Want fast SATA HDD, recommendations?

Somewhere on teh intarwebs Paul wrote:
David W. Hodgins wrote:
On Mon, 20 Jun 2011 02:06:19 -0400, ~misfit~
wrote:

So what say you? Is the Western Digital Caviar Black WD5002AALX a
good

Anything recent from WD is garbage. Their "Advanced disk format"
drives use
a 4KB physical sector size, but still use a 512 byte logical sector
size. Many of their drives lie to the os about the physical sector size,
claiming it's 512 bytes.

If you use one of the garbage drives, you must align all partitions,
files, meta data, etc, on 4k boundaries (which can be very
difficult), or you will have pathetic write performance.

My opinion, do not buy anything from WD, unless you know it doesn't
use their "advanced disk format".

Regards, Dave Hodgins


The bad news is, there was an announcement, that the "industry" as a
whole was switching to 4KB sector drives. So soon, you won't be able
to escape them.
And with the consolidation, and the loss of Hitachi, Samsung, and the
like, there really won't be a lot to choose from. It'll be a "diet of
garbage".

AF gives higher aureal density so greater drive capacity. Yes, it's the way
of the future for mechanical drives (I believe all SSDs are 'AF'?) but it's
still a PITA for XP users, especially when I had to find out about it the
hard way.

I'd read about AF, that it was 'coming' a long time ago but when I bought my
2TB 'EARS' WD HDDs there was no mention that they were AF on the site I
ordered them from. I had to dig deep into WD's PDFs to find it. (Other than
the tiny writing on the drive that I missed at first which said to use a
jumper if using with XP and single partition. I'd never use a single 2TB
partition anyway so ignored it when I saw it.)

However, for now it'd be nice to find a smallish fast non-AF HDD for my
tower boot drive.

Cheers Paul, great to see you still prolifically posting here. I often come
here just to read your posts. :-)
--
Shaun.

"He who fights with monsters might take care lest he thereby become a
monster. And if you gaze for long into an abyss, the abyss gazes also
into you." Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche

Somewhere on teh intarwebs John McGaw wrote:
On 6/20/2011 2:06 AM, ~misfit~ wrote:
Hi group.

I have a tower system that I basically use as storage and backup for
my laptop HDDs. It has four SATA trayless removable HDD 'docks' (for
want of a better word) that I use to facilitate transferring data
and doing backups. It works well.

(System is an Asus P5KE-WiFi/AP board with a QX9650 CPU and just 4GB
of RAM [running 32-bit XP])

I have a few 2TB HDDs that get moved between USB docks attached to
laptops and this machine. The USB docks are fine for writing
moderate amounts of data but are rather slow for large amounts.
That's where the tower comes in. Anyway, I want a new (mechanical) boot
drives for it. The old
Seagate 500.10 isn't the greatest these days and frankly I don't
need 500GB for a boot drive. However looking at new ones that seems
to be the starting size. Frankly all I need is ~100GB. I toyed with
the idea of a 2.5" drive but they're generally slower and would cost
me more than a 3.5" 500GB drive anyway.

I'm not rich but would like a fast, reliable drive. Single-platter
would of course be best, faster to spin up etc. I'm contemplating a
Western Digital Caviar Black WD5002AALX. WD don't seem to want to
tell you how many platters / heads each of their drives has, unlike
Seagate. You need to infer it from the weight / ready time in the
specs pdf that you can download. I've Googled trying to find a review of
smallish 7,200rpm desktop
HDDs but, from what I could see, all of the hardware sites are only
interested in benching SSDs these days.

So what say you? Is the Western Digital Caviar Black WD5002AALX a
good choice? I can get a Seagate 500GB 7.2K HDD for about 3/4 of the
cost of the WD but the WD has a 5 year warranty and recently I've
moved to WD drives as the Seagate agents for New Zealand don't seem
to be very aggressive or competant or something, most stores seem to
have lots of WD stock and little Seagate stock.

