Hard drive and memory

Hi again,

I want an advise from you all, i bought a new laptop and i want to upgrade its memory from 8GB to 16GB, but i don't know which 16GB[2x 8GB] brand i should get, i found Crucial and on newegg.com i saw G.Skill has more reviews, that G.Skill is a bit cheaper, but i really don't know about that site and this brand, i bought Crucial before for my old laptop [8GB then 16GB] and it is working great, what do you recommend?

I am also looking for a 1-2TB internal hard drive to compliment my SSD to use for storage and scratch, i also not sure which brand to go with, WD, Seagate, ....? I will get 7200rpm one, i was thinking to go with Seagate Momentus XT, but i have only 750GB and not sure if that is enough to use for files storage and scratches and such.

Crucial has a scan tool on their site that tells you what type of memory, and how much, your computer will take. Once you know the details you can shop around for the company you want; Kingston, Crucial, PNY, etc.. Memory these days is memory, you won't see much difference at all between the different companies. The only thing you'll see is whether or not reviews are more favorable for one versus another. But in actual practice most companies make memory that's no better or worse than anybody else.

Western Digital laptop drives (any of their drives that are "green") have a parking feature that parks the drive after 4-8 seconds. It does not make it a good drive to use for storing photos, especially if you access the photos for processing. I had to use HDDScan to disable the "green" features of the drive, otherwise every time I paused for a few seconds it'd take a few seconds for the drive to spin up, which made processing a pain in the neck. If all you're doing is using it for straight storage you'll be fine, but if you plan to process from that drive you're gonna see lag times because the drive needs to spin-up if you pause for a few seconds.

I avoid WD drives like the plaque, especially laptop drives. They always go overboard with cute features and the next thing you know your drive doesn't do a specific thing well.

Crucial had a couple problems at some point. In the end both Crucial and G.Skill use the same reference PCBs and half-random memory chips (at same product designation), so apart from the SPD values and warranty there isn't a real difference that you can control by buying a specific product.

katodog wrote in post #15811622
Crucial has a scan tool on their site that tells you what type of memory, and how much, your computer will take. Once you know the details you can shop around for the company you want; Kingston, Crucial, PNY, etc.. Memory these days is memory, you won't see much difference at all between the different companies. The only thing you'll see is whether or not reviews are more favorable for one versus another. But in actual practice most companies make memory that's no better or worse than anybody else.

Western Digital laptop drives (any of their drives that are "green") have a parking feature that parks the drive after 4-8 seconds. It does not make it a good drive to use for storing photos, especially if you access the photos for processing. I had to use HDDScan to disable the "green" features of the drive, otherwise every time I paused for a few seconds it'd take a few seconds for the drive to spin up, which made processing a pain in the neck. If all you're doing is using it for straight storage you'll be fine, but if you plan to process from that drive you're gonna see lag times because the drive needs to spin-up if you pause for a few seconds.

I see, i know which memory i can use, i just asked which brand, i did the scan and also checked the specifications of my laptop and know what type of memory it is compatible with, but i ended up or narrowed with 4 options to choose between, i neglected other more.

I didn't understand your point about the hard drive section, i will read it more and try to understand it.

Thanks!

What makes one brand better then the next is customer support and Corsair is top notch.

isoMorphic wrote in post #15811692
What makes one brand better then the next is customer support and Corsair is top notch.

B&H doesn't sell Corsair memories, and i didn't order from newegg before at all yet and would like to try them.

Tareq wrote in post #15811688
I didn't understand your point about the hard drive section, i will read it more and try to understand it.

Thanks!

If you have photos on the drive, and you process those photos, if you pause for a few seconds the "green" feature of the WD drive makes it spin down. Which means when you try to resume processing it lags because the drive has to spin up.

Green drives are green because they spin down to save power. The problem is that it slows access time. With my drive I process the photos that are on that drive, so if I leave the green features enabled processing time lags because of the spin down and spin up issue. I took care of that by running HDDScan for that drive, and created a bat file to run at startup.


If all you do is store photos on the drive and don't access them or don't need to access them for processing, then a WD drive will be perfect.

