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2TB drive: Segate ST2000DL003 or good ol' Samsung HD204UI?

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Sakura90:
Awesome post ^_^

So both your ST2000DL003 are good. Nice to hear. I ordered for import a Startech dual esata dock two weeks ago, as it was the cheapest thing I could find with 2 actual ports, and not one and relying on the "port multiplier" feature of the sata controller (I have a AMD SB750 southbridge, controller is so-so, it doesn't even list the "safe remove" icon for HDDs, even though the hotswap functionality works like in any other mobo). I think it's safer with two separate ports :P


One thing I don't get though... 50 MB/s write and 100 read? Are you sure? My HD204UI goes between 110-140 read/write, and your Seagate should be around the same according to this review. Maybe you're referring to the speeds on the lowest end? In "real life" if I copy MKVs around ~1GB each I get between 100 and 140 MB/s. Lots of little files like MP3s go at ~50-60 MB/s.

Well... now I don't know what to do. Maybe flip a coin? <_<

ColdFission:
I get that 50 MB/s because speeds actually decreased when I was transferring 70 GB of anime from my Caviar Black to the Seagate drive in question. My guess is that the longer and larger the file(s), it will gradually go down to your average speeds. I just did a transfer test for a smaller 2 GB file and writes were around 85-90 MB/s. When I benchmarked the drive, the data point gradually slope down downwards. I can't exactly explain the graph to you in text, its best that you see it yourself when you try out HDTUne pro. It can also be a little bit of contention with SATA bus system (mobo is a Giga-Byte EP45-DS3L with the Intel P45 Northbridge and the Intel ICH10 Southbridge) as I have all 6 SATA ports filed up with my DVD burner and my 5 HDDs.I did mention that I have another Seagate just sitting in an enclosure at the moment, I also have three other drives in a box, two of them not even used yet (1 TB WD Green and a 500 GB WD Black), the other was the older model Seagate 500 GB mentioned earlier in my post above.

I don't actually know why the numbers are like that, but I am not complaining.

Tiffanys:
I use Western Digital, but I can't say anything good about any of the large drives. I mostly use 1TB Caviar Blacks. I've had quite a few fail... Western Digital does have a great RMA policy though.

ColdFission:
Hmm, after some thought, I think the reason why speeds do go down is that the onboard cache on the HDD gets filled up too fast for it to be written to the platters (mind you, cache is designed to be extremely quick, faster than the the platters can physically do, usually designed to go at SATA port speeds) as the the files sizes go up, therefore, the average speed that I was writing at was as fast as the physical components can go (like the arms, platters, spindle, etc). When the file sizes are smaller, the transfer speeds are most likely just the cache doing its job of fooling windows that the file is written or read successfully when it reality, it is a few nanosecond delay between the cache and the actual platters. IIRC, this is called Write-Caching that can be disabled if you wanted to. If you are happen to be transferring some files and the power gets cut, whatever was in cache is gone as it is volatile memory. And when you turn you PC back on, you may discover your files that were supposed to be written on the platters are either corrupted or never made it there.

In high-end systems like workstations and servers, they have their drives hooked up to specialized RAID cards that have on-board cache. The cards also have special batteries to keep the card (and the cache) alive when a power outage occurs to preserve that data in the cache. In the business world, data means money and lots of it.

fohfoh:
Actually, I agree. 2TB drives if you're saying selection is shitty, might not be the best choice for you. For sure 1TB drives in general are far more reliable than 2TB.

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