The Best Hard Drives and SSDs For Your Money: Summer 2010

The Internals of a traditional hard drive(Top) and a SSD(Bottom)

1. The Best Hard Drives and Solid State Drives (SSD):

Most of you know well mechanical hard drives and it’s most probably what’s inside of your computer.

In the last few years and more and more as capacity increase and prices decrease, Solid State Drives are slowly but surely about to take over as the best choice for storage.

Solid State Drives have much lower latencies and higher transfer rates compared to mechanical hard drives and at this rate, will be the become the de facto choice for storage in computers in the near future.

Currently at a price of about $115 for 64GB of storage capacity, they are coming down in price quickly, but are still too expensive for the mainstream market, who likes a lot of storage, at this point in time. However, if you’re interested in a solution that boots your OS much faster, loads your programs much faster and transfer data faster, you should take a look at SSDs.

For most of you, mechanical hard drives offers a lot of storage for a reasonable price/reasonable performance and remains the best choice. Hence why I’ll be covering both type of drives in this article, which is separated in three parts:

1. Best Hard Drives For Your Money
2. RAID 0,1,5 and 10: A quick and easy summary
3. Best SSDs For Your Money

The Best Hard Drives For Your Money

If you have the time, reading detailed hard drive reviews and specs are a lot of fun. However, most of us don’t have the time to do the research and just want the answers. In other words, what you want to know is what is the best hard drive within your budget.

So if you don’t have the time to do the research, or just don’t care to do it, don’t worry. I’ll come to your help with this guide of the Best Hard Drive for your money.

Summer 2010 Update:
Samsung recently launched their F4 series of high-performance hard drives. As you may have guessed, the F4 series is even faster than the already very fast and popular F3 series. Thing is, the Samsung F4 Spinspoint is only available with a 320GB capacity at this point in time.

However, considering that it’s using a 640GB platter, with only one side used at the moment, it is possible that we’ll see 640GB version of this drive, if not even higher capacities, sometime in the future. Mind you, this is pure speculation, as I couldn’t find any information on whether Samsung will or will not release an higher capacity Spinpoint F4 drive. Let’s cross our fingers and hope so!

Other than that, the price of the popular high-performance Samsung Spinspoint F3 1TB drive is down to $60, a real bargain for such a great drive!

Not that I’m being a fanboy of Samsung or anything, but they are clearly leading the way when it comes to the performance/price ratio right now.

I went with Samsung because their hard drive offers the highest performance (See above) as well as the highest reliability, with 98.7% compared to 94.2% for the WD Caviar Black, according to Hardware.fr (An outstanding French hardware site , I also speak French if you didn’t know  ).

Best Hard Drive for ~$40:

SAMSUNG Spinpoint F4 HD322GJ/U 320GB 7200RPM SATA 3.0Gb/s

Recently launched, the Samsung Spinpoint F4 series offers top-notch performance, outperforming even the Samsung F3 series. The only drawback is that it’s only available with a 320GB capacity for now.

However, at $43 per drive, you easily buy two, if not four and put them in RAID 0 for mind-blowing performance.

Up to 320MB/s+ (Up to 640MB/s+ with four of them) read transfer rates for $86 (Or $172 for four)? Yes please!

For more details on RAID, read the “RAID 0,1,5 and 10: A quick and easy summary” section further down in this article.

Best Hard Drive for ~$50:

SAMSUNG Spinpoint F3 HD502HJ 500GB 7200RPM SATA 3.0Gb/s

The Samsung Spinpoint F3 has become the de facto performance standard for hard drive these days. At $53, you get one of the fastest hard drive on the market, with a storage capacity of 500GB, plenty enough to handle your video/music collection and all your games.

Alternative:
If performance isn’t your number one priority, but low-power consumption silence is (Example: For a HTPC, Backups, etc.), the Western Digital AV-GP WD5000AVDS 500GB SATA 3.0Gb/s is what you are looking for.

Best Hard Drive for ~$75:

SAMSUNG Spinpoint F3 HD103SJ 1TB SATA 3.0Gb/s

Back in March, these drives were selling for $90. They are currently selling for $75, an even better price considering that this is the fastest 1TB on the market. Yes, you read that correctly: 1TB of top-notch performance for $75! If that doesn’t sound any special to you, know that slower, 1TB drives were easily selling for double of, if not nearly triple the price back in 2008-2009.

