I think it is more the manufacturers having a tendency to over-inflate the bundled laptop SSD prices that killed it from mainstream. In one instance, I've calculated bundled laptop SSD to cost almost 50% more than retail. It is just downright appalling.

Why did you compare SSD with RAM? RAM cannot provide most of the benefits that SSDs provide. Perhaps RAM with non-volatile memory would make a fair comparison, but not today's volatile memory RAM.

The WD Green are not 7200RPM HDDs. It's just WD's marketing speak to sell you 5400RPM HDDs by claiming the drive 'intelligently' operates in a range of 5400RPM to 7200RPM. They don't.

As for which is better, no clue. Take your pick.

The cache sizes that small doesn't really matter. In a best case scenario, on SATA 3.0Gbps wires, the 64MB cache will be exhausted in 0.213 seconds and the 32MB cache will be exhausted in 0.106 seconds. Then your HDD performance will depend entirely on access times and read/write performance.

When buying HDDs, unless you want a low heat/noise/power profile HDD, specifications don't really matter. What you need to know are the benchmarks for sequential read/write and access time, reliability and cost.

I'm guessing that both 10K and 15K RPM HDDs will go extinct or become even more niche by 2020.

This has happened to me, with my HD204UI, until I secured the HDD with screws on both sides of the drive cage.

SSDs are also good for photo or image galleries, as the thumbnails load faster.

You really should install your OS on the SSD, as the OS will benefit more than your games will.

It can also be a sign of a poor quality PSU or one that is stressed beyond its design limits. Unreliable power supply can cause that symptom.

In any case, 405 pending sectors is alarming. I'm comfortable enough with having single digit bad sectors on my HDD, one of my HDDs has one since the beginning of the year, but not that many.

No, it isn't. The WD6400AAKS is from Western Digital's Caviar Blue line.

It should. I might be mistaken, but I think my WD10EADS outperforms my old WD 250GB 7200RPM.

The lowyat.net price lists? They lie. Check out the dates, if there are any. The C-Zone price list is dated to 20th May, three months ago.

Try this one instead as they're more up to date http://www.hardwarezone.com.my/priceLists

Or try visiting their respective web pages.

ycs, SMART uses simple counters. Has the number increased at all since you changed the cable? If the number has remained the same, then your problem is fixed and you do not need to RMA the HDD.

Yes, you don't have to worry. Most of the counters represent the HDD's entire history. So even if the problem is fixed, the numbers won't reduce.

This post has been edited by everling: Aug 12 2011, 10:49 PM

The Samsung HD103SJ is a HDD. It's only better enough to be more attractive than WD, but not by much. It's mostly the pricing that gets people's preference.

This post has been edited by everling: Aug 13 2011, 12:48 AM

Yeah. Unfortunately SMART did not report any hint of impending failure in 56% of Google's HDDs.

It can take a month.

1. SATA is the communications technology between your HDD and your motherboard.

2. The 2.5" HDDs are HDDs that are 2.5 inches in width. 3.5" HDDs are HDDs that are 3.5 inches in width.

This is very unusual, as USB 2.0 file transfers should not slow down your system as much as it does. Perhaps your computer has been infected with a malware?

Gigabit network can allow transfers up to 100MB/s and USB 2.0 can allow transfers up to 30MB/s. It is of little surprise that USB 2.0 transfers will not stress your HDD.

Copying from a 60MB/s 5400RPM HDD to a 30MB/s pendrive really shouldn't cause most videos to be laggy or jerky as even a 4,000 megabit/s video stream (eg: DVD, 720p) only requires 0.5MB/s.

Hmm... could it be that the 50-70% CPU consumption be due to the CPU being used to decode a 720p or 1080p video? The i3 does have only two cores, which may explain the 50-70% CPU consumption. With the HD 5470, you may be able to use your media player to decode certain video streams with the GPU. "Media Player Classic - Home Cinema" may do so once it has been properly configured.

It is probably dead, but you might want to make sure. You could try the refrigerator trick if there is some data in it that you'd like to copy out.

For all you know, the enterprise HDDs may be the same as retail HDDs, but with a different labelling. They may have a manufacturing cost of RM100, they sell it to you for RM700, and then they would happily give you one or two replacement HDDs over the five years and pocket the difference.

I have done it before, twice, and successfully recovered some data. Unsurprisingly, some of it was damaged, but it was certainly still a relief.