As long as you are not buying a 5600rpm one aimed at CCTV/security camera use (WD call theirs Green, offhand I am not sure was Seagate call their equivalents) then write speeds should be good enough for capture purposes, especially if it is not being used to load the game and OS as well. Are you sure the hard drive is the bottleneck though? Capturing to X264 I would usually expect the CPU to be the hold up, if you are capturing to raw or some kind of older big lossless format at greater than 1080p then I can see hard drives coming back in, if you are doing raw frames though then you might want to look into changing that. I would also take a trip to the BIOS and make sure you are running in AHCI mode rather than IDE emulation as such things also can cause slowdown (you might have put it in IDE to get an old OS installer to work at some point).
In this particular case there are an awful lot of reviews complaining about the failure rate of the ST3000DM001

https://www.backblaze.com/blog/3tb-hard-drive-failure/

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822148844
http://www.scan.co.uk/products/3tb-...sata-iii-6gb-s-7200rpm-64mb-cache-8ms-ncq-oem
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Seagate-ST3000DM001-Barracuda-3000-Internal/dp/B005T3GRLY
http://www.amazon.com/Seagate-Desktop-3-5-Inch-Internal-ST3000DM001/dp/B005T3GRLY

It looks like there might be some better versions now but it might also just be worth finding something else. At this point I do not have an alternative to suggest.

SSHD = solid state hybrid drive? If so then I am not the fondest of them. Most of the ones I have dealt (not that many but a broad selection of manufacturers) with seem to die sooner than others and nobody is really making them any more either.

SSDs then. If you are doing it "properly" then you would probably be told to only buy SSDs from those people that also make NAND chips. Samsung would be one such company. I am not convinced of the need to do that but price wise there is usually not a lot in it.

I have a variety of 120 gig SSDs running an OS and a decent selection of programs in all sorts of different systems, including adobe stuff. If you are also going to use it to store massive games, videos and years and years of music then it will probably run out but for basic OS use then 120 gigs is fine.

If you have a spare PCIe port then you can always stick a sata card in, here is a cheaper one with a couple of SATAIII ports http://www.amazon.de/tinxi®-PCI-E-Express-interne-Controller/dp/B005GCXS10/
For the most part it is only in crazy RAID type setups, RAM based hard drives (not that I am aware of any that do SATAIII right now) and SSDs from the last couple of years that SATAIII will come into its own. It might even do better as the sata controller on many a consumer motherboard is not the greatest.

 

3TB Seagates seem to be not reliable, the rest are fine. I have an almost 2-year 1TB myself.

If anything I've heard quite some complaints about certain WD drives lately, but that could be subjective.

 

There are 2 ports on the inside as well.

 

RAID is a way to utilize an array of hard drives at once with different modes, each mode suitable for a specific purpose.

RAID 0 is used to increase performance, but is the least reliable of all modes.

 

So Basically RAID 0= better performance.

So with the two 1TBs on RAID 0, and as you've already said, they perform well as it is, you increase their performance further. @MichiS97

 

Get the 3TB HDD and spend a weekend with them HDDs

 

I graduated from school and won't have anything to do until I'll start studying in October anyway Don't wanna re-install all my programmes though

 

Whatever you go with, avoid Seagate, they are the least reliable by far. I have a Seagate drive in my desktop that is failing on me now, had it for a few years though, but none of my other drives show any signs of failing any time soon (other than the one I damaged by carelessly throwing it onto my bed), including drives I've had longer. Seagate drives have a much higher failure rate and will probably fail sooner, so even if they are cheaper they will cost more in the long run.
HGST/Hitachi/Toshiba are the most reliable drives around by far (they're all really HGST drives, since WD now owns HGST and Toshiba has rights to produce their 3.5" drives), but the others apart from Seagate are not doing badly either.

 

That appears to be the same as the old Hitachi DeskStar, so it should be great.

 

One slight correction to FAST's info, Western Digital Caviar Green is their "Eco" drive prioritising low power usage and power saving (I.e. Spindown) features. I've seen 5400 and 7200rpm versions, but they generally do have slower access times and are mostly designed for media storage only. It's the "Red" series that are designed for 24h operation in CCTV/NAS/server solutions which have slower access speeds but are actually better at handling multiple access requests (search and read whilst still recording sequentially).

For better access speeds, WD either have the "Blue" series which is relatively cheap and middle range (I don't actually know if it has any outstanding features) or the "Black" series which has much better access speeds but a significant price premium.

I'm also in the camp that avoids SeaGate at all costs (ever since they acquired Maxtor) but for several years they have been getting consistently good reviews at bit-tech (who prioritise performance and stability, since it's difficult to objectively review longevity at launch outside of warranty periods). Can't say anything about Toshiba drives though, except that the dozen or so I've dealt with in the past are still ticking along (much more than SeaGate).

For SSDs, I keep hearing the same song year after year. Samsung SSDs for performance (actually OCZ and a couple others get slightly better performance, but Samsung are considered one of the most reliable brands) and Crucial for value (price per GB whilst still having decent performance). 120GB is more than enough for the OS, but beware of some apps that tend to secretly suck up all your space (here's looking at you, Apple's accursed iTunes!). For myself I've got 120GB for the OS and 250GB for Steam/Origin.

If you have a SSD for your OS drive, it doesn't actually matter much if you get a high performance HDD or a cheaper "Eco" HDD. The only thing the access speeds noticeably affect is loading times (e.g. Unpacking large levels/environments in games). It's only the OS and the swap file that largely benefit from the faster access speeds, as the rest tends to be down to CPU/RAM speeds and optimised coding (huge overgeneralisation, but still).