In TechReport’s recent article of the best 1TB Hard Drive, the Samsung F3 HD103SJ was up against the Hitachi Deskstar 7K1000.C, Seagate Barracuda 7200.12 and the WD Caviar Black (The latest 6Gbps edition) and it was declared the best drive overall:
“Not only does the F3 offer the best performance in all manner of sequential transfers, it’s easily the quietest of the drives overall.”

This drive offers 1TB (1000 GB) of storage, plenty enough to handle your video/music collection and all your games. This drive comes with 32MB of cache and a 3 years warranty.

Alternative:

1. For low-power consumption and the same capacity (1TB) is (Example: For a HTPC, Backups, etc.), go with the Western Digital Caviar Green WD10EARS 1TB 5400 RPM SATA 3.0Gb/s
2. For low-power consumption and higher capacity (1.5TB), go with the SAMSUNG EcoGreen F2 HD154UI 1.5TB. With 1.5TB of storage for only $95, this is the sweet spot when it comes to price per GB, with a cost of ~0.063$ per GB.Like the Western Digital Caviar Green, the Samsung EcoGreen F2 is a “green” drive, meaning that it’s not geared toward the best performance, but rather low power consumption and low noise. Mind you, it’s far from being a slow drive and will be just fine for the majority of you.
3. For even more performance, but less storage (640GB): Transfer rates hitting up to 320MB/s (A single Samsung F3 1TB hits up to 150MB/s) are what you can expect withtwo SAMSUNG Spinpoint F4 HD322GJ/U 320GB 7200RPM SATA 3.0Gb/s in RAID 0, with a cost of $86.

For more details on RAID, read the “RAID 0,1,5 and 10: A quick and easy summary” section further down in this article.

Best Hard Drive for ~$130:

SAMSUNG Spinpoint F3EG HD203WI 2TB

For $130, you can also choose this single Spinpoint F3EG 2TB drive. At 5400 rpm, it’s not a speed demon, but rather a “green” drive, meant for low power consumption and noise. An excellent choice if you need a lot of storage space for all your media.

Covered by a 3 years warranty.

Best Hard Drive for ~$150:

Western Digital Caviar Black WD2001FASS 2TB

Back in March, this used to be $280. No, I’m not kidding. That’s a $130 price cut!

The Caviar Black series is the performance series from Western Digital, that comes with dual-processor on board as well at 64MB of cache.

If you’re looking for a fast, single-drive setup that can hold all your date, this is the way to go.

As usual, the Caviar Black series is covered with a 5 years warranty.

Alternatives
Two SAMSUNG Spinpoint F3 HD103SJ 1TB in RAID 0.
For $150, you can get two of my $75 recommendation, the SAMSUNG Spinpoint F3 HD103SJ 1TB SATA 3.0Gb/s hard drive. Add RAID 0 and you’ll get a very fast setup, capable of hitting up to 300MB/s transfer rates, with 2TB of storage capacity, perfect for a build where performance is what matters most.

You can also choose to go with RAID 1 for data safety, where one of the two drives is an exact copy of the other. Note that you’ll only get half the capacity, 1TB in this case, with such a setup. For more details on RAID, read the “RAID 0,1,5 and 10: A quick and easy summary” section further down in this article.

Best Hard Drive for ~$170:

Four SAMSUNG Spinpoint F4 HD322GJ/U 320GB 3.0Gb/s in RAID 0. Capacity: 1280GB

How does 1.28TB of capacity and up to 640MB/s read transfer rates for $172 sounds to you? That’s what you’ll get with four SAMSUNG Spinpoint F4 HD322GJ/U 320GB 7200RPM SATA 3.0Gb/s in RAID 0. Nothing short of amazing!

Now, keep in mind that four drives in RAID 0 offer much greater risks of data loss, since if a single drive fails, you lose all your data. If you decide to go with this setup in RAID 0, do yourself a favor and do regular backups on external drives/USB thumb drives and/or optical disks.

