Choosing a good Internal Hard Drive...

When was the last time you bought a new internal hard drive ? It used to be a simple decision three years back, pick the cheapest Seagate or Western digital based on the drive capacity that you need and you are all set to use and enjoy it for many years.

Not so anymore, especially if you need a high capacity internal drive. There are so many newer models and sub versions that it becomes a major pain if you buy the wrong drive. Here is a quick write up on the various options based on my own experience:

Internal Drive: There are a few factors to consider if you need a new internal drive.


1. Usage : Is this a drive that is going to go into your computer and be used once in a while for data access ? Or is this going to go into a enclosure that will be on many hours in a day (say for media player, FTP server or a backup server). Or do you need it as a primary boot drive in your primary computer ?

2. Heat : How much heat will the enclosure create ? Is it a nice computer cabinet with plenty of fans to circulate air or is it a small NAS/USB enclosure with hardly any fan movement ?

3. OS : What operating system (Windows 7, Windows XP and Linux) will be used to access the drive ? And will you have some form of Raid ? Yes, it seems like a idiotic question, but trust me, this has a bearing on the choice of drive.


Once you have answers to the three questions above, you can pick the right drive from below:



Seagate 7200rpm 1tb (Barracuda 7200.12) : (Fast, Hot, All OS) These are fast and really hot drives. They are ideally suited for boot drives which are quick, but need a lot of air circulation to keep them cool. They work well on any operating system. I have seen one such drive being used in a enclosed media player that failed because the temperature reached over 80degrees. When we took it out, it was so hot that we could not even hold it. So DO NOT use them in tight enclosures.

One point to note. When it comes to Seagate drives, avoid the older Barracuda 7200.11 drives at any cost. There are some good drives in that series, but the amount of issues and heat in the series is not worth taking a risk especially when the 7200.12 series is easily available.

Seagate LP 5900rpm 1tb and 2tb (Barracuda 7200.12) : (Medium fast, medium hot, All OS) These drives are the Seagate answer to the slower competition drives that generate less heat. They are a good compromise drive if you have a enclosure with less air circulation and are still looking at reasonably good performance. My second choice for NAS and USB enclosures as they still run hotter than the Western Digital.

There is one note of caution that I read with these drives. The Seagate LP has a much lower load/unload rating of 50,000 cycles, . Reason being, the Seagate Barracuda LP 2TB uses the older Contact Start-Stop (CSS) technology to park its heads, while the other drives use the more updated and more reliable Ramp Loading technology. Not sure if we will ever hit the 50k number, but you never know !

Western Digital WD20EARS : (Fast, Cool, Windows 7, no Raid)

These are excellent drives in general and come with 64mb cache. Run fast and run cool and are a great value for money. But with all good choices, there is a major caveat. The WD20EARS, along with the companion 1TB WD10EARS, are the first 3.5" drives to hit the market with Western Digital's new formatting structure, which divides the drive into 4k byte sectors instead of the smaller 512-byte sectors used in current drive technology.

What this means is that if you want to use a old OS like Windows XP or a NAS box or a USB enclosure with its own adapter, the incorrect partitioning and formatting can make the drives three times slower and the data very unreliable. If you need a fantastic drive on a new OS like Windows 7 or a new Linux variant, go for this drive with your eves closed. But if you are not a geek who can find their way around with manual partitions and sector alignments, stay away from this drive for all other operating systems and enclosures.

Western Digital WD20EVDS : (Fast, Cool, All OS, no Raid) :



The latest entrant in the crowd, WD calls these as media capable drives that will fit in any existing enclosures. In layman's terms, it means that WD realized the the WD20EARS drives would have been winners without the advanced format crap that they added. So they took out the advanced format and made normal drives that go anywhere, run cool and are reasonably fast). Alas, only 32mb cache !

Western Digital WD20EADS : (Medium fast, Cool, All OS, no Raid) Four platter 2tb drives that are not available easily anymore. They are drives that run cool, work across all OS and are generally average performance. Old drives, so stay away if possible.

WD2002FYPS : (Fast, cool, RAID) WD's way to make money if you need raid support. If you need to use the drives in a raid enclosure, make sure you get these drives, otherwise the normal drives do not respond fast enough for the raid commands, thus rendering the raid unusable. There are plenty of tips in the net about using a WD internal tool to make all drives RAID compatible, but the tip is not a gurantee.

Samsung F4 2tb : (Blazing Fast, Cucumber COOL, All OS) One of the best drives available in the market for all and any purpose. The only black spot is that the Samsung warranty is not the best of class and there are plenty of horror stories. The bad news is that it is just not available in countries like India (I would be willing to pay a 10% premium if these were sold in India !).