Recommendation for 7200/320GB Hard Drive

I need to get a hard drive to use as a backup drive that will be placed in a hard drive enclosure. Figured I might as well swap out the current 5400/320 GB drive in my 1330 with a 7200/320 GB and use the old one as a back up.

Any recommendations for a reliable 7200/320 GB hard drive for my 1330?

Will the increase in RPM be noticeable or am I better off just buying a cheaper drive and using that as backup instead of swapping the one in the 1330?

 

I'm changing my 5400rpm for this, should feel snappier loading application and games, and maybe at boot up:

Western Digital Scorpio Black 320GB 7200RPM SATA-II 16MB Cache - OEM (WD3200BEKT)

 

Thanks for the rec. I just ordered the Seagate Momentus 7200.3. Tom's Hardware preferred this one over the Scorpio, but TechReport found the Scorpio to be better. Not exactly sure which review to trust.

 

Seagate 7200.3 is fast, relatively cheap and comes with 5 year warranty.

PC Mark benchmarks and PC Mark Vantage benchmarks done by NBR members indicate the Seagate 7200.3 is faster than the WD.

 

Hi Phil,

Do you have a preference for which one you would purchase (between the Seagate and WD)? From what I've read, the Seagate is a bit more power efficient, while the Scorpio performs a bit better. I am not sure how these two factors play out in real world experience, however.

 

I'd pick Seagate 7200.3 because, as I said, PC Mark benchmarks and PC Mark Vantage benchmarks done by NBR members indicate the Seagate 7200.3 is faster than the WD3200BEKT.

I do not fully believe the results that Techreport got from the Seagate 7200.3 because their results seem too low. According to their tests it's being outperformed by 5400 drives. Might have to do with the drive they had or the fact that they run their benchmarks on a desktop (!).

 

Interesting... I was a bit confused as to how two different reports (TechReport, Tom's Hardware) could be so different regarding the same drives. In any case, thanks for your advice/help.

 

Yes that also surprised me.

Could be several reasons: maybe Techreport had a bad drive or a very early edition. It could also be that real life performance of the Seagate 7200.3 is actually not as good as the WD.

Techreport is the only site that has published real life test results on the 7200.3.

All benchmarks Tom's HW has done are synthetic.

 

I see. So if TechReport's real life test results are in fact accurate, would that change your recommendation for the Seagate? Do the PC Mark measurements done by NBR members you mentioned earlier measure synthetic situations or real life usage?

 

PC Mark is a synthetic benchmark that uses traces of real applications.

But the PC Mark tests were done on several laptops. The Techreport review was done on one older desktop.

But yeah, there is a slight chance that the WD is actually faster in real life.

If i would recommend it? depends on what you need.

 

Fair enough. Seeing that the Seagate is less power-hungry and the difference in performance is (hopefully) not very noticeable compared to the Scorpio, I will probably stick with the 7200.3. I mostly do Flash development and programming on the laptop and will mainly use the rest of the disk space to store/play uncompressed music.

 

I'd go for Seagate as wel. Also because I've heard more reports of heat and vibration on the WD than on the Seagate.

 

Sounds good, Phil. Thanks again for your wise and timely advice!

 

Welcome man.

Another thing that I find interesting that is Tom's HW only got 7,9MB/sec for the Seagate with PC Mark startup performance, while several NBR members have reported > 9,7MB/sec.

 

Wow, so that would actually put it at the top of the heap for that test. Goes to show how erratic and system-dependent these measurements can be.

 

Right. And considering the Seagate also consistently knocks in the best HDTune restuls, that's where I'd put my money.

 

I got the 7200.3 last week and I'm extremely pleased. The heat was only an issue because its an M860TU but after applying the file found elsewhere on these boards my temps dropped down and now rarely get above 52C even when running max setting on Fallout 3.
Vibrations are unnoticable.
Noise is minimal. You can do AAM (auto acoustic management) and there is some talk of clicking and incorrect AAM numbers set by the manufacturer but I haven't found this.
Oh and speed is awesome.

 

Hi Jahar,

What file are you referring to that dropped your temps? Was this only applicable to your particular laptop?

 

Is there such a thing as a 500G 7200 rpm single hard drive?

 

Kinetic its only for M860TU's, they have/had heat issues coming straight from Clevo but there's a driver patch to fix it.

EDIT: As for the hard-drives. Seagate announced a few months back the 7200.4 which is a 500GB 7200rpm drive but no date yet on release. Phil any others?

 

Not yet, there will be.

 

Well it's very likely we'll see Hitachi and WD offerings too. I won't be surprised if Samsung joins them.

 

With such high data densities on those platters I'm sure we'll be seeing some high performance!