WD Caviar Black vs Samsung Spinpoint F3

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stonedzen

stonedzen

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May 10, 2010
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I'm looking at both these drives and am curious about performance. Reviews on HDDs rarely show benchmark comparisons. I'm most likely buying two and setting them in Raid 0.

SO......

Western Digital Caviar Black 7200 1tb 64mb cache ($100)

vs

Samsung Spinpoint F3 7200 1tb 32mb cache ($75)


Let the testimonials begin!
 
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D

Deleted member 217926

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I believe that that new Black the FAEX model is quite fast. It is a bit faster than the F3 when accessing small files but the F3 is a bit faster when doing larger files. Since most of the time you are working with small files that would give the FAEX an advantage. To me it is not worth the extra money and the Spinpoint is still the best "bang for your buck".
If you want a truly fast drive go with an SSD.
 
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stonedzen

stonedzen

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I agree, in fact I have 2 Samsung F3 hdds, a Kingston SSDNow V+ 64gb ssd, and an Antec Truepower 1000-watt psu in my shopping cart at the egg site ;)

All this for $530 with shipping.

Just waiting to sell my old guitar, then its buying time!

My plan is to set up my F3s in Raid 0 for games, use the SSD as a boot drive (and maybe put my steam games here, if there's enough space), and use my current 500gb maxtor for media and backup. Should be blazing fast, especially since I'm installing another 3870x2 when I get the new psu...which will give me a 4-gpu crossfireX! Also, the new psu should allow me a stable cpu overclock to 3.8ghz (cant get past 3.4 on current psu, as I get a burning smell...scary)

One more question to boot...

If my drives fail in raid 0, I will lose the data but can I reformat and start over? Basically, if the raid 0 fails it doesnt cause permanent physical damage to my drives right?
 
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Deleted member 217926

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That is right. BUT if a RAID 0 fails it could vary well mean one of the drives is having some kind of problems. So while it will not cause damage it might mean there is damage. I myself have been quite lucky with RAID 0 and have never had a failure. I have been running it since 2004 or so with 160gb Seagates then 250gb WDs then the 640 Blacks I have now. I have had a RAID 1 fail but that was no big deal as there was no data loss. Just make sure you keep current backups!

Why run 2 x 3870x2s when you could just get a 5850? You could use a much cheaper/smaller power supply, get basically the same performance and have goodies like DX10 and 11. Many games do not scale well with multiple cards and unless you are running an insane resolution you will really not get any benefit from it.
 
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stonedzen

stonedzen

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I already own the two 3870x2s, I just cant run them both with current psu. I wanted to upgrade to a 1000 watt anyway for cpu overclocking and future upgrade potential, so there is no reason not to run the 3870x2s in cfx.

A single new high-end video card will be my next upgrade after the upgrade listed above and a memory upgrade (adding a second set of 2x2gb g.skill ddr3-1600 for 8gb total).

Besides, my current 3870x2 with a custom cooling mod handles almost everything I throw at it at very high resolutions and med/high settings. The only thing it doesnt handle well is anti-aliasing, which is a well know drawback of the HD38xx series. However, the most recent benchmarks on the newer catalyst drivers show a 70-80% increase in framerate when adding a second 3870x2, so long as AA isnt bumped up too high (that was in COD:MW and other 2008-2009 games and should apply to the games I play now like COD:MW2 and L4D2).
 
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Deleted member 217926

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Cool......got to go with what your budget will support ;) Might as well add another card if you already have it.
 
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MRFS

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WD does NOT recommend using Caviar Blacks in RAID arrays,
because they do not support TLER (Time-Limited Error Recovery),
whereas WD's RAID Edition ("RE") HDDs do support TLER:

http://www.wdc.com/en/products/productcatalog.asp?language=en


These graphs may help you do comparisons:


platter.transfer.crossover.graphs.2.png



In general, for best performance, when choosing WD's HDDs for RAID arrays,
be sure to select from their RE models + from the ones that use PMR
(perpendicular magnetic recording). See latter graphs for justification.

PMR also permits tracks to be much closer together, which
explains why the buffer-to-disk rate falls slower with PMR drives:
modern HDDs try to main the same or similar recording density
from outermost to innermost tracks. Therefore, raw transfer
rates from buffer to disk are directly proportional to track
circumference = Pi x Diameter.


Hope this helps.


MRFS
 
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