Best hard drive for recording to?

[Raoul23]

At the mo I have a WD raptor has my recording drive but I'm now find that very small what is the best drive to replace it with eg value for money and capacity taken in to account

Do I get a velociraptor with 300 gig or a black with 700 gig the black is cheaper but not as fast. Our then any other drives I should consider

Regards

[jntracks]

any 7200 rpm drive with 32mb or better cache will be fast enough for recording. larger drives in the 1TB+ range start to have better sustained transfer speed because the areal density is so high.

don't bother with sata 6 GB if it's more money since no spinning platter drive can transfer even as fast as sata 3, you'll never saturate that port so it's not worth the extra money.

raptors are really more advantageous as your operating system drive, not necessary for recording. (the difference in speed is more meaningful in short bursts, anyway)

aaaaaand people will tell you they swear by one brand or another but statistically speaking there is no significant difference. go with whatever is the best deal for the capacity at the speed and cache size you want. (and you'll find they're all with in a few bucks of each other anyway)

i fully expect to be flamed for this by the way.
but, too bad! objectivity vs hype

[Park Seward]

OWC has some good choices:

http://eshop.macsales.com/shop/firewire/

I also like G-Tech:

http://www.g-technology.com/products/g-drive.cfm

I choose Hitachi drives inside the enclosures.

[thumos]

Most HDD manufacturers, Hitachi, Seagate, etc., all make pretty good HDDs, and of a similar specification too, so you really only need to consider type, capacity, and RPM. But it's not just about the HDD, it's about the enclosure that the HDD sits in, and particularly, the bridging chipset. That's the circuit board that transfers the data between the cable and the actual HDD. AVID recommend the Oxford chipset, which is used in the G-Tech and Glyph enclosures. For ProTools I use a Glyph GT050Q. They have a triple interface and their own power supply - awesome dude!

[Hotcrazyfruit]

The most popular drive iv seen people buy is the WD Caviar Black. It is 7200 rpm, 32 mb cache, its robust featuring an axle and bearing at both ends of the spindle, dual data processors and they come in sata 6Gb/s connections. The thing that tops it off is the price, only slightly more expensive than their standard spec counterparts.

Nick

[albee1952]

Originally Posted by Hotcrazyfruit

The most popular drive iv seen people buy is the WD Caviar Black. It is 7200 rpm, 32 mb cache, its robust featuring an axle and bearing at both ends of the spindle, dual data processors and they come in sata 6Gb/s connections. The thing that tops it off is the price, only slightly more expensive than their standard spec counterparts.

Nick

My preference as well. The Velociraptors make a bit more noise, a bit more heat and no better performance(according to most).

[Raoul23]

Thanks guys for your help looks like im buying a WD black

Thanks again

[Emcha_audio]

Personally I'd go with a cheetah. it's much faster than any HDD at 15k rpm has a better sustain transfer, very good access speed, good cache, and is one of the best value for the price at under 1$ per gig. In fact I did go with that I have two of them in my tower :)

http://discountechnology.com/Seagate...rd-Disk-Drives

http://meilleursprix.ca/show-product...600Gb+15000rpm

[WinTaper]

+1 for the WD Caviar Black - I have 4 of the 2TB drives in mine - fast and reliable.

Emcha ... Cheetah's are SAS ... different interface. They're also more money. I have a machine with several Cheetah 15k drives. Not noticeably faster for audio, but definitely noisier and they run MUCH hotter than SATA drives.

[Emcha_audio]

Well let's see would you?

Here's the stats for the CW black 1tb wd1001fals (tested by tom's hardware)
random access time of 12.2ms (only stats available)
burst speeds of 229MB/s
sustained read of 106 MB/s
sustained write of 106 MB/s
drive surface temp in C 47.2

Now let's see the specs for the Cheetah 15k.7 600 GB(tested by tom's hardware)
random read access time 5.7 ms
random write access time 2,8 ms
sustained read of 203.4 MB/s
sustained write of 203.4 MB/s
drive surface temp in C 60.0

So as you can see, the Cheetah is better on all those things (except the heat see below) which are important in our industry. Yes they do cost a bit more, but they provide more also. In this case they reduce the latency that will be brought up in your system due to the HDD, which for tracking, and also VI usage is a very, very good thing.

Noise?? every one knows that you shouldn't keep the PC or MAC in the CR room anyways. Heat? if you system is not in your room you can place what ever cooling system is needed. If not you should always get a noise reduction and isolation cabinet.