Feb 17 2009 - Serial ATA is the hot technology for hard drive storage thanks to its simplicity for users to install compared to the older IDE technology. Most of the innovation for hard drive performance and capacity are now showing up in these new drives. Here are the best Serial ATA hard drives for various tasks based on the research and experience of the About.com PC Hardware / Reviews Guide.
1. Best Capacity - Western Digital Caviar Green 2TB
©Western Digital
If you are looking for the largest capacity hard drive available, then the Western Digital Caviar Green 2TB is currently the model to get. It is the first drive to reach the two terabyte (2000GB) capacity level. The Caviar Green drives are also designed to be environmentally conscious by consuming less energy. The way it does this is by varying the rotational speed of the drive from 5400rpm to 7200rpm depending upon the load. Performance is still strong and on par with most of the one terabyte drives. Of course, Western Digital's lead may not last for long as Seagate has announced a two terabyte drive to be released in the coming months as well.
2. Best Value - Hitachi 7K1000.B 1TB
Value in hard drives is generally referred to by the price per gigabyte. This is the overall cost of the drive divided by the total drive's capacity. When looking at the various drives on the market, the Hitachi 7K1000.B is currently the least expensive drive per gigabyte with an average cost of just 9 cents per gigabyte. With its terabyte of storage space, this means that drive can be found easily for under $100. While it is a very high capacity drive, it is not in the same performance league as drives from Western Digital or Seagate but it still performs quite well. Much of the performance lag is likely due to the density of the data on the platters and the 16MB of cache compared to the 32MB on other drives.3. Best Performance - Western Digital VelociRaptor 300GB
©Western Digital
If you are looking at sheer performance of the drive over capacity, then the Western Digital VelociRaptor is certainly the drive of choice. This drive is all about speed and performances thanks to its 10,000rpm spin rate and special firmware. It may not have the same throughput performance as some of the new terabyte drives but it performs much better with I/O requests. Why is this, the drive is really designed for use in server class systems that need fast multiple application access running is a 24x7 environment. In fact, the drive is actually a 2.5" drive that is installed in an aluminum heatsink 3.5" frame to help dissipate heat.
4. Best RAID Drives - Western Digital Enterprise RE3 1TB
©Western Digital
RAID is a configuration that uses multiple drives to enhance performance, data reliability or both. Because the drives work in tandem and rely on having similar specs to ensure the best overall performance in the array, the drives require a bit more specialty. Those looking to put together a RAID array would be well served by looking at Western Digital's Enterprise RE3 drives. These drives are specially designed to be put into RAID arrays. In fact, they have some of the best performance available on the market out of any 7200rpm SATA drive. The drawback to drives such as this is that they tend to cost more than standard SATA desktop drives. Western Digital does back the drives with a five year warranty compared to their normal three years.
5. Best Sub-Terabyte Drive - Western Digital Caviar Black 640GB
©Western Digital
If you don't need a huge hard drive but are looking for a solid performing drive that is a bit more affordable, then the Western Digital Caviar Black 640GB is the choice. The drive actually uses the same platters used by the terabyte Caviar Black version, but instead uses two rather than three platters. The result, a drive with the same level of performance but uses a bit less energy and is more affordable to those that don't necessarily need to store as much data.
