keeping my /casual/ standard in informing current consumer technology trends : I have tried to be as user-friendly as possible and edited this post several times counting down days opening into James Cameron’s ‘Avatar’ movie, but if you find this still complicated as you read on : simply flip / roll down to the bottom of the page where I will offer a few recommendations on purchasing current best-value-for-the-Won HDD’s

first-off : a Hard Disk Drive constantly rotates most of the time you are working on a computer, so should be handled most delicately more, than you would your most beloved person or pet . when purchasing you can pay on-line but try to go pick it up yourself . and NEVER ever shake it to see if it makes noise . and back-up its contents if it is valuable data, at least every Season .

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in the old saying AND custom of the old Orient : you organize your belongings and cleanse your body in the final days leading up to the end of the year to get rid of all things bad AND un-necessary then prepare for a bright AND fruitful New Year . this end-of-the-Year rite AND New Years and more so Lunar New Years – where beginning AND ending highly revered – is the second most followed holidays only after ThanksGiving in the whole of Korea –  for ofcourse here too we thank the land for feeding us in association with the importance of family in traditional Asian culture .

but the ritual has been evolving on another dimension multiplying in speed of itself AND of the computer .

  1. when personal computers became office and soon household necessities it was the ‘files’ that had to be deleted AND organized at the end of the year .
  2. then came those tons of pictures so easily accessible from the World-Wide-Web, that became cheap reference material for many start-up dot-com companies in the nineties .
  3. soon after came proliferation of mp3 music filez that is still now jeopardizing the music industry .
  4. and over the Millennium : video filez . here I distinguish ‘filez’ from ‘files’ in entering the ‘grey’ area of legitimacy .

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this might have been a simpler issue in context as well as the solution IT technology were somehow to slow down .. but no, Moore’s Law holds true as ever, as our computers double the speed every other year, and in some categories : more (Ouch !) . and you can see it unfolding right in front of your LCD screen especially in South Korea now dubbed “The Nation with the FASTEST Domestic Internet Connection in the Whole-Wide World”.

in short : it is time again to organize your HDD Hard Disk Drive . yes the contents too but time to evaluate if the time is right to exchange it all together or upgrade to a larger one .

that said, it is most wise to sell your HDD Hard Disk Drive in a year or a year-and-a-half, given most manufacturer’s product support coming 2 ~ 3 years from MANUFACTURE DATE in South Korea . with HDD Hard Disk Drives containing THE most moving parts in a computer aside from cooling fans you would buy them at the country of intended use . here are HDD’s sold in South Korea AND general consensus attached to its use by company, in the order of most use but NOT necessarily my recommendation :

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[ HDD Hard Disk Drive Manufacturers sold in South Korea ]
  1. SamSung : yes it sells well NOT because it is a superb product line (with a few exceptions now-and-then when a specific model rumours to last long ~) but of its accessibility AND no-questions-asked exchange policy . great, when it goes wrong : you take it to a nearest SamSung showroom doubling as support center and they’ll exchange it on-the-spot with sincere apologies, but a reliable HDD Hard Disk Drive SHOULDN’T go kaput so often in the first place – and even in my personal experience the past decade : one-out-of-FIVE easily goes dead within 2 months to a year . but I should point out for any of the rest of the makers below : you would have to bring it in (send HDDs via courrier or post ONLY when you have to because it gets tossed around – so even if you buy it on-line try to go pick it up yourself) where usually there is only ONE point of receiving address in ALL of Korea AND usually wait an hour or more for them to check it with barely an apology .
  2. SeaGate : any tech-conscious user would pass on SamSung and use either this or WD below and each person’s stigma on perceived speed, noise AND heat varies and heats up debate on every other model on related communities .
  3. Western Digital : my preference to-date for they offer some keen technologies attached to its size but again, it is dependent on the importers’ sales strategy at certain times . for some offer better price AND/OR longer support .
  4. Hitachi : used less in South Korea in the Millennium than end-of-the-past-Decade and now centered on smaller 2.5″ laptop / notebook drives . I should add here we will be concerned with SSD and HDD Hard Disk Drives for desktop computer systems and NOT laptops / notebooks, for whom the makers AND use shifts considerably .

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[Q] yeah great, but WHY should you buy an HDD in the city that you are going to be using (for a year or longer), rather than bring the one/s bought back at home town OR order from abroad if it is cheaper ?

[A] because as noted above in the beginning, Hard Disk Drives contain constantly moving parts thus much more chance of something going wrong than any other components of a computer, perhaps with the exception of cooling fans (buy the way : cooling fans are deemed unusable NOT when they halt to rotate BUT as soon as they start making rattling noice – even a bit).

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[ Which HDD Capacity to Choose ]

currently available models within reasonable price come in range of 500GB, 750GB, 1TB, 1.5TB AND 2TB .
and perhaps Hard Disk Drive capacity is the measuring yard of changing times in the modern world since the birth of personal computers .
and at any given time there are such a thing as the Best-Bang-for-the-Buck capacity .
and now it is 1TB AND 1.5 TB . ofcourse the larger the better for you can cram more files into it . BUT you should NOT buy more than you need .

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[ Recommended Models ]

for every long-term computer user there is such a thing as a favourite HDD maker, and for me they are either Western Digital OR SeaGate . usually this experience comes from NOT choosing those manufacturers with whom you have had bad experiences such as one starting irrational noice OR even going dead . among them I have especially BAD experice with SamSung and I should tell you I regularly update HDD’s with distinctive use for either OS (operating system) OR storage .

a common consensus among the geek/nerd/Otaku/Paein circles in South Korea is that only novices who don’t keep important files AND need close access to support centers use SamSung . they are especially considered unstable among newer technology and barrier-breaking larger capacities – in current case over 1.5TB .

but SamSung F3 line of models which come in either 500GB and 1TB, are rumoured to be quite stable, so if you DON’T need super-large capacity AND want close access to product support .. go for it .
Spinpoint F3 HD502HJ 7200 rp/