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SuperBiiz has the Western Digital Caviar Black WD2002FAEX 2TB 7200 RPM 64MB Cache SATA 3.0Gb/s 3.5" Internal Hard Drive (Bare Drive) for $170 - $15 off with coupon code KICKOFF [Exp 2/7] = $155 with free shipping. Covered by a 5-year warranty.
$155
This was on sale at amazon for $140 a few months back. This is a good drive with 5-year warranty. But, there is Hitachi 2TB with the same features that is now on sale at NewEgg for $100. Which one would I choose? Probably the Hitachi even though I have had luck with WD drives but the 2TB Hitachi does the same for $55 less.
You pay more for better performance and a longer warranty. The two Hitachi drives I see on Newegg are the 5K3000 for $100 and the 7k3000 for $120. The $100 one is more in line with the WD Green series (1/2 the cache of this WD black and a slower RPM). The 7k3000 is closer in terms of performance but it's still got 1/2 the cache of this one and a 3 year warranty instead of 5.
Comes down to what you plan on using the drive for (main boot drive vs data drive vs backup drive, etc.) and which is more important, the cost of the performance.
I'm not a WD fan personally (I've had more WD's die than any other type) but there isn't really another drive out there like this drive (other than the WD2001FASS, which is the same drive but 3Gb/s SATA instead the 6Gb/s that this drive has). The dual actuators on these things actually do help the speed.
If you want to squeeze a bit more speed out of your 2TB drive, this is the way to go. If speed doesn't matter to you (say, media storage), get one of the cheap green drives.
If you're trying to RAID0 two or more, how is windows suppose to see more than 2.2gb per partition? Will setting GPT on the non-bootable partition solve this problem?
Yes, GPT will let you use a greater than 2TB volume. I just set up a RAID0 with 5 of the 1TB version of this drive and I now have a 4.6TB volume and Windows sees all of it. You aren't limited to non-bootable partitions either. You can install Windows on a GPT partition if your system supports EFI. Just launch the Windows installer through EFI and it defaults to GPT for the install.
thanks #5. I think a majority of people don't have EFI based boards, which is why I was asking. My MSI 790FX board unfortunately doesn't have EFI.