Another option would simply be to go with RAID 1+0, where you get both redundancy and a performance boost. Performance would drop to up to 320MB/s read transfer rates and capacity down to 640GB, but with RAID 1+0, if one of the drive fails, your data will be fine, unlike with RAID 0.

Best Hard Drive for ~$300:

Western Digital Caviar Black WD2001FASS 2TB

Back in March, this used to be $280. No, I’m not kidding. That’s a $130 price cut!

The Caviar Black series is the performance series from Western Digital, that comes with dual-processor on board as well at 64MB of cache.

If you’re looking for a fast, single-drive setup that can hold all your date, this is the way to go.

As usual, the Caviar Black series is covered with a 5 years warranty.

Alternative:
Four SAMSUNG Spinpoint F3 HD103SJ 1TB in RAID 0
For $300, you can get four of my $75 recommendation, the SAMSUNG Spinpoint F3 HD103SJ 1TB SATA 3.0Gb/s hard drive. Add RAID 0 and you’ll get a very fast setup, capable of hitting up to 600MB/s transfer rates, with 4TB of storage capacity, perfect for a build where performance is what matters most.

You can also choose to go with RAID 1 for data safety, where one of the two drives is an exact copy of the other. Note that you’ll only get half the capacity, 1TB in this case, with such a setup. For more details on RAID, read the “RAID 0,1,5 and 10: A quick and easy summary” section further down in this article.

RAID 0,1,5 and 10: A quick and easy summary

I’ve been asked by a few of you to explain RAID and the different modes in simple terms. In short, RAID consists of combining two or more hard drives (Or SSDs) to improve performance and/or reliability. While there are other modes than 0, 1, 5 and 10 (1+0), these are the main ones that usually come integrated on motherboards (Not all motherboards support RAID) , so they are the modes that most of you have access to, hence why I’ll focus on these. Let’s get started!

Note:
In most cases, with motherboard’s integrated RAID controller, you must set up RAID within the BIOS and/or disk manager (i.e. Intel Matrix) prior to installing the OS. Consult your motherboard manual for details on how to set up RAID.

RAID 0:

Using a minimum of two drives and as many as you can install (3,4,5,6,etc.), the data is spread across all the drives, basically combining their read and write performance into one ultra-fast array. The easiest and cheapest option to improve performance, you keep 100% of the combined drives capacity, but if any drive fails, you lose all data.

Important:
The more drives that you have in your RAID 0 array, the more likely it is to fail. You also get diminishing returns as you add more and more drives:

• Two drives, get a theoretical 100% I/O performance gain but double risk of failure.
• Three drives, get a theoretical 50% further performance gain but triple risk of failure.
• Four drives, get a theoretical 25% further performance gain but quadruple risk of failure.
• Five drives, get a theoretical 20% further performance gain and so on…

So you’ll want to avoid putting critical data that you can’t afford to lose on a RAID 0 array or at the very least, you’ll want to back it up somewhere else as well, since this is the least reliable solution, even less than a single drive.

RAID 1:

Using two drives, the second drive is a live backup of the first one, being an exact copy of it.

You lose a bit of write speed compared to a single drive (due to the overhead of copying the same data in real-time to two different drives), do gain read performance (Since the OS can read from both the drives) but you only get the capacity of one of the two drives (Two 1TB drives in RAID 1 =1TB total capacity).

The main pro is that you get an higher level of redundancy/reliability, compared to a single drive.

If one drive fails, you do not lose data, you are still able to use the PC, but you will need to replace the drive and rebuild the RAID array before regaining redundancy and data loss protection from RAID 1.

RAID 5:

Requires a minimum of three drives. Unlike RAID 1 where data is identical on every drive, with RAID 5, data is spread across the drives, with parity bits spread across the drives in a way that if one drive fails, the RAID array will continue to function without any apparent change, other than some performance loss.

However, like with RAID 1, if you lose a drive, you’ll need to replace it before regaining redundancy and data loss protection from RAID 5.

RAID 1 vs RAID 5:
Both RAID 1 (mirroring or duplexing) or RAID 5 (striping with parity) offer good data redundancy should a single drive in a RAID array fail. The major difference however can be found in the system performance between RAID 1 and RAID 5. RAID 5 experiences more heavy write overhead because of the additional parity data that has to be created and is then written to the disk array. RAID 1 does not experience this overhead.

