Forget about Sata I, II or III (1.5G, 3G or 6G). At current point of technology and speed, HDD physical delivering speed nowhere near the Sata speed.

Correct me if I am wrong.

With nowadays, std hdd size is about 500GB and above and main stream is 1TB, it is not a few hours, but nearly half a day.

Mean existing XP machine won't recognise it?

What is those "pre-work"?

Sorry just read a bit, don't know the details of it.

HDD consume very little W only, working at around 10W only. Somemore, HDD is not working full all the time one, a lot of time are idle or light usage only.

So it is very unlike those a few W extra needed will cause the PSU to power down (not enought power), as most set-up in most computer has extra PSU power left one if your existing PSU/CPU is working fine one.

At the moment, Samsung is cheaper than the others across.

At least Rm20-40 cheaper depended on which model of capacity.

But I don't know why Samsung is significant cheaper than WD and Seagate.

Normally HDD price won't differ too much and always in tight range across, but currently Samsung gap vs others is quite large by HDD standard.

2 platters that's mean must be 2 x 500GB.

750GB is considered odd size/capacity at the moment giving that manufacturers start moving to 500GB per platter.

Even for 334 GB per platter, 750GB still is an odd capacity.

750GB is suit to 250GB platter which I think soon will be offline.

It depended on their particular model.

Look for the model code/number, hit google and search, can easily get some review and details of it.

We cannot say 500GB must be 1 platter, as there are still some old models in the market. But manufacturers now has started to move into 500GB per platter as their primary product line.

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Added on April 27, 2010, 4:28 pmIf not mistaken, SATA speed is way over the physical ability of HDD can transfer, aka read/write.

In other word, the speed is limit by HDD ability.

This post has been edited by cherroy: Apr 27 2010, 04:28 PM

The problem is shops cannot earn from those "high end" hardware, because if the store has stock and cannot sell out or need sometimes to sell out the item, then the shop probably will make a loss by stocking it, as we know lastest and high end hardware tend to drop in price over time quite quickly. Margin already low to start with, if suffer losses due to stocking on a few high end stuff, then shop cannot survive.

So most shops stock those general range, mid to low end hardware which is the mainstream of most sold computer.
They stock what is the most popular hardware out there which has fast turnover rate.

Actually for ordinary users or non-sophiscated users, they won't notice much or at all, whether using Blue or Green version.

It is ok for ordinary usage even as the main OS disk.

The one noticeable surge in performance is SSD.

The slow window start up aka most take a minute plus or so is due to HDD.

We can have Sata II, III, IV. But HDD output rate aka write and read won't exceed Sata I speed capability.

90MB/s almost max out the HDD capability already.

It is normal for some PSU to supply 11.8v as well. There is a range of tolerance +/- which won't have any problem at all.

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Added on June 7, 2010, 2:46 pmHDD power consumption is quite low, one HDD consumer roughly 10-20W only.

1TB and 2TB different in power consumption could differ a few W only.

While HDD won't be spinning full all the time, in ordinary usage.

Especially for storage purpose one, mostly at idle stage.

This post has been edited by cherroy: Jun 7 2010, 02:46 PM

For the size of 1TB, if format entire HDD (not quick format type), surely take a few hours to complete.

I think you get the "advanced format" of 1TB which is not compatible with XP.

Quick format, don't need 50 min.

Buffer size get you syiok for split second not even one second, the difference between 16MB, then the rest depended on the disk performance, like how many platter, platter density etc.

Yes, you need WD align for XP to work with new 4K sector HDD, like 10EARS.

No, XP is not written/designed to recognise the new HDD with 4K sector. In the future, all HDD is expected come with 4K sector one.

It won't damge the HDD, but there is significant performance loss as your experience.

WD sells more, so it is norm to see more of its HDD being RMAed.

It is about rate of RMAed, not quantity.

For eg.
XYZ sold 10 million HDD, so you could see 10000 HDD being RMAed, which look huge amount but the rate is 0.1% only
ABC sold 10k HDD, but you see 20 HDD being RMAed, which look negligible (so little HDD being RMAed), but the rate is higher at 0.2%.

So in term of quality wise, we said XYZ is better on average.

This is not something good news.

I would rather they half the price with the same capacity instead double the capacity for the same price.

30-50G is sufficient as an OS main drive.

What hinder people to use SSD as main drive is the cost, too way expensive.
If slash price into half, then we could see lot of people start to install SSD as the main operating system drive.

But it stated F4 is for performance, server usage, which I reckon could be like WD enterprise grade one, which price wise may not as competitive, after all it is 320GB one.

Yup, kinda agree on this issue.

It is very difficult to get a F3 out there. So no matter how cheap, how good the HDD is, if stock availability is not there, it is as good as none.

Can easily shop around 5-6 shops around, none of them carry F3.
Even ask about Samsung HDD only old model F1 got.

HDD still far away to max out the Sata II capability.

In fact, currently Sata I is enough/about sufficient to handle HDD max performance (HDD model peformance varies, but majority won't even max out the Sata I)