[reignofchaos]

Originally Posted by condor

Was looking at internal harddrives on Flipkart. Seagate's are rated higher than WD. But the opinion I had got recently was in favor of WD.

Which ones are better ? I am looking at 2 TB drives

Was looking at the WD purple.

Purple is for surveillance. It will drop data under extreme load and is not suitable for desktop use if you do lots of copying. Get the blue or red.

[Thad E Ginathom]

Originally Posted by reignofchaos

... Get the blue or red.

I got a black. It is way faster than any possible placebo effect of the extra cost could explain

[reignofchaos]

Originally Posted by Thad E Ginathom

I got a black. It is way faster than any possible placebo effect of the extra cost could explain

Yep but that costs way more so didn't really recommend. Black is the best hands down. However it is too expensive for a dump drive. For an OS or program drive, it makes far more sense to get an SSD.

[Thad E Ginathom]

I've only got two internal disks: I can stand the extra cost

I have not entered the rarefied world of SSDs yet

[R2D2]

Originally Posted by condor

Was looking at internal harddrives on Flipkart. Seagate's are rated higher than WD. But the opinion I had got recently was in favor of WD. Which ones are better ? I am looking at 2 TB drives

Was looking at the WD purple.

WD's drive models are specific to a end user requirement or deployment.

For e.g. Purple is for surveillance video recorders, Red for NAS with 24x7 operational capabilities, Black for high performance desktops and Blue (previously Green) for medium performance desktop with lower noise and power consumption than the Blacks. The Gold is enterprise class storage with 24x7 operational capabilities like the Red models.

Warranties differ from model to model. Their enterprise class and Black drives have 5 year warranties while the others have 2-3 years.

I moved away from Seagate over 11 years ago and haven't regretted it. There's no way I'll trust a Seagate with my data. They are simply unreliable. Some of my WD drives have failed but after several years of use and not early in life or with the alarming frequency of Seagates. I use SSDs and WD Black in the home desktops and Red for my Netgear NAS box.

So, choose according to your needs. If you envisage pure desktop use then Black or Blue are for you.

[condor]

Originally Posted by R2D2

WD's drive models are specific to a end user requirement or deployment.

So, choose according to your needs. If you envisage pure desktop use then Black or Blue are for you.

@RoC & @R2D2, thanks.

I am looking for use in a DAS box, which will take care of the redundancy. Usage will be once in a way - they wont be running much. Hence regular desktop usage type HDD's should be fine.

hence SSD's dont meet the requirements

[R2D2]

Originally Posted by condor

I am looking for use in a DAS box, which will take care of the redundancy. Usage will be once in a way - they wont be running much. Hence regular desktop usage type HDD's should be fine.

Then forget the Black. Save your money and get a WD Blue. Or, an equivalent from Seagate if you don't mind rolling the dice on reliability.

[IronH4WK]

Originally Posted by Thad E Ginathom

I've only got two internal disks: I can stand the extra cost

I have not entered the rarefied world of SSDs yet

You are gonna love the SSDs. I have a Samsung Evo 250GB for the OS (Windows 10) and the boot time is super fast!

[Thad E Ginathom]

I used to hanker after ssd... But the boot time of my machine might be less than a minute (and that is not even from the wd black hdd) so I don't feel the need for speed.

My motherboard is seven years old. Yes, there was ssd then, but it's a long time in technology and I don't know if it will support the latest and greatest.

This week I added a separate graphics card, as per advice of a page or three back. My needs are modest anyway, but rather than just buying from Amazon, I bought from our local maintenance company, who advised me to make them more modest! In theory, they said, your machine will support what you want and much more, but expect a lifetime of a couple of years. Some capacitor... I don't remember the details.

One doesn't get that kind of advice from amazon! I can't tell if it is right, but these are the guys who are seeing the hardware problems every day for years.

I respect them. I leave hardware trouble shooting to them these days; I can no longer be bothered! But... I still had to look after the Linux driver stuff

[condor]

Originally Posted by R2D2

Then forget the Black. Save your money and get a WD Blue. Or, an equivalent from Seagate if you don't mind rolling the dice on reliability.

Amazon had a lightning deal for the 2TB WD Blue - at 4899. Additional 10% cash back with card. Grabbed one.

Next, a 15% code @ ebay.

[R2D2]

Originally Posted by condor

Amazon had a lightning deal for the 2TB WD Blue

Windows defaults to quick format which just (re)writes a new MFT/FAT depending on which file system you select (NTFS/FAT32). To safeguard your data make sure you partition the disk as per your requirements and do a full format on ALL partitions.

A full format will conduct a surface scan and takes several hours to complete. A 2 TB partition should take about 4-6 hours. So leave your PC on overnight if required. If any bad clusters are discovered contact Amazon for a replacement.

Time and use take their toll on the drive's mechanicals. I back up my HDDs on the NAS & full format the drives every 12-18 months just to be on the safe side. The next FF is due early '18. Data on the NAS (with WD Red drives) is safer as the NAS uses RAID and the drives aren't subjected to the same workload as the desktop drives. So I am not too concerned about them.

[condor]

@R2D2, thanks.
Plan is for a DAS box. But will do the FF before installing the disks

[Thad E Ginathom]

Yesterday, I upgraded the ram on my seven-year-old tower machine from 4Gb (WinXP days) to 12GB. ie, added 2 * 4Gb modules. The max per slot on my machine is 4Gb. I didn't want to spend the money on the full 16!

On T-BHP advice, as per previous post, I have also added a modest video card instead of using on-board graphics.

It's only been half a day with the new memory, but I do not see the memory monitor widget filling up as soon as open Thunderbird and Firefox with a few tabs. Looks good.

[reignofchaos]

Originally Posted by Thad E Ginathom

Yesterday, I upgraded the ram on my seven-year-old tower machine from 4Gb (WinXP days) to 12GB. ie, added 2 * 4Gb modules. The max per slot on my machine is 4Gb. I didn't want to spend the money on the full 16!

On T-BHP advice, as per previous post, I have also added a modest video card instead of using on-board graphics.

What is your CPU? If it has dual channel memory access, having 3 modules can actually have a detrimental effect to performance.

[condor]

So I got my 2 x 2TB WD Blue SATA hard drives, and started kicking myself for having got these. I should have got the 3 TB at least. With the way these devices are bought and used, I think I am stuck with these.