ABT Builder’s Guide: September-October 2008
HARD DISK DRIVES
For this section, just like with cases, I can only guide you.
Size
You are the one who knows how much storage space you need overall, whether or not you will be partitioning, doing RAID and so forth. All I can give is a guide. Currently, the best price/GB ratio lies at the 500GB, 640GB and 750GB sizes.
While some people swear by the performance gain of RAID 0 (performance), I don’t think the increase justifies the additional cost. RAID 1 (security) however, can be justified if you have very sensitive, private and/or priceless data on your drives that you really can’t afford to lose.
Brand
Again, this will come down to personal preference and past experiences. As a guide, look towards Western Digital, Seagate and Samsung. Hitachi drives are very good performers as well but their prices tend to be higher than the other brands. That is why they fall just outside of my recommendation. The price/performance ratio is not quite as good.
If you still need me to make a few suggestions, they would only be honourable mentions. So here they are…
Honourable Mentions:
Price/GB – Samsung Spinpoint F1 HD753LJ (750GB)
Price/Performance – Western Digital Caviar SE 16 WD6400AAKS (640GB)
Performance – Western Digital VelociRaptor WD3000GLFS (300GB)
