Hardware Getting a new Hdd

[dragonblood9999]

I've been wanting to get a 3TB HDD for a while now, so i was on Newegg.ca site today and i saw this one and was wondering if this would be good for as a second hdd for my pc.
i will be using it for my games(steam), anime and video capturing(from ps3 and wii) or should i spend a little more and buy this 4TB Seagate or get a usb 3.0 HDD?

 

[Psionic Roshambo]

The price is fantastic for the space, but I would recommend a different drive.

In my opinion way too many complaints of DOA drives and drive dying after a few months.

I know they cost a bit more but they have better reviews if you get Western Digital or Seagate. (I myself would pick a WD drive as I have had a lot of good luck with them.)

$10 more but has cheaper shipping.

http://www.newegg.ca/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822136926

*Shopping pro tip for Newegg, make sure you check out the stuff that has free shipping. Sometimes the difference in cost is made up on the shipping allowing you to get a better item for the same price.

 

[dragonblood9999]

The price is fantastic for the space, but I would recommend a different drive.

In my opinion way too many complaints of DOA drives and drive dying after a few months.

I know they cost a bit more but they have better reviews if you get Western Digital or Seagate. (I myself would pick a WD drive as I have had a lot of good luck with them.)

$10 more but has cheaper shipping.

http://www.newegg.ca/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822136926

*Shopping pro tip for Newegg, make sure you check out the stuff that has free shipping. Sometimes the difference in cost is made up on the shipping allowing you to get a better item for the same price.

thanks, i did not even see it on the site i will definitely get it.

 

[Count Duckula]

The WD30EURS (http://www.newegg.ca/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822136926) is a SATA2 drive and looks to use some kind of variable spindle speed (as opposed to straight 7200RPM). It's designed for security systems/home theatre systems that are constantly reading/writing slowly to the drive, not for performance.

For gaming you'd be better off with the 7200RPM toshiba you linked to, or a WD black if you want to spend more.

For ID tech 5 games (rage, the new wolfenstein) you really want to run them from a SSD or Raptor, due to texture streaming issues with the megatexture tech.

 

[Originality]

For gaming, the sweetspot for price to performance is in the 2TB drives. You can get WD Caviar Black drives up to 4TB, but you pay a large premium for the continued performance. Generally, if you need the larger drives, you're better off getting a "green" drive which will be slower (bad for games) but have much better reliability and costs far less.

For nearly the same price you're paying for a WD Black 3TB ($210), you can get a 1TB WD Black ($82) and a 3TB WD Green or SeaGate (SeaGate has more performance but lower reliability at nearly the same price).

By the same logic, you can get a 250GB SSD for $120-140 which is enough for the OS, applications and a bunch of games, and then get a 2TB drive with the leftover cash or spend a little more for a 3TB drive for all your videos. I've always advised people to get a fast primary drive and a slow Eco secondary drive for storage.

 

[gifi4]

I'll just chip in that if you're worried about drives dying, go with WD. WD drives cost more than Seagate but are given a 5 year warranty from WD (Probably a few years from place of purchase as well)

 

[Psionic Roshambo]

thanks, i did not even see it on the site i will definitely get it.

I only recommended that drive since you said it's a secondary drive to the PC, if it was a main drive for OS and games I would probably say to spend a little more yet again.

Other posters may have missed that part of your original post.

If I was going nuts recommending drives... I would say get 2 SSD's one could be really small and fast as you would just be putting your swap file on it, the other would need to be larger for the OS and your games, then I would tell you to buy a NAS box with 4 drive bays each packed with 4TB drives to store everything you ever touch... Might run you a thousand bucks but yeah since we have tons of imaginary cash why not lol

 

[dragonblood9999]

what about a usb 3.0 drive? is it worth getting one?

 

[Originality]

It depends on what you need the drive for. External drives have a much higher failure rate than internal drives, due to their variable operating environment. External drives tend to get moved more often, have inadequate ventilation, are susceptible to vibration, and have a less stable power supply (not to mention that removing the USB without safely removing can cause corruption and sometimes physical damage if it was in the middle of a write operation).
External drives are also slightly more expensive than internal drives.

On the plus side, external drives are portable, and 2.5" external drives can run purely off USB BUS power (3.5" drives need power from the wall).

 

[FAST6191]

It depends on what you need the drive for. External drives have a much higher failure rate than internal drives, due to their variable operating environment. External drives tend to get moved more often, have inadequate ventilation, are susceptible to vibration, and have a less stable power supply (not to mention that removing the USB without safely removing can cause corruption and sometimes physical damage if it was in the middle of a write operation).
External drives are also slightly more expensive than internal drives.

On the plus side, external drives are portable, and 2.5" external drives can run purely off USB BUS power (3.5" drives need power from the wall).

Do they still also stick the "might have otherwise failed quality control" grade drives in them too?

 

[Originality]

Do they still also stick the "might have otherwise failed quality control" grade drives in them too?

I've only noticed that with Maxtor drives. I've seen Samsungs using special model HDDs in their enclosures, WD with any random model inside, and more dead Seagate drives than I can count (that said, I don't know how to differentiate their models), and one dead Hitachi in a random enclosure, but nothing that indicates any different QC process than regular internal drives.

Even so, it's rare for me to dismantle an enclosure unless there's a fault with it, which may be why I've never seen a Toshiba come out of an external drive. Even then, about 1 in 5 drives I take out actually still work when I plug it in my PC for testing (maintaining that I've never seen a fully dead Samsung).