Help pick my new HDD

[Bond007]

Seems my seagate 7200.12 500gb is toast (you already know this if you read my other thread). Now I need your help to pick a new HDD. I figure I will go with 1TB now as its my everything drive. Looking at NCIX sale this week I can go for any of these 3 choices:

For $69.99
Seagate Barracuda 1TB 7200RPM 64MB SATA 6Gbps 3.5IN Internal Hard Drive - OEM - Seagate - ST1000DM003

or for $99.99
Western Digital Caviar Black 1TB SATA3 6GB/S 7200RPM 64MB Cache 3.5IN Dual Proc Hard Drive OEM - Western Digital WD - WD1002FAEX

or for $79.99

Western Digital Caviar Blue 1TB SATA 6GB/S 7200RPM 64MB Cache 3.5IN Hard Drive OEM - Western Digital WD - WD10EZEX


The Seagate and the black are sata 3 (6gbps) not that it matters now, but it may help a bit down the road when the rest of my comp gets upgraded again. seagate is 1 year warranty, blue is 2 and black is 5. This model of black seems to get a lot of complaints for noise.

What would you buy?

[SugarJ]

If it was me, I'd go for the 5 year warranty.

[Perineum]

exactly.

[BryceBooth]

The WD Black drives are nice, however the Seagate drive will be faster as it employs just a single platter. So long as you have a backup strategy in place, I'd go with the Seagate drive (consequently they have their own noises all to themselves).

[Dzzope]

The blacks are loud but I've had 5 different variations of them and never ever had any kind of issue with any of them...
The seagates look good for speed and price but my question is over their warranty.. why so low.. I'd love to have figures on returns of these drives to see if there are any issues with them..
Suppose time will tell, I just got a 2TB 7200.14 one for my brothers budget build..

[enaberif]

Seriously who cares about warranties. The drive will be outdated in that time anyways and be cheaper just to buy a new one.

[Dzzope]

Dunno about that.. I have a 3-4 year old Black 640GB drive that is in constant use and I'd want it replaced if it died.. Though if you can't get a 640 any-more they would probably bump me to a 1TB.. :D

[Perineum]

Originally Posted by enaberif

Seriously who cares about warranties. The drive will be outdated in that time anyways and be cheaper just to buy a new one.

Only costs $12 to replace a drive under warranty.

The 5 year warranty sells the Black in my opinion, who cares about a slight speed increase, if any, of the Seagate.

[Soultribunal]

Gotta admit, I care about my warranty quite a bit.
I did a pair of drives under warranty during the Crazy HDD price spikes, gotta say that was well worth it.

So, I'm going to side with SugarJ on this one , 5 years of coverage on your drives is well worth getting the Black.

-ST

[fubar]

But, if a drive is excessively noisy, isn't that a bad thing? Doesn't that mean parts are too busy? :)

I've noticed that the drive manufacturers are buying each other out so much that these choices are getting rather few, if you ask me. I'm so fed up, I'd almost throw my hands up in surrender and just choose based on price. Read a few reviews and flip a coin. Or go with the drive that has the most recent technical renovation (e.g. the one-platter Seagate).

I don't really look at warranty. If you have data, back up the drive so have the same data on another drive and don't have anything ultra-important on the OS drive. My two cents. Probably not worth much.