Input appreciated. I want a small, fast and preferably cheap boot
drive for my tower / server / archive machine.

TIA,

Seems pretty simple to me. If you want a fast boot drive then buy a
small SSD and use it for just the OS and minimal application. What
would having a spinning platter gain you over an SSD besides slower
speed, more power consumption, heat, and noise? I get along in my
main i7 machine with an 80gB Intel drive and IIRC the actual OS
installation along with all of my high-priority applications, swap
file, hibernation file, etc took up ~24gB. The system has a 2tB data
drive with three partitions but it doesn't need to be all that fast
so I get along fine with a 'green' drive there. In your situation,
I'd leave the 500gB drive right where it is and use it for data and
store images of the SSD on it for backup.

Thanks John, I agree that, in a perfect world that's the way to go. Alas,
I'm an invalid on welfare since an accident in '95 left me with spinal
injuries. SSDs are still out of my price-range. Ironic LOL In fact this
drive I was planning on getting is off the menu for now. Times got a lot
tighter of late, I'm selling my collection of old ThinkPads, my only hobby,
machines that I bought cheaply and refurbished. Can't afford to drink,
smoke, socialise, go visiting (ergo have lost the frinds I had), eat decent
food. I gave up on TV a long time ago and now it seems my one hobby that
gives me pleasure has to go.

(I used to bould desktops, for myself and friends, and was a rabid
overclocker. However when electricity got so expensive I switched to working
with ThinkPads for my hardware fix.)

Sucks to be me right now. Middle of winter, unheated house, many layers of
(old) clothes, typing in fingerless gloves at 2pm, trying to decide which
ThinkPads will net me the best money and be the least loss.

Be well,
--
Shaun.

"He who fights with monsters might take care lest he thereby become a
monster. And if you gaze for long into an abyss, the abyss gazes also
into you." Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche

Somewhere on teh intarwebs larry moe 'n curly wrote:
On Jun 19, 11:06 pm, "~misfit~"
wrote:

I have a few 2TB HDDs that get moved between USB docks attached to
laptops and this machine. The USB docks are fine for writing
moderate amounts of data but are rather slow for large amounts.
That's where the tower comes in.

Anyway, I want a new (mechanical) boot drives for it. The old
Seagate 500.10 isn't the greatest these days and frankly I don't
need 500GB for a boot drive. However looking at new ones that seems
to be the starting size. Frankly all I need is ~100GB. I toyed with
the idea of a 2.5" drive but they're generally slower and would cost
me more than a 3.5" 500GB drive anyway.

I'm not rich but would like a fast, reliable drive. Single-platter
would of course be best, faster to spin up etc. I'm contemplating a
Western Digital Caviar Black WD5002AALX. WD don't seem to want to
tell you how many platters / heads each of their drives has, unlike
Seagate. You need to infer it from the weight / ready time in the
specs pdf that you can download.

I've Googled trying to find a review of smallish 7,200rpm desktop
HDDs but, from what I could see, all of the hardware sites are only
interested in benching SSDs these days.

So what say you? Is the Western Digital Caviar Black WD5002AALX a
good choice? I can get a Seagate 500GB 7.2K HDD for about 3/4 of the
cost of the WD but the WD has a 5 year warranty and recently I've
moved to WD drives as the Seagate agents for New Zealand don't seem
to be very aggressive or competant or something, most stores seem to
have lots of WD stock and little Seagate stock.

XbitLabs.com did comparative reviews of hard disks last February and
December, and they seem to test hardware better than anybody else
does.

I've had no problems with 4KB "advanced format" drives and simply used
a partition alignment tool (Gparted, downloadable with a self-booting
CD ROM image).

Thanks Stooges. See previous posts for my experience with AF. I checked Xbit
before I posted here but didn't find anything relevant. Must look again. I
agree, they're a good site, my first stop for tests, opinion etcetera.
--
Shaun.

"He who fights with monsters might take care lest he thereby become a
monster. And if you gaze for long into an abyss, the abyss gazes also
into you." Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche