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#1
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Want fast SATA HDD, recommendations?
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, -- 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 |
#2
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Want fast SATA HDD, recommendations?
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 -- Change nomail.afraid.org to ody.ca to reply by email. (nomail.afraid.org has been set up specifically for use in usenet. Feel free to use it yourself.) |
#3
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Want fast SATA HDD, recommendations?
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. |
#4
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Want fast SATA HDD, recommendations?
On 6/20/2011 2:50 AM, 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 You can't really mean that can you? The WD disks work fine with any operating system which understands them natively - in other words any modern operating system. On more antiquated systems it takes all of ten seconds to align the partitions using the free utility which WD provides. The drives work perfectly well with XP and other old operating systems if they have only one partition without running the utility by simply installing a jumper which is the time they 'lie' to the OS. Oh, and I speak from experience, having installed eight of the WD 2tB 'green' drives and running them on a daily basis. There is nothing 'garbage' about them, just people who aren't willing to accept the fact that we aren't living in the olden days any more and 512K sectors are a relic of history. Standards change and people need to change along with them otherwise we would all be using audio cassettes to store data on our PCs and wishing that someday the floppy disk would become cheap enough for mere mortals to afford. |
#5
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Want fast SATA HDD, recommendations?
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". Paul |
#6
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Want fast SATA HDD, recommendations?
On Mon, 20 Jun 2011 13:33:57 -0400, John McGaw wrote:
You can't really mean that can you? The WD disks work fine with any operating system which understands them natively - in other words any modern operating system. On more antiquated systems it takes all of ten seconds to align the partitions using the free utility which WD provides. The drives work perfectly well with XP and other old operating systems if they have only one partition without running the utility by simply installing a jumper which is the time they 'lie' to the OS. Oh, and I speak from experience, having installed eight of the WD 2tB 'green' drives and running them on a daily basis. There is nothing 'garbage' about them, just people who aren't willing to accept the fact that we aren't living in the olden days any more and 512K sectors are a relic of history. Standards change and people need to change along with them otherwise we would all be using audio cassettes to store data on our PCs and wishing that someday the floppy disk would become cheap enough for mere mortals to afford. I ran into it with the 1.5TB drive model WDC WD15EARS-00Z5B1. From fdisk -l Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes There is no jumper on the drive, to control the reported physical sector size. It was only by googling on the drive model number trying to figure out why it was getting such poor write performance, that I found out it was internally using a 4kb physical sector size. Yes it's possible to force partitions to start on 4kb boundaries, once you know it's needed. You also have to ensure the filesystem metadata, journals, etc, all use multiples of 4kb. Not difficult, but it's extra work, that if not done leaves you with a system that is not usable for regular work. If the drive used a 4kb logical sector size, it would be simple. By using a 512 byte logical sector size, with a 4kb physical sector size (but lying to the os about it), it forces a lot of extra work, to ensure everything aligns on 4kb boundaries. I've done that for the two drives I purchased, but won't be going through that again. Yes they've provided a windows driver, that will do that, but they haven't done that for other operating systems. I'm using linux. I will never buy wd drives again, or recommend them. Regards, Dave Hodgins -- Change nomail.afraid.org to ody.ca to reply by email. (nomail.afraid.org has been set up specifically for use in usenet. Feel free to use it yourself.) |
#7
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Want fast SATA HDD, recommendations?
On Mon, 20 Jun 2011 19:19:04 -0400, Paul wrote:
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. I have no problem using a drive with a 4kb logical/physical sector size. I had a problem with a wd drive that reported to the os that it was using a 512 byte logical and physical sector size, but in reality, was using a 4 kb physical sector size. Drive model WDC WD15EARS-00Z5B. Regards, Dave Hodgins -- Change nomail.afraid.org to ody.ca to reply by email. (nomail.afraid.org has been set up specifically for use in usenet. Feel free to use it yourself.) |
#8
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Want fast SATA HDD, recommendations?
David W. Hodgins wrote: 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. I have Windows XP and created the aligned partitions with GParted, a Linux program. It takes about few minutes, including the time to boot from a CD. Once an aligned partition is created, all the files should also be aligned, unless a nonstandard and unusually small allocation size is chosen. As for other aspects of WD drives, I've noticed when I run the MHDD diagnostic, it reports that each sector can be read in less than 50ms, but with other brands of 1TB - 2TB drives there are usually 1-2 sectors that need over 150ms, depending on temperature. |
#9
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Want fast SATA HDD, recommendations?
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). |
#10
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Want fast SATA HDD, recommendations?
Somewhere on teh intarwebs 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". Thanks Dave, I already tripped over that hurdle when I bought the 2TB storage drives. I run XP almost exclusively across my machines and, when I first used the drives it was in USB docks attached to the main laptop. They seemed fine for the month or so before I needed to stick them in the tower and move files. Suddenly my tower was getting the dreaded BSOD regularly. After much research I not only had to download the WD 'Align' software and run it on each disk (5+ hours each) but I then had to download and install the latest Intel Matrix drivers for the southbridge (I use AHCI mode) as I was *still* getting BSODs. All's fine now. However, I'd prefer to avoid 'AF' with a boot drive. Not all WD are AF, it's easy to find out which are and aren't by downloading the PDFs. Also, I thought that it was Seagate who were using AF but putting a conversion chip on the HDD PCB so that it looks like 512 Byte sectors to the BIOS? It's my understanding that WD drives are one or the other, no 'hybrids'. Thanks for your input. -- 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 |
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