Best Hard Drives

HDDs aren't as fast as solid-state drives. That said, some are still faster than others. Some offer outstanding performance across the board. Some are more reliable. Honestly, some are just better than others. And, from what we've seen very few could handle a candle to WD Black in just about any category.

Though HDDs are inherently affordable, this model isn't cheap. But given what it offers in return, we can't say that the price isn't justified. We could hardly highlight a single thing that's particularly great about this internal hard drive as there are quite a few of those. Still, you have to start somewhere, and the cache size is as good of a place as any to start with.

Most hard drives on the market these days feature 64MB of cash. Some of the better models will give you 128 to work with. But this particular device doubles that offer, incorporating 256 megabytes of cache space.

256 megabytes of cache space means that the hard drive will be able to store and move 256 megabytes of data at a time. Though that number is impressive in and of itself, the model also makes use of the company's Dynamic Cache technology. These technologies, along with the increased cache space, optimize performance in real time in order to allocate and balance that cache space between reads and writes.

Long story short, you'll get top-notch read-rate performance and outstanding transfer speeds, making WD Black the best hard drive on our list in that regard.

If it wasn't for WD Black that has the model in question beat in the cache size category, the Toshiba X300 would've definitely been our candidate for the best hard drive. Just like the former, this HDD doesn't put all of its eggs in one basket. It is a great product across the board that delivers way above average numbers in every category.

For starters, it packs a whopping 6 terabytes of storage space. It isn't the most amount of space per drive that exists on the market today but it is definitely one of the most spacious drives that weren't designed for commercial applications. The model's massive capacity is perfect for large gaming libraries. Six terabytes of storage space will be enough for about a thousand full-length high-resolution movies or somewhere around 150 Blu-ray films, or tens of thousands of songs in a lossless format.

Honestly, even for most gamers and creative professionals, it is a bit too much. Hell, even people who love collecting and storing digital copies of their favorite movies will unlikely be able to max the HDD out in the foreseeable future. But, as we've said in the "What to look for" section, it is seldom a bad idea to err on the side of caution. As long as you aren't sacrificing performance or reliability in return, getting a bigger HDD than necessary won't hurt you.

Plus, there's just something about the freedom that you get with a spacious drive, when you don't have to worry about running out of space and can just install whatever feels like necessary or appealing at the time.

What we like about this version of Seagate Barracuda is how overall balanced and cost-effective the model is. It doesn't go overboard with any of its features or specs nor does it feel underwhelming in just about any category. With hard drives, it all starts with the capacity.

Here, you'll have 2 terabytes of storage space at your disposal. As far as we're concerned, it is the perfect amount for your average user. Two terabytes offer more than enough for a solid gaming library. It is just the right amount of storage space for a decent Blu-ray movie collection or the most extensive collection of full HD titles. It is a nice choice for people who like TV series but aren't that fond of streaming services.

Aside from the model's capacity, there are a few things that do not necessarily help it stand out from the crowd but ought to be mentioned just as well. Like most modern hard drives, the model work through the SATA 6Gb/s interface.

Of course, that 6Gb/s value doesn't really play a factor here. Simply put, it is the SATA speed, a specification describes the highest potential speed of a SATA connection. But there isn't an HDD out there that is capable of transferring data at that sort of speed.

That said, it does optimize the drive's burst performance. It won't make that much of a difference down the stretch but it will prove useful in different gaming scenarios like loading the location and the units present in that location.

WD Blue is a younger brother of WD Black, the earlier entry on our list. Most of its specs aren't quite as impressive. But the model incorporates most of the same performance and safety technologies. On top of that, it costs about 4 times less, so there's that too.

Sure, its 1-terabyte capacity is more or the less what you would consider the bare minimum these days. Now, don't get us wrong - it is still more than enough for your average user today. We seldom store that much information on our computers nowadays. It is all about cloud storage and streaming services. More often than not, we don't store movies on our PCs and laptops. Why would we? We have Netflix, Hulu, YouTube, and other streaming services for that. We don't really store music. Again, there's Youtube, iTunes, Google Play, and other similar platforms.

About the only thing that most people store these days on their computers are video games. And, for that, 1 terabyte of storage space should be more than enough. Even the most massive AAA titles require about 50 gigabytes of available space. So, as you'd imagine, you'll have plenty of space for quite a few games.

Of course, if you happen to be an avid gamer, sooner or later you will run out of that space. But nobody plays more than 10-15 games at a time on a semi-regular basis, so if you just occasionally delete the ones that you've already finished or those that you don't plan on playing anytime soon, you should easily be able to make it work.

This iteration of Seagate Barracuda is, for the most part, a pretty basic internal hard disk drive. Though HDD relies on a somewhat outdated mechanical approach to storage and data transfer, no PC is complete without it. And that is exactly what this model offers you. For a rather reasonable price, it will help you complete your rig.

Now, it isn't like this is a bad product. On the contrary, there is quite a lot to it. It's just that some of its specs are a tad underwhelming compared to other models in this review. For example, the drive's rotation speed of 5400 RPM isn't bad. it will give you solid transfer rates. It's just that it is noticeably slower in comparison to its 7200 RPM counterparts.

That said, it does have a few things going for it. For one, it features 128 megabytes of cache space. For a budget model, that is nothing short of impressive given that most HDDs won't give you more than 64 to work with and the only ones that feature 128 and 256 MB of cache space are usually a lot more expensive than that.

That cache space that this Seagate Barracuda offers will make up for the drive's shortcomings in the RPM department. Capable of storing and moving 128 megabytes of data at a time, it will streamline data transfer to a point where you won't likely notice the difference between this HDD and its less affordable counterparts.