - they're just one more component to power and keep cool for no reason... again, in my workflows).

What you call made up is what is what I have actually experienced. And when I comment on something I do not have direct experience in; it is from something called reading. Which I do a lot of.

No skin off of my nose if my experience says nothing to you, but hopefully the OP can see the point of my posts. Lets keep the conversation factual and stop throwing personal attacks in there, okay?

 

Ok...so after long and carefull consideration I decided that an M.2 drive is just not worth it at this point in time so I'm just going to go with a 512 Gb Crucial MX100 and the slowass WD Blue Slim 1Tb

Now my biggest gripe with WD is their agressive head parking policy and from what I read wdidle3 doesn't work with this drive.

Is there any other option to "repair" this issue?

LATER EDIT: Ok...so I found a way to make HDPARM to run automatically at startup with hdparm -B 255 /dev/hdb thus disabling APM

Does this have any drawbacks except higher power consumption?

It's my understanding this actually increases the HDD lifespan.

 

-Jinx-, despite you basically ignored the good advice of fellow forum members, I'll give it another try. Get rid of WD and get a Hitachi!

 

Sigh...if you would have read the whole thread you would have saw that I actually chose this BECAUSE of the good advice of forum members.

Several people(including tilleroftheearth, TomJGX) recommended that I stay away from M.2 SSD. That's the reason why I'm forced to use this HDD.

The Clevo P650SE can only take 2x7mm drives OR 1x9.5mm.

So by listening to forum members advice to use a normal 2.5' SSD I am forced to use only a 7mm HDD.

The WD is the only 1TB drive available right now in 7mm form factor.

While I could buy a 500GB 7200RPM Hitachi that would mean that the 20% increase in speed would come at a 50% reduction in size.

Since my main purpose for the HDD is torrenting HUGE quantities of data, 500Gb is not really enough for this.

Aside from that ... Hitachi is now owned by Western Digital ...that's actually why the Hitachi travelstars have the exact same head parking issue(it's a power saving feature).

So even if I would choose a Hitachi Travelstar I would still face the same issues...

If you have other reasons than the above stated for me to avoid the WD Blue Slim 1Tb then please by all means enumerate them.

 

With 7mm Hitachi Z5K1000 you'd barely notice the difference with 7200rpm WD with those anti-head parking tricks, and will definitely notice without them - in Hitachi's favour of course. Despite being owned by WD, Hitachi drives do not suffer from agressive head parking issues. You can get away with torrenting from 5400rpm drive at decent speeds without any problems - as long as it's not system drive, which is not the case. I'm not the first in this thread pointing out that good 5400rpm drive is actually better than bad 7200rpm.

 

Unfortunately as i said in my previous post....WD Blue Slim 1Tb is THE ONLY 1 Tb 7mm HDD available in my country.

I would have gone for the HGST in a minute if it was available


P.S.Don't know for sure about z5k1000 but the HGST 7k1000 definetly has the same head parking feature. There are alot of complaints online.

 

This is something I've been thinking about since I decided to get the P650 SE.

I guess a combination of 2.5" SSD + 7mm HDD would be the more practical approach. Fortunately, where I'm located, a 256GB M550 + 1 TB Travelstar costs just a bit over 30 USD more than a 256GB M.2 M550. I'll just slap the default HDD into an enclosure.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

Jinx, you seem to know that you made a bad decision, but blaming circumstances and not yourself for the mistake is not the way to go. Just because a forum member or two make a suggestion to you doesn't mean you were forced to do anything. What country do you live in? Unless you say it is the Democratic People's Republic of Korea, I have news for you, whatever hard drive you want to buy is available. For heaven's sake, give me $75 and I'll mail you one on Monday morning.