Read performance, on the other hand, is usually better with a RAID 5 setup. This gets even better if your RAID 5 array has more than 3 disk. RAID 5 read performance increases with more drives in an array because the more drives there are, the more read/write heads there are, and RAID 5 arrays have the awesome ability to read simultaneously from all the drives at the same time. RAID 1 only has two drives by nature and is therefore limited in the number of read/write heads.

So in short, if all you want is decent redundancy and don’t care that much about performance, RAID 1 will be just fine. If you want more read performance (For faster applications launch, faster OS and game loading) and capacity (since RAID 1 is limited to two drives in most cases and more would be somewhat pointless), RAID 5 is the best out of the two.

RAID 10 (1+0):

However, if you want top notch performance AND redundancy, RAID 1+0 (or 10, same thing) is the way to go. Basically, it’s a combination of RAID 1 redundancy with RAID 0 performance. While RAID 1+0 is possible with two drives, four drives is preferable, if you want most of the performance benefits anyway.

A final note on using RAID for data loss protection:

Hard drives do fail and RAID is not perfect. Sometimes, multiple drives will fail at once (Due to a faulty power supply, power surge, etc.). RAID has limits and is not a 100% proof solution for data backup. It should only be used as one of many steps to protect your data, along with other backup solutions such as an external drive, USB thumb drive, a web server, optical disks (CD/DVD/Blu-Ray,etc.).

The Best Solid State Drives (SSD):

Solid state drives are the new hot thing in the computer world right now: Everyone see them superseding hard drives in the next few years as their capacity increase and their prices come down.

Right now, they are still expensive, still are quite a new technology and that means that you need to learn about them and shop for them.

Problem is, which brand and which model should you choose? This is where I come in.

So if you don’t have the time to do the research, or just don’t care to do it, don’t worry. I’ll come to your help with this guide of the Best SSD for your money.

A quick recap on what a SSD is:

You know those flash chips that are used in usb sticks and various memory cards? A SSD is basically several of those chips working in parallel with a controller to bring you higher speed.

There are many advantages to a SSD compared to a traditional spinning mechanical hard drive, such as:

1. There are no noise, as there are no moving parts.
2. Less heat emission compared to hard drives, as again, there are no moving parts.
3. Lower power consumption, because you’ve guessed it, there are no moving parts, which results in longer battery life for laptops and mobile devices.
4. SSD are much more resistant to shocks than hard drives are.
5. Much lower latency (in the 0.07ms compared to 7-9ms).
6. Higher transfer rates for reading (Up to 330 MB/s+) and writing files.

Of course, there are a few cons to SSDs as well. This is a new technology, so the cost per GB is much higher.

What about those reports of SSD slowing down over time?

They are true, but let me explain this quickly for you:

SSD are similar to hard drives in the way that they delete files: They don’t. They simply flag the files as deleted.

What’s the problem with that? With a hard drive, when you want to use the space occupied by the previous file, the hard drive would simply overwrite it. In the case of a SSD, it needs to erase the file prior to writing again.

Until recently, SSD would delete the file right before writing the new one. Needless to say, this slows down write operations a lot, especially as your SSD gets filled up and you need to erase pretty much any previously deleted file to write new data.

TRIM

TRIM is here to change that through. What TRIM does is erase the file right away, allowing you to write at full speed without waiting to erase previously used space.

Now, to use TRIM, you need a OS that supports it, such as Windows 7, Mac OS X and some variants of Linux being the only ones as far as I know. You also need a SSD that supports TRIM obviously. Note that OCZ, Intel and a few other SSD manufacturers offer an utility that mimics what TRIM does, for OSes that don’t support TRIM.

If you want to learn more about SSDs and TRIM, I highly recommend The SSD Anthology: Understanding SSDs article from Anandtech, a very complete and detailed article on SSD. A must read in my opinion. Also from AnandTech, The SSD Anthology: Understanding SSDs is another must read if you want to learn more about SSDs.

With that said, let’s move on to my recommendations.

