Considering 4TB drive for Asus P9X79

[Bill Anderson]

This is a new one on me. I was just window-shopping for a larger
capacity drive to replace a perfectly functional 1.5 TB drive in my
system -- don't really need one, just looking -- and I found what looks
like a nice 4TB Seagate drive at Newegg for $190. Also found that
Amazon has the same drive for the same price. Seagate Desktop HDD.15
ST4000DM000 4TB.

So I was reading through the reviews and something just didn't seem
right. One of the reviews said that "500 gig for $50 is a great
bargain." Huh? That's when I realized that not one of Newegg's reviews
was for the Seagate drive that was illustrated at the top of the page.
(Well, I think none of the reviews was for that drive -- I didn't read
all 1,990.)

Newegg
http://snipurl.com/26q5sev

Very strange...so I went to Amazon, and guess what? Same drive, same
price, same problem with the reviews! They're all for other, smaller
drives!

Amazon
http://snipurl.com/26q5swv

Weird. And no, I haven't ordered a 4TB drive and I don't intend to until
I can find a set of reviews that address the drive I'm looking for.

--
Bill Anderson

I am the Mighty Favog

[Paul]

It does look like there's something wrong with the Newegg reviews.
For example, when I listed a bunch of drives on Newegg, the listing
said there were 2,930 reviews for the item. And considering they
haven't been for sale that long, that sounded wrong. The actual
page is showing only 22 reviews.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822236407

You can always look for an enthusiast site review.

http://www.hardwarecanucks.com/forum/hardware-canucks-reviews/58267-western-digital-black-4tb-hard-drive-review-3.html

It's interesting, that in a quick search, the tech used tends to not
be 1TB platters, but perhaps 800GB platters. So these drives
are likely a bit on the "tall" side as well. Fitting five platters,
think of the vertical spacing.

Also in my quick search, there is a wide variation in rotational speed.
The slowest I found, was listed as 5200 RPM. Another was 5900 RPM.
The fastest was 7200 RPM. You have to be very careful when buying
them - I've run into situations before, where they don't state the
RPMs, because they're not proud of the figure. Rotational speed
is a component in the seek time (since the sector you want, has to
rotate under the head).

So, yeah, by all means, spend a lot of time on the reviews.
These look a little too new to trust yet.

Paul