Storage drive wishlist

Storage drives are an important part of a gamer’s PC. Whether they’re SSDs used for operating systems and game files to increase boot speed and decrease loading times, or they’re HDDs used to cost-effectively store large volumes of data.

Each has a place in the modern gamers PC and since new storage isn’t likely to hurt your performance you may as well stock up. Here are some of the best products around at the moment.

OCZ Vertex 4 512GB

Large and in charge, the OCZ Vertex 4 512GB is the 2.5 inch form factor SSD to get if you’re looking for incredible performance with enough capacity for a Windows drive (complete with games storage).

With sequential read/write speeds of 560/510 MB/s, and random 4K IOPS reads of 95,000, the drive macthes every performance task you’ll set. What’s more, it has a MTBF of 2 million hours, supports TRIM and uses the tried and tested Indilinx Everest 2 controller for maximum reliability.

It’s pricey, but for this performance pay the man with a smile on your face.

OCZ Vertex 4 SSD

OCZ Agility 3 128GB

If you can’t quite stretch to the Vertex 4, OCZ’s Agility 3 range is the next best thing.

Offering one of the best price/performance ratio’s around, the Vertex 3 128GB can be found for under R1,000 locally, and offers enough performance for you to never go back to hard disk drives ever again. Sporting sequential read/write speeds of 525/500 MB/s, and random 4K IOPS reads of 50,000, the drive outperforms any mechanical drive comfortably.

Even better, 128GB is enough for an operating system and all of your most played games. You might not be able to dump your entire steam collection on it, but with a little management you can fit things in quite comfortably.

OCZ Agility 3 SSD

Western Digital Caviar Black 4TB SATA 6G

SSDs are great if you’re pushing the performance boundary and want the fastest thing around, but they fall horribly short when it comes to capacity.

With the Western Digital Caviar Black 4TB it’s go big or go home. The drive comes with a high price tag, but in return offers exceptional performance (for an HDD), reliability, and capacity, which makes it worth the amount you shell out for the drive.

Western Digital Caviar Black 4TB

Seagate Barracuda 2TB SATA 6G

Gamers who can’t afford astronomically priced HDD storage also need drives that can reliably store their bulk data, and there is no better way than the Seagate Barracuda 2TB.

Seagate large capacity drives have long been the workhorse of the regular gamer and besides a few issues with drives 2 or so years back, the brand is known for it’s reliability. The performance doesn’t compare to the latest and greatest high capacity HDDs; but then again who needs incredible performance if all you’re doing is storing data.

The drive is a great buy and essential for anyone who likes backing up data and collecting Linux distros.