Looking for help choosing an internal hard drive

[jim lyon 11]

Hi!

I've got a Dell Dimension E520 multi media system & am looking for a new

( internal ) hard drive. It's a desktop so I assume the drive is 3.5". It's configured to SATA 1, & while I know SATA 2 is backwards compatible, what about SATA 3, will that also fit? The reason for asking is although I'm doing SATA2 searches, what mainly comes up is SATA 3. - I've even seen SATA6 - but I suspect this is an error & is referring to 600 Mb/s transfer speeds?

I also see reference to WD blue/black or red desktop ( on ebuyer ) & Amazon bang on about green or red caviar. - Is there any useful or relevant info concerning that?

Ideally, I'd like a 1 TB, & on the basis of the little I know, what seems most promising to me.@ the moment is either a

 

Toshiba DT01ACA100 1TB 3.5" SATA2

 

a little bit cheaper, but postal delivery is slower & no customer feedback on it

 

or

 

Western Digital Caviar Green 1TB SATA III 6 Gbps 3.5 inch

 

about £3 more, postal delivery is faster, customer reviews seem reasonable on the whole, but I don't know if SATA 3 is compatible?

So any recommendations or feedback would be really helpfulful. - TIA !

 

Cheers,

Jim

[Skink 10]

guessing you will have checked but I thought WD Black and blue were 2.5" drives, just got a new one for my laptop and WD black was 7200rpm (blue was 5400rpm)

 

have you looked at cclonline? or dabs? not sure their customer service is as good as it used to be but their prices can be pretty good

[gillybear 10]

All SATA drives are backward compatable but you will get the speed of the older connection.

 

I believe that Green drives are often used as data drives rather than for an OS but a drives a drive and anyone should be ok.

 

My personal choice is an SSD for the OS and some programs and a Hard Disk for data.

[jim lyon 11]

Thanks for the links & heads up - appreciated !

[anywebsite 10]

I'd pick Seagate or Toshiba.

[SpeedwayDan 10]

Samsung or Seagate for me.