If you play lots of games that require lots of loads from HDD from level to level, scene to scene then take the Blue, I think the price between Blue and Green is not going to differ too much.
Green HDD will try to spin down if idle for slightly long time (i.e. >5 minutes), to lower power consumption, so you might see lag loading something from it after long time idle.

UEFI support for 3TB only needed for booting and OS purpose, should works without one as secondary storage.
Otherwise BIOS update, proper device driver, then partition them to works on 32-bit OS environment.
More reading...
http://www.pcworld.com/article/235088/ever...ard_drives.html

Did I interpret it right?

Kuching here even worst, RM495 from one of the retailer, cut-throat expensive

Looking at C-Zone pricelist, the Samsung 2TB also cheaper, way cheaper than WDC and SG, priced at RM400.

It just depends on luck, some of my friends has problem with even the WDC Black series so it's not just Samsung problem when there's hardware failure.
You could use low level format and let it runs overnight (it could take very long) and see hows the SMART reading, of course backup the data before doing that.
What you should really look at is "Reallocated Sector Count" which the hard disk has detect a malfunction sector and decide to replace it with temporary sector, it also means permanent bad sector, if this increase rapidly, send for RMA.

What's your D drive hard disk? Is it the same hard disk but different volume/partition?
If you're using Green (Eco, 5,400rpm) then you should expect something like this, if your system has not access the hard disk for more than 10 minutes, the hard disk will spin down to slower speed or totally stop (just like sleep mode) to save power, you can however use hard disk management tool from each manufacturer, seagate and western digital has them for their own hard disk, you can set not to spin down when idle, this will speed up your access time but the hard disk will spin more, consume more power and "probably" lesser life span.

My WDC Green 1TB has 1 permanent bad sector (Reallocated Sector Count) and 5 read error sectors (Pending Sector Count), I would backup the whole drive and do some low level format before sending to RMA as the web state that most of the time those RMA return the very same thing back to you, and those hard disk still within acceptable bad sectors margin will NOT be accepted as well.
Hard disk can live pretty long if you give them much care and of course, that's all pretty darn depends on luck as well (it's made by human after all).

Try check your SMART and look for "Reallocated Sector Count", if the amount is huge, somewhere 10+ then you should send for RMA.
Also use the WDC tools to verify the condition of the hard disk, they usually only accept the report from their program, not sure if they will care about how much bad sectors on the hard disk.
If "Pending Sectors Count" is huge, you should experiencing file corruption, then you should low-level format it, normally it should fix it but sometimes later it might come back again (in my case it came back with fewer counts, improvement??)
If every SMART is good then you can run speed test using HD Tune (free or pro can too) to perform speed test to verify if there is speed drop, then try to test few more times before send to shop for RMA. Print screen, print it out and convince them it's the hard disk fault.

What company you bought it from (sent for RMA)?
I only did 2 HDD RMA so far,
1 is 500GB Seagate which has the firmware issue last time, after 1 month, they called and give me a new HDD with sealed bag. (3E)
2 is my Seagate 320GB external HDD which has bad sectors problem, I gave them a nicely wrapped plastic (original packaging) and came back only with hard disk, a USB cable with plastic wrapped (darn... Compuway).

Laptop? You need to buy laptop IDE to USB in order to use it at any desktop PC, desktop PC's IDE is different from the laptop, SATA however is the same.
You may try to find friends who have it due to fact that your HDD might be spoilt if can't read from the converter you buy, it'll be a waste of $$.

This post has been edited by wildwestgoh: Mar 21 2012, 09:07 AM

Check with your HDD manufacturer tools to ensure you got the warranty, then send for RMA if it fail.
One of my HDD also has 1 "Reallocated Sectors Count", but the stupid software respond with GOOD condition... darn.

Also check "Pending Sectors Count" to see if there's any, if there is, then try to do low level format (backup whole HDD first) to see if it does increase the "Reallocated Sectors Count", if this attribute increase rapidly then send for RMA.

Because finding matching board is like finding grain of salt in desert, it's not easy as just buy and replace.
Read a page or 2 back and you should see there's only few percentage of working ones.

HDD price has dropped for a tiny little bit (RM 10~20) for the past few months, if this keep up we can expect great deal end of this year provided if we can wait for it xD" (my HDD space is slowly decrease despite my much lesser download behaviour, :sigh:)

Is there anyone using the Seagate 3TB yet? I would like to know about the operating temperature and the clicking noise (head parking) that was reported to be quite annoying at some forums (found on Google).

What type of USB cable you use? Is it the Y-cable where you can plug to 2 ports to provide more power for the hard disk?

Has anyone asked about the WDC 3TB HDD?
I like to know how to identify the newer 3-platter and the older 4-platter, manufacturer date being the one but I'm not too sure which date they start utilizing the 4-platter, so I'm appreciate if someone here can help me, I have googled without any result.

It's ok if it's not under operation, but you need to properly cool it down when you want to use it.
You can read the operation manual on the maximum storage temperature.
Normally the car's temperature can reach around 45C on a hot day in this tropical country.

Just to note to use the external HDD as internal one, you may use it but you'll break the warranty, it suppose to have a warranty seal some where near the external casing.
Some e-retailer tend to sells external unit as internal, I'm not sure why it's considerable cheaper now but if you do use external as internal, you won't be able to receive official warranty.

if your machine is running 24/7 and busy read/write to the HDD all the time then you don't have to worry about the "power-saving" being activated, its only activate when it's idle for more than a certain amount of time, normally from 5 to 10 minutes, it'll spin down to save power.
My 24/7 download server also has a WDC Green 1TB running for months now, and the operation is of course 24/7 read/write so it'll never spin down and the temperature is quite high compare to the Seagate 500GB running at 7,200rpm, higher by about 1~3 degree celcius.

Please elaborate more on this, you have experienced this?
I just RMA one of my Samsung drive bought last year, my other 2 older drive still OK though.
Since I ask one of the shop that I bought it from to do all the RAM for me (pay like RM30+) so I don't know how's the procedure like cause I'm afraid I might mess up and end up costing more than I have to pay him to do the better job.

What version of HDDTemp are you using? and Everest? That's old, search for Aida64.
I use Speedfan by the way, great way to detect all temperature sensors for almost all types of CPU, mainboard, GPU, HDD.

http://almico.com/speedfan.php

Seems like Samsung old "firmware-disease", can't be detect or use on some mainboard and require mainboard vendor to update their BIOS instead.
Glad that you found your problem and solved it.