Thread: WD Black or Samsung Spinpoint?

I'm finally retiring my ole skool raptor drives for a 4-5 HDD striped raid. Since I've had my raptor drives I haven't kept up with HDD tech much. So what do you guys think? WD Blacks or Spinpoints? When I think HDD OEM, Samsung doesn't come to mind first but I'm sure they make a good product and of course WD is a very tried and true brand. So, go with the cheaper "new kids" (To me anyway) or the slightly more expensive Western Digital who I've always bought from?

Spinpoint Drive I'm looking at:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16822152112

WD Black

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16822136320

I would think the Blacks with the 32Mb of cache would be faster then the Spinpoint with the 16Mb. Yes, I am well aware of the 1Tb F1 drive that has 32Mb but since I'm buying so many, it isn't reasonable for me to get them.

I would go for the WD, I have had numerous WD's without problems. I have also been looking at the WD Black drive for a couple months and haven't read any thing bad about it yet.

Here is a great review on the Caviar Black, helped me with my decision in buying one to replace my dying one (gets here Friday).

http://techreport.com/articles.x/15363

They compare the Barracudas, the Black, the VelociRaptor, the Spinpoint, and several others, very informative.

And anything you read in the reviews on Newegg about it being DoA, that is NewEggs fault, not WDs.

Price was $183 at the time that article was written a few months ago... I've bought two of these in the past 2 months for $100 each (right now is $100 on Newegg and $105 on Amazon) and the first one works great, the second one should be here any day.

Also, 5yr warranty on the WDC blacks. I've been buying WDC's for a long time and was about to switch to Seagate when I found they had longer warranties, but now with the 5yr on the black, that's not an issue.

Nice article. Looks like Black it is! I was interested to see that the Velociraptor didn't crush all the others like I sthought it would. Also... that the Black is about as good or better then the Raptor.

WD caviar's have been the only drive I use in my own PC, as well as builds, for years. Quiet. Stable.

I can't wait for my 500GB one to get here tomorrow!

I put 4 on order. I have no idea when they will get here though. I should have paid the extra $50 for overnight...

The price went up $5 today from the $69 I paid on monday.

I just went though this debate with myself last week. I got the Black, but the drive wasn't as fast as I thought it would be. I ended up buying the new Seagate 7200.11 drive (4 platters), VERY fast.