Forum Discussion

Ernimus_Prime's avatar
Ernimus_Prime
Heroic Explorer
9 years ago

Need a new HDD

Ok gang. I have a Samsung 256 gig 850 Pro. Many used for the OS. And I have a 1
TB WD Black HDD, that has my programs and games on it. I am finding that I am
running out of room. Since now games can be 50 gigs and up to install. I want to
replace the WD 1 tb with at least a 2 TB HDD. Is WD Black drives still good. Or
is there any other recommendations? As well. How would clone the old drive to
the new drive

12 Replies

  • cybereality's avatar
    cybereality
    Grand Champion
    9 years ago
    WD is still pretty solid. I was exclusively WD for a while, but I've been experimenting with other brands, and Seagate seems pretty good as well. 
  • kojack's avatar
    kojack
    MVP
    9 years ago
    I still use western digital for my non ssd drives. The type varies by use:
    - c drive with windows / most active games - 1TB samsung ssd (850 evo I think. Had a 840 pro but it died)
    - western digital 10000rpm Velociraptor drives (1TB) for programming, other games, most active work.
    - western digital caviar black for extra storage (cheaper than velociraptors, but a little bit slower)
    - western digital caviar green for less used stuff (backups of steam games that don't fit on c: and I'm not playing right now, etc)

    I've also got a caviar purple drive (3TB) in my Asus Vivo pc. Caviar purple are made for 24 hours/day writing, for things like security cameras (which is what I use it for).

    I just upgraded my laptop. It had a samsung 850 evo (0.5TB) ssd, but it's run out of space, so I added a samsung 850 evo (0.5TB) M.2 drive. Wow. Read speeds are near identical to the ssd, but the M.2 gets 3-4 times the write performance.
    (Still got room for another SSD. I like my laptop!)



  • nalex66's avatar
    nalex66
    MVP
    9 years ago
    You shouldn't really need to clone the drive if it's not your OS drive, just copy the full contents of one drive to the other, then remove your old drive and remap the new drive to D or whatever drive letter you had been using.
  • Ernimus_Prime's avatar
    Ernimus_Prime
    Heroic Explorer
    9 years ago

    nalex66 said:

    You shouldn't really need to clone the drive if it's not your OS drive, just copy the full contents of one drive to the other, then remove your old drive and remap the new drive to D or whatever drive letter you had been using.



    I do need to clone it because when I installed windows.  I set it up that all my user profile and data was set to D drive.  I probably will get a WD and use their cloning software.  I used these steps when I did a fresh install

    https://www.tenforums.com/tutorials/1964-users-folder-move-location-windows-10-a.html

  • brackus1's avatar
    brackus1
    Protege
    9 years ago
    If your computer has the room, I would get two 1 TB drives instead of one 2 TB drive.  A 1 TB drive has a single platter, while a 2 TB drive usually has two platters.  More moving parts means more chance of failure.  Likewise, if you have two HDDs, if one fails, you still got the other.
  • mbze430's avatar
    mbze430
    Rising Star
    9 years ago
    I would also suggest getting another 1TB or whatever you can afford and RAID0 them.  Specially since they are games.  The games you can always redownload, and with saved game mostly now is on the cloud or in your personal Windows folder.  If the RAID0 crash/break it's not a huge lost.  Best part is gain in Read/Write speed.

    I had a bunch of 512GB 850 Pros and RAID0 them to put in my games.  Load time is AMAZING.
  • mbze430's avatar
    mbze430
    Rising Star
    9 years ago
    if you don't know or have concern.  RAID0 doesn't have to be the same size.  like RAID5 or RAID1 (they can be different size, but extra space is not being used).  But it does conform to the fact that what ever slowest speed of the drive in the RAID set, it is then across the entire RAID set.