As for failure, or anything else, I've been using Western Digital drives for around 28 years now, and never once have I had a drive fail or have an issue that made it unusable. Their SecurePark (SmartPark, whatever they call it now) feature is an annoyance only if you want to access the drive continuously, otherwise you wouldn't notice the issue.

katodog wrote in post #15811726
If you have photos on the drive, and you process those photos, if you pause for a few seconds the "green" feature of the WD drive makes it spin down. Which means when you try to resume processing it lags because the drive has to spin up.

Green drives are green because they spin down to save power. The problem is that it slows access time. With my drive I process the photos that are on that drive, so if I leave the green features enabled processing time lags because of the spin down and spin up issue. I took care of that by running HDDScan for that drive, and created a bat file to run at startup.


If all you do is store photos on the drive and don't access them or don't need to access them for processing, then a WD drive will be perfect.

As for failure, or anything else, I've been using Western Digital drives for around 28 years now, and never once have I had a drive fail or have an issue that made it unusable. Their SecurePark (SmartPark, whatever they call it now) feature is an annoyance only if you want to access the drive continuously, otherwise you wouldn't notice the issue.

What about the Blue and Black models of WD? are they different than the green?
What about Seagate Barracuda? I didn't say i want only WD or Seagate but i know those are the top brands of HDD i use, and i am not sure which model of those 2 to go with.

And yes, i want to store photos and also process them, if i will have problems with the spinning then i will choose few photos and transfer them to my SSD and when i finish i delete the original files on SSD i worked on as i have them on HDD as storage, also i have some external storage devices i can use, so i will not put that internal HDD for photos only.

Here is the comparison i chose of 5 memories i look at, what do you think, one of them or pass to another you recommend?

http://www.newegg.com …5%3A%24%24%24%2​4%24%24%24

Tareq wrote in post #15811765
What about the Blue and Black models of WD? are they different than the green?
What about Seagate Barracuda? I didn't say i want only WD or Seagate but i know those are the top brands of HDD i use, and i am not sure which model of those 2 to go with.

And yes, i want to store photos and also process them, if i will have problems with the spinning then i will choose few photos and transfer them to my SSD and when i finish i delete the original files on SSD i worked on as i have them on HDD as storage, also i have some external storage devices i can use, so i will not put that internal HDD for photos only.

I don't know about other drives besides the WD drives. This si the first drive where I experienced this issue. This one is a WD Scorpio Blue, so it's definitely not just their "Green" branded drives. If you choose a drive, any drive, that has a parking feature, you can just use HDDScan to create a .bat file to run at startup that will disable that particular feature. So far I haven't had any problems after doing that with my drive.


Memory is memory, I had 8Gb in here and upped it to 16Gb, and just chose what has cheaper. Without opening the laptop and looking at it I'd have to say it's Patriot brand I think, got it at Best Buy and so far it's running great. And, it's 10600, where the stock memory was 12800, and my scrawny human brain doesn't know the difference. The laptop screams no matter what I throw at it, and I haven't even had the hint of any memory issues. If you're getting what's recommended by the Crucial scan, just match specs and get what you want, whether it's the best rated or cheapest price. They all boil down to the same set of binary 1's and 0's, 99% of the time our brains wouldn't know the difference.

Out of the batch you chose I'd go with Corsair, never had a single problem with Corsair memory in any of the systems I put it in.

Ok, thank you very much!

Crucial scan told me that i can upgrade up to 16GB, this describe "16GB kit (8GBx2), 204-pin SODIMM, DDR3 PC3-12800 memory module".

I found 3 on B&H:

http://www.bhphotovide​o.com …+4141834260+429​4948696+35

newegg has the memories a bit cheaper.

Lower CAS is better and you don't want value select scraps for almost the same price as Vengeance.

Get the 10-10-10 G.Skill or the Corsair @ Newegg and while the heat spreader is not needed on this type of ram it wont hurt either.

isoMorphic wrote in post #15813619
Lower CAS is better and you don't want value select scraps for almost the same price as Vengeance.

Get the 10-10-10 G.Skill or the Corsair @ Newegg and while the heat spreader is not needed on this type of ram it wont hurt either.

This.