Samsung Spinpoint F3 vs Western Digital Caviar Black

[Dvorjak]

Other than one being 500gb and the other being 1tb, I'm having a difficult time deciding which is better.

The Caviar Black is 6.0gb/s while the Samsung is only 3.0gb/s but I have read that the samsung write's and read's faster. What do you guys think?

[llDemonll]

changed the title to be more understandable

[Cilraaz]

I don't believe any mechanical drive has been able to saturate a SATA II connection, so you can pretty much remove that from the equation. Personally, I think they're a wash, but I've heard people argue either side.

[ispano]

I don't believe any mechanical drive has been able to saturate a SATA II connection, so you can pretty much remove that from the equation. Personally, I think they're a wash, but I've heard people argue either side.

This is most likely correct. Even the 600GB 10,000RPM Velociraptors barely bump up against SATA I speeds.

[Plasmon]

Caviar Black's have 64MB cache, and I'm pretty sure Spinports are still at 32MB. This probably leads to a slight performance advantage in some situations for Caviar Black. I'm not sure exactly how caching works, but I guess it means half as much time is spent seeking during a transfer from one location of the disc to another.

There's probably benchmarks out there somewhere if you want to search for them.

[Enola]

Well got a F3 last week, after some research, and extremely happy with it, reach's 140MB/s (not short stroked yet) read speed virtually noiseless and for 50 bucks, can't ask for more.

[taekvideo]

I also got a spinpoint f3 and it's... so fast. Compared to my old hdd the difference is crazy.
I haven't used a caviar black before so I can't really compare, but I'm sure you'll be very satisfied with either one.