Trying to justify your purchase by saying that some other Samsung and Hitachi drives have problems makes no sense. I use 1TB and 1.5TB Hitachis and 2TB Samsungs like crazy. After all my research on these drives and 1+ year ownership of them, I have never heard nor experienced any head-parking "issues" on Hitachis. If you think small random-write performance for the Samsung is poor, unless you are downloading dozens of torrents at once in excess of 200Mbps, you aren't going to notice. And even then, most programs will allow you to adjust caching so that only larger chunks of data are written at a time. And it is just funny that after all this talk, you end up with something absolutely inferior.

Either be happy with your decision, or cancel your order/ return the products and buy better stuff, but stop saying that you were "forced" into making any of these decisions.

 

Let's clear something up...I did not buy/order anything yet so I wasn't trying to defend my purchase. I'm at sea right now (seaman) so I'll have to wait 1 week more before actually buying something.

So other than thinking the WD Blue Slim would be an acceptable drive I did not make any mistake yet.

That was just a decision that I had taken...though after all the critical feedback I received I can see that it was not a good one.

In general I don't buy anything until being 100% sure it's the best choice....and right now I'm not sure on anything.

Small random performance on the samsung is only "poor" when compared to HGST Travelstar 7K1000.

Other than that I actually wrote above that it's the perfect drive for 90% of the population.

I actually own a Seagate Backup Plus so I could get the Samsung drive for "free" so to say.
However performance wise I prefer the HGST 7K1000 because I actually have 1Gbps (122MBytes/s)download speeds.

For thise of you wandering how that's possible in a third world country....here's some proof:

(just to be clear...this isn't my speedtest as I'm away from home now; I actually get 950-990 on a daily basis)

The decision to buy a WD Slim was actually a rather desperate one(fully aware of the shortcomings of this drive) due to the fact that in order to fit a 2.5' SSD I need a a 1 Tb 7mm Hdd(as most people here told me to avoid an M.2 SSD , M.2 drives are expensive and the Clevo P650SE can only hold 2x 7mm drives together or a single 9.5mm) the only 2 options being the HGST Z5K1000(unavailable) and the WD Blue Slim.

I didn't expect my decision to buy a WD Slim to be so controversial

I live in Romania...a ****ty eastern-european country where international warranty means nothing and electronics arrive much later than the rest of europe. .... but hey...we have 1Gbit/s internet for just 15$/month

I could indeed buy this drive on ebay and pay 14£ delivery from UK and forgo warranty but I'm not so happy with that.

I'm starting to think that I'd be better off just buying and putting a 7k1000 in the laptop now and waiting for a decent affordable M.2 SSD for 3-4 months because right now I can't find a single acceptable option .

Most 256 gb M.2 ssd's here cost 10-20 dollars less than the 512 GB 2.5' Crucial MX100 so you can see why it's hard to make a decision(also most of them don't even come close in performance)


P.S. I didn't make up the stuff about hitchi head parking :
http://www.wilderssecurity.com/threads/how-can-i-disable-continuously-parking-heads.370669/


Read post from pandlouk on 27nov2014 together with CrystalDiskMark screenshots.

Also for those too lazy to read it here's a quote:
" I recently bought some HGST travelstars 4 drives 5K1000 and 2 Drives 7K1000 and all six suffer from this(frequent head parking)"


That doesn't change that it's the best drive(if I could only find a reasonable M.2 SSD) for me. It's easy enough to disble APM with Hdparm on startup

 

OK so looks like the Crucial MX200 has started to be available in my country also....going in and out of stock frequently but soon the retailers will probably have them in ample supply.

Does anyone own this SSD yet? Is it reliable and does it overheat?

The reviews show that it's good and for the moment is priced the same as the 2.5" variant wich is surprising.

I'm thinking one of these with a 1TB Travelstar will be very nice.

BTW..Thanks to all of you who convinced me the WD Blue Slim would be a mistake

 

Do you have a link which shows how to connect an M2 drive in a P650SE/SG to the heatsink with thermal pads? What sort of pads are we talking about here?

 

I actually don't.. Mind be worth asking @HTWingNut about this... He was the 1st one who mentioned this...

