500gb wd or segate

[rogueshah]

Hello guys I am considering buying a 500 gig harddisk with 32 mb cache, my 2 options are
WD WD5001AALS 5 year warranty
or Segate st3500320as 3 year warranty
i am buying in Pakistan, and WD costs about 8USD more than Segate, so which is better choice
a)if price is not considered
b)If price to performance ratio is considered

 

[Slyr762]

From the start, of course the seagate has a better price/performance ratio, but the WD has a 2yr longer warranty. I prefer WD, and the 5 yr warranty doesnt hurt, so that's what I'd pick.

If you're really on a budget and cant spend more, the Seagate seems to be a fine choice since they both have 32MB cache.

 

[GundamF91]

Go with WD. $8 is nothing for HDD prices, 2 extra yr warranty is worth it.

 

[nosfe]

why not the 7200.12 gen 500gb seagate drives? they should have reached your country by now

 

[SuperStuart]

I like both drives and have had few problems from either brand. Too bad I can't say the same for some other brands. I've read that the 7200.11 have had some firmware issues though. Several WD drives I purchased about 3 years ago developed a high pitched whine which could get rather annoying. I don't know if that was an isolated issue with just my drives, never the less it did not affect data integrity or drive performance.


Maybe it is just me, but I find Hard Drive warranties to be a bit overrated. Every drive I've had replaced under warranty it has been a refurbished drive. A refurb may be fine for non-critical data, but I've never found it all that comforting to put my important data on one nor entrust a client's data to them.

Brian C.

 

[rogueshah]

http://www.seagate.com/ww/v/in...nVCM100000f5ee0a0aRCRD

i believe segate's 7200.12 has 16mb cache, in contrast to the one of wd/segate that I am considering, so would the new 7200.12 be faster then those?

 

[harbin]

i have 2 st3500410as in raid 0, it's fast. got 194mb/s by HDTune

 

[nosfe]

it's definitely faster than those 2, also, cache isn't that important, there's barely any difference between 8 and 16 so going to 32 would be even less

 

[rogueshah]

thanks guys, so its established that 7200.12 seagate would be faster than 32mb older counterpart
but how about the new baby form WD ? http://www.wdc.com/en/products...riveid=338&language=en
they have also i believed rolled this new baby some time ago or cavier black?, probably competing with the Seagate's 7200.12 ?
both of these are available in my country here is the supplier's website
http://www.galaxy.com.pk/forms/hdd.htm

 

[nosfe]

that's not new tech, that's a two platter drive while the 7200.12 is single platter, plus, it's Caviar Green which means that it sacrifices speed for lower power consumption. In case you didn't know, fewer platters means higher platter density which means the drive is faster because the head doesn't have to move as much when reading data