HDD Advice NEEDED!

Hi all.

Let me start by saying I am TRULY a novice when it comes to the complex language that is computer hardware.

That being said, I am looking to have a laptop made for me, and I need some advice as to which HDD to have installed. I will be using the computer for basic entertainment (chatting, surfing the web) and also for streaming and watching movies. I will also be playing games like The Sims 3, Spore, and SWTOR. Could someone please tell me what I should be looking for in terms of size, and type (hybrid or otherwise)?

I know that 7200rpm is preferable to 5400rpm, but beyond that I'm completely unsure. I know relative sizes from one to the (500GB vs 750GB), but I'm not sure whether 500GB is really that small, or if it would suit my needs.

Any help would be really appreciated!

I'll be hovering around the board for now, so if you need more details I'd be happy to provide them!

Thank you!

 

I would say go SSD if you can afford it but if not go with HDD I like WD Black drives but they are 7200 and Blue is 5400 I have decent returns on WD laptop HDD. But all this is from my experiences and other might be different. Here comes the more important part if you are going to chat make sure it at least comes with Webcam/mic and decent CPU Intel if you can go that route i5 or i7 with 2.x Ghz or better. And dedicate GPU otherwise it would be Intel HD graphics which should suffice but if you game you will want a dedicate Nvidia or AMD GPU for games as Intel HD will limit your gaming. If you game a 17 would be good but that make it heavier most go with somewhere between 15.6 to 16 inch screen not to heavy or bulky. I would stay away from hybrid drives haven't heard good track record and they are pretty expensive to get because if you do then you might as spend little more and get a good large SSD. SSD are pretty expensive right now compared to HDD so if you go for 200G SSD expect to spend alot for comparable HDD in the same size and they will not match in storage capacity with HDD currrently. And at least 4G if your going x64 O/S otherwise x86 only go to 2.5 to 3.5 on Windows 7 machine. But you should also look at what are the options the builder is giving you if they are building your laptop for you so you know what your getting and how much your spending. That would help the rest of us here to know what else you should look for and add or remove to get the bang for your buck.

I revise this is something comes up....

The Speed matters in terms of loading speed and relative to storage. 500G should suffice as the 2.5" drive are up to 1TB HDD right now if you can find it. 7200 works good in loading of games like Crysis from the HDD but other then that your sacraficing battery life for a more RPM and 5400 suffice for more general apps but SSD loads even faster but they do cost the downsize besides smaller storage capacity.

 

Agreed on getting a WD Black as it is a 7200rpm HDD and also gets the very best owner reviews at newegg.

BTW the proper full name is Western Digital Scorpio Black.

I ordered both a 750GB and a 500GB from amazon at $84 and $69 respectively. The 750GB is 2 platter; I'm unsure if the 500GB is single platter.

With regard to SSD drives, I continue to see too many horror stories.

IMO the 7200rpm WD Black is the far better all around deal as a HDD upgrade over the normal 5400rpm HDD that comes with a new laptop computer.

 

That's the problem with a SSD its all electrical and if the Ram goes so does the info with the HDD you can still if you can manage to squeeze info back from the dead. SSD gone is gone HDD can be brought back to life at least enough to get your precious data off.

 

SSDs are considerably more reliable now than when they first came out. Also, you retrieve your data from a proper backup. If it's really that precious, you should backup, and if you don't it's your own fault it's lost. I'v had a few HDDs fail in the past, but have never lost data.

 

backup? what's that.

i'd stick with a HDD, or atleast have an external HDD to backup the SSD from time to time. 500GB should be plenty unless you are going to be storing all your digital music, movies, and your life history on it. and 7200RPM is a must also make sure it has atleast 16mb of cache ram on the hard drive.

 

RAM is volatile storage (will lose data if power is cut off), whereas SSDs are non-volatile storage. And SSDs have mechanisms that allow them to keep data integrity in the event of a sudden power loss (write cache inside the drive, capacitors for backup power that'll last for a few moments).

Outside of Sandforce-based drives and drives made by companies with sub-par SSD quality and tech support (like OCZ), I don't see many horror stories whatsoever. Especially not from Crucial, Plextor, Intel, or Samsung drives.

 

I was just out on Newegg looking at mSATA SSD, and regular SSD. To my surprise current Crucial M4 may (?) be having some problems, but I'm not really sure about that as I don't follow SSD drives.

Pulled up mSATA on wikipedia.org and it seems to be SSD in a smaller package.

On Amazon I noticed retail Intel 320 SSD in 120GB size was being offered at $120 price ($125 w/shipping) by 2 3rd party vendors and bought one.

Plus I bought a 15.6" Lenovo IdeaPad Y580 w/high def screen.

I'm pretty sure I have you to thank for that coz early this morning you commented in some other thread that buying a standard def screen in a 15.6" laptop didn't make much sense; at which point all the homework I'd done fell into place for me.

So thank you.

Anyway busy day today.

 

I agree. I have been using SSD's in all my lappys for several years now. Not one of them has ever had an issue. But I also only use Intels (except my first SSD, a Corsair Nova 128 now in my youngest daughter's laptop). None are SF, all have at least 500TB written to them, and all show no signs of wear on them. Stick with a quality brand, and research before you buy. There is a very long and detailed forum on here dedicated to SSD drives. Check it out and read what many users over the past several years have found from using the drives. Good luck and enjoy when you get one.

 

In real world there is hardly any performance difference between the controllers, And in real world all controllers have had some kind of problem cycle; But its only the ones that gets amplified by few people get notoriety / popularity.

 

True, outright performance is practically the same (read/write, random access, etc). What I mean by sub-par quality is the problem cycle you mention, but also sleazy business practices (such as OCZ switching out 34nm NAND for 25nm NAND in customers' SSDs that were RMA'ed and such, without their knowledge). And the offenders in the SSD space typically offend more than once: OCZ's tech support, Kingston's SSDNow V-series underperforming, etc.

Just to provide numbers, here's the failure rates of SSDs, sorted by brand:

(source: SSD failure rates compared to hard drives - Storage Forums)

While Crucial seems to have high rates of failure as well (compared to Intel), this is probably due to the firmware bug that the M4 had back then (fixed now). Also note that Crucial's tech support is something to envy if you're an OCZ customer . (which is why I include Crucial in SSD recommendations)

 

More recent SSD data (25/10/2012) from the same source material:

In French: SSD - Les taux de retour des composants (7) - HardWare.fr There is an english version somewhere on another website, but i forgot which one.

And now the 3.5" HDDs since there is no data for the 2.5" ones.

 

I see that Intel SSD 520 (240GB) uses SandForce (SF) controller.

Do you have any clue as to why Intel's SF 520 units might be more reliable than other manufacturer SF SSD's?

And a question on mSATA SSD: I see that they max out at about 256GB (hard to believe they can cram that much into the small mSATA form factor).

Am I safe in thinking that the largest size of mSATA (i.e. 256GB) is likely less reliable than the next size smaller?

 

Intel has completely switched over to Sandforce, starting with the 520. However, Intel uses their own firmware for the drive (other SF drives use SF-made firmware), helping with reliability.

The amount of NAND is pretty much irrelevant to how reliable the drive is. For just about all cases, SSD issues are controller related.

 

Yup, it's all in the controller and it's firmware.