 

If you find a solution post it here also
It would be worth knowing.

However I don't know if it's viable for all m.2 SSD as from what I know some manufacturers don't allow the label to be removed under threat of loss of warranty and more often than not that label is on the actual parts that need to be cooled.

 

As far as I know, he didn't remove the label etc.. it was just connecting part of the drive using thermal pads to the heatsink..

 

So..I'm posting this as a conclusion to this thread.

At first I went with a hitachi travelstar 1 Tb drive wich indeed had the annoying problem with head parking so I returned it and just took out the Samsung 2TB from my seagate external drive.

This one has an occasional chirping sound but I'm satisfied with the performance and tired of looking for another one with no alarming/ominous sounds to it. Just to make it clear it's not the actual sound that bothrrs me bit what it may forebode....

To complement the HDD I got a 500gb Crucial MX200 m.2 ssd wich I'm happy with.

Atm it has not given me any issues like the m550 drives had(not being recognised after restart sometimes) and I can recommend it to anyone looking for a good cheap m.2 SSD

Temps don't jump above 61ºC without any heatsinks.

 

Lol my Hitachi doesn't reach 60C.. Also what is the parking problem you were talking about? I had no such problems lol..

 

You didn't read the post well enough

That's my m.2 ssd that reaches max 61 degrees.

The hitachi that I had before my samsung had periodic clicking sounds(same like western digital) due to agressive APM.

 

Should have phrased it better.. What I meant was that my hitachi is one hot HDD but doesn't reach 61C like your M2 SSD.. I'm not a fan of such high SSD temps.. My Extreme II doesn't hit 40C under massive transfering load...

Ahh my Hitachi does get clicking noise but it's usually when I'm moving my laptop to another room etc.. It's probably due to the head being parked by the accelerometer...

 

No you still don't get it. Why are you comparing HDD vs. SSD (M.2 mind you, which is even hotter) in terms of temps? SSDs can operate normally at temps that would roast an HDD.

 

@TomJGX

In day to day use it doesn't exceed 43 degrees.

In benches is where it runs 61 degrees.

It's not the accelerometer. That one only head parks under freefall more or less.

It's a power saving technique

 

Well mine doesn't have those problems.. Never noticed any noises from it except for in the cases stated...

 

You can get rid of that clicking noise by setting disk's APM to 254 (or FEh) in CrystalDiskInfo. To do this click "Function > Advanced Feature > AAM/APM Control". Remember that this setting will reset when the system is closed. So you should tick "Resident" and "Startup" also in Function menu.

 

@karasahin

I returned the hitachi on day 2

I already fixed it by putting a hdparm command on startup turning off APM completely but decided I'm better off just using the samsung 2TB from my Seagate backup plus as ot was...free

I don't like things that come "broken" out of the box so that's why I returned it.

 

They call it a feature but I don't like it too. They could've done less aggresive setting for it. There wasn't any 1 TB 7200 RPM HDD besides Hitachi so I had to choose this disk for both performance and storage. I'm pleased so far as I disabled that noise for good.

 

I have no idea about this noise... You people got some sensitive ears!

 

I had two of those drives for 4 monthes and I never heard so much as anything either. That's wierd.
I pulled mine out and am using them bare with no case for backup drives and still haven't heard a peep out of them. I actually have to pick it up just to see if it's running or not .

 

@Player2

Different firmwares maybe?

 

My drives say January 2015 on them. So they are relitively new. Maybe they fixed that problem by the time I got mine.
My firmware is showing either 2115 or 0.
I'm guessing 0. If I read it like my other drives it's a 0.
I have it connected with usb to SATA 111
Cable when I read firmware. When I put it in a hardrive enclosure I get the firmware of the enclosure instead of drive. That's wierd. I wonder if I plug it into the laptop directly I will get a different firmware.
Anyway what firmware are you showing on yours.?

Edit : Nevermind jinx I see that you already sent yous back.