TRIM with RAID:
From AnandTech:
“For months now you all have been asking me to tackle the topic of RAIDing SSDs. I’ve been cautious about doing so for a number of reasons:

1) There is currently no way to pass the TRIM instruction to a drive that is a member of a RAID array. Intel’s latest RAID drivers allow you to TRIM non-member RAID disks, but not an SSD in a RAID array.

2) Giving up TRIM support means that you need a fairly resilient SSD, one whose performance will not degrade tremendously over time. On the bright side, with the exception of the newer SandForce controllers, I’m not sure we’ve seen a controller as resilient as Intel’s.”

So in short:

You can use two or more SSDs in RAID, you just need to pick the right SSDs. My recommendation would be use either one of these, in this order:

1. A SandForce based SSD, such as Corsair Force series or OCZ Vertex 2/Agility 2 series.
2. Toshiba controller based SSDs (Mostly some Kingston models).
3. Any Intel SSD.

You can use other SSDs for RAID, but I wouldn’t recommend it to you, nor will I recommend it in this guide, since performance will degrade over time, slowing down the SSDs to very low performance, not something that you’d want when you pay for two or more SSDs.

Keep in mind:

I’ll use this opportunity to remind you that this article is only a guideline for the prices I’ve seen on August 14th. You’re letting yourself down if you’re not looking for deals when you decide to purchase.

Here are a few things to keep in mind when you read this list:

• Prices and availability change everyday. I can’t keep up with accurate pricing everyday, but I can suggest to you great SSD that you won’t regret buying at the price ranges that I list.
• This list is based on the best U.S. prices from NewEgg and Amazon. In other countries or in a retail stores, things might be different. All prices are based on new SSD prices.

Best SSD for ~$80:

Corsair Nova CSSD-V32GB2-BRKT 32GB

If you’re looking for a bottom cost SSD, that is still reliable and supports TRIM, the Corsair Nova CSSD-V32GB2-BRKT 32GB , at a cost of $80 is the way to go.

With 32GB, it’s also the SSD with the lowest capacity in this guide, so if you want an higher capacity SSD, keep reading.

Based on the Indilinx Barefoot controller, it does ok with RAID and lack of TRIM support, but no where as well as Intel or SandForce controllers based SSD, hence why I would recommend spending a tad more and get two (or more) Intel X25-V 40GB if you want a low-cost RAID array.

Best SSD for ~$110:

Intel X25-V 40GB

If you’re looking for a SSD to upgrade an older machine, or simply to host the OS along with a few important applications/games, go with the Intel X25-V 40GB.

It was recommended by AnandTech as the best 2010 Value SSD (Close to or below $100), offering better overall performance than the OCZ Onyx and Kingston SSDNow V series, not to mention the larger capacity (40GB vs 30/32GB).

It’s also the best performer compared to the OCZ Onyx and Kingston SSDNow V series when it comes to gaming performance (scroll down to the last graph).

It’s not the best SSD, not the one with the largest capacity, but for $110, it’s a great choice to give a second life to older machine or laptops that don’t need much capacity, or as a boot drive that hosts the OS along with a few important applications/games.

Best SSD for ~$145:

Crucial RealSSD C300 64GB

With SATA III 6.0Gbps support, the C300 is capable of hitting up to 355MB/s read transfer rates. It’s also backward compatible with SATA II 3.0Gbps, although you’ll obviously lose some performance.

This is a great drive for starters, with excellent performance, a capacity of 64GB, TRIM support and a price under $150.

Note that I don’t recommend getting more than one, for example with RAID, since theCrucial RealSSD C300 write performance drops horribly (~20MB/s) without TRIM. With one drive and TRIM, you’ll be fine though.

Best SSD for ~$165:

Corsair Force 60GB

While the Crucial RealSSD can hit higher read transfer rates (Up to 355MB/s), the Corsair Force offer much higher write transfer rates (Up to 275MB/s vs up to 70MB/s). More importantly, it performs better overall in real-life situations, thanks to the top-notch SandForce controller.

At $165, you lose a mere 4GB compared to the Corsair C300, but gain better overall performance. It’s also the best candidate for a RAID array.

Best SSD from $200 to $300:

Kingston SSDNow V Series 128GB

Offering performance of up to 200MB/s read and up to 110MB/s write and a capacity of 128GB the Kingston SSDNow V Series 128GB model isn’t the fastest SSD on the block, but it’s still way faster than a mechanical hard drive and it offers incredible value.

