1TB Hard Drive

[Shakey_Jake33]

Looking at getting a 1TB Hard Drive, this is primarily going to be used for storage of HD media (Blu-Ray, HD-DVD etc).
Trying to decide between the Hitachi Deskstar, and the WD Caviar Green Power.

Some of you may know that the Green Power is getting real good reviews because of it's low power consumption, runs cooler and quieter. However, the Deskstar is faster.

While I know a fast drive is mainly a consideration for gamers, would the Green Power slow enough to have trouble with HD media, with room to spare? Perhaps the answer is an obvious 'yes it'll be ample', but I'd like clarification before spending money on such an expensive drive!

(Before someone suggests it, I don't want 2x500GB's!).

[burfadel]

Here's a review for the 7200.11 Seagate drive. Under this review, they compare it to both the Hitachi 7k1000 and the Caviar GP, so its an ideal review for you as it compares the two items you are looking at on the same testing platform (for the benchmarks, and there's quite a few of them):

http://techreport.com/articles.x/13440/1

[Shakey_Jake33]

Thanks, I'll give it a read :) I'm actually mainly interested in the drive's performance for media though, since I'm not really sure if video playback (specifically HD video playback) is something that requires a fast HDD or not. The fact that the Caviar GP runs quiet is obviously very appealing for a media machine.

[Shinigami-Sama]

Thanks, I'll give it a read :) I'm actually mainly interested in the drive's performance for media though, since I'm not really sure if video playback (specifically HD video playback) is something that requires a fast HDD or not. The fact that the Caviar GP runs quiet is obviously very appealing for a media machine.

we'll say that HD media takes 30mbps(peak)
30 / 8 = 3.75Mi/sec

an old win2k box with a dieing HD handle a sustained rate of 15.5Mi/sec
so these newer faster ones should have no trouble at all
unless you have 'XBOX HUEG' fragmentation problems

[Shakey_Jake33]

Thanks :) This is really just to satisfy my uncontrollable paranoia with this kind of thing! As I say, it's primarily to store HD Isos taken from my discs, so I wanted to be extra sure.

[shakey]

The Samsung offering is out/coming out soon. It only uses 3 platters, unlike the others which use 4 or 5, so it runs quieter with less power usage.

[evilclive]

The Samsung offering is out/coming out soon. It only uses 3 platters, unlike the others which use 4 or 5, so it runs quieter with less power usage.

You're right: http://www.samsung.com/global/business/hdd/ contains links to the Spinpoint F1 HD102UJ (1TB, 16MB cache) and the HD103UJ (same, with 32MB cache), where it boasts of Max. 334GB Formatted Capacity per Disk

Samsung's recent desktop hard disks have all had three platters (or fewer in the lower-capacity models, of course).

Presumably, this means that another drive manufacturer could replicate Samsung's manufacturing technique, and market a 4 or 5 platter, 1.5TB hard disk by roughly Q2 2008.

[blizard]

we'll say that HD media takes 30mbps(peak)
30 / 8 = 3.75Mi/sec

an old win2k box with a dieing HD handle a sustained rate of 15.5Mi/sec
so these newer faster ones should have no trouble at all
unless you have 'XBOX HUEG' fragmentation problems

Thanks :) This is really just to satisfy my uncontrollable paranoia with this kind of thing! As I say, it's primarily to store HD Isos taken from my discs, so I wanted to be extra sure.

I record in rather high bitrate to keep a good quality of my MPEG2 recording for compression or what ever I want to use them for. One thing is that MPEG2 at 8000 kpbs can grow rather large and get very fragmented on hard disk, so I need to de-frag quite often to keep my hard disk up to speed.

With large ISO as you plan to store on a 1 Terra byte hard disk I would believe you need to de-frag each of those ISO after you ripped those from HD-DVD/BluRay to keep up your hard disk performance. Don't forget that you also can divide your hard disk in logical smaller partition, which make it possible for each partition to be de-frag faster as it would be less space to cover instead of a complete de-frag on 1 Terra.

On Windows XP you have those tool as part of OS: Administrative tool>Computer management (Disk defragmenter and Disk Management). I would get a better de-fragment application as those could work in the back ground and make less need to check manually that your file isn't going to be fragmented. Diskeeper made Win XP basic de-fragmenter (offer trail periods) and then you have something called O&O (which I have not used). Look around if those can offer better work to keep your system up to speed.

[JohnnyMalaria]

The Green Power thing is a sales gimmick. There isn't anything remotely environmentally friendly about computer hardware (or any electronics). Sounds like a politic movement.

I won't suggest it but will ask why you won't consider 2 x 500GB. You can configure them as a RAID and knock the single drive's speed performance into oblivion.

[Shakey_Jake33]

2x500GB drives are just a pain. I can't think of a logical reason, I know 2x500's makes more sense, I just really don't want to take that route lol.

I know the Green Power thing is a gimmick, but it is the quietest of the 1TB drives out right now, which is definitely a big deal to me.

Anyway my drive has already been ordered, so thanks for the help anyway!

[Shinigami-Sama]

if you format the drive as UFS you won't have to worry about fragmentation at all, but that requires a bit of unix know-how, and samba if you want to share it

or if you plan on adding more drives to it later on ZFS would be a good choice, but its got a few fragmentation problems, mostly with small files though, but again a little unix know how - Solaris actually but its easy enough to do