With 128GB of storage capacity for only $220, this SSD is the sweet spot when it comes to price per GB for SSDs, with a cost of ~1.72$ per GB, the lowest cost per GB for a SSD that performs well, is relible, support TRIM and do well without it (for RAID).

It’s also an excellent candidate for a RAID array, as it barely suffers from the lack of TRIM.

Alternative:
If performance is what matters to you, the Corsair Force 80GB , based on SandForce controller, will have no problem outperforming the Kingston SSD. However, you lose 48GB of storage capacity, which is not a trade off that everyone might be willing to accept.

Best SSD from $300 to $400:

Corsair Force 120GB

Based on the SandForce controller:

• Top-notch performance
• TRIM support
• Great long-term performance with RAID without TRIM

Alternative
You can stick with the SandForce controller and improve performance by getting twoCorsair Force 60GB in RAID 0. You’ll get the same 120GB capacity, but much higher transfer rates. The downside with RAID 0 is lower reliability (The more drives that you have, the more likely you are that one will fail), but like any other storage solution, backups are your best friend.

Best SSD from $400 to $500:

OCZ Agility 2 180GB

Note that from this point on, we’re sticking with the SandForce controller as the main recommendation, since it’s the current top-performance. The difference that you’ll see as you spend more is higher storage capacity, as well as some interesting RAID solutions.
Based on the SandForce controller:

• Top-notch performance
• TRIM support
• Great long-term performance with RAID without TRIM

Alternative
You can stick with the SandForce controller and improve performance by getting either:

• Two Corsair Force 80GB in RAID 0. You’ll get slightly less storage capacity (160GB vs 180GB), but much higher transfer rates.
• Two Kingston SSDNow V Series 128GB in RAID 0. For $440, you get an ultra-fast RAID 0 array with 256GB of storage capacity. A very interesting choice if you want more capacity and don’t mind sacrificing a bit of performance compared to the SandForce-based SSDs in RAID 0. Keep in mind that this setup will still run in circles around any hard drive and most SSDs.

As usual, the downside with RAID 0 is lower reliability (The more drives that you have, the more likely you are that one will fail), but like any other storage solution, backups are your best friend.

Best SSD from $600 to $800:

OCZ Agility 2 240GB

Based on the SandForce controller:

• Top-notch performance
• TRIM support
• Great long-term performance with RAID without TRIM

Alternative
You can stick with the SandForce controller and improve performance by getting either:

• Four Corsair Force 60GB in RAID 0. You’ll get the same 240GB capacity, but wayyy higher transfer rates. How does up to 1140MB/s read transfer rates sounds to you? Mind-blowing? Yeah, no kidding, better be at this price 
• Of course, four SSDs in RAID 0 might sound too risky for you (remember that if any of the four drive fails, you lose all your data) for your own comfort, so you can also go withTwo Corsair Force 120GB in RAID 0 for still up to 570MB/s read transfer rates.

Best SSD from $800 to $1000:

Here, we have a bunch of RAID solutions. Pick what suits you best:

• Four Corsair Force 80GB in RAID 0. Total capacity of 320GB and read transfers rates of up to 1140MB/s, at a cost of $944
• Two OCZ Agility 2 180GB in RAID 0. Total capacity of 360GB and read transfers of up to 570MB/s, at a cost of $870
• Four Kingston SSDNow V Series 128GB in RAID 0. Total capacity of 512GB and read transfer rates of up to 800MB/s, at a cost of $880.

Best SSD for over $1000:

OCZ Agility 2 480GB

This is the SSD based on the SandForce controller with the highest capacity. If you absolutely want a single drive with the highest capacity, with top-notch performance from the SandForce controller, without messing with RAID, this is the way to go.

Alternatives
Of course, if you don’t mind RAID solutions, here are two alternatives:

• Two OCZ Agility 2 240GB in RAID 0. Total capacity of 480GB and read transfer rates of up to 570MB/s.
• Four Corsair Force 120GB in RAID 0. Total capacity of 480GB and read transfer rates of up to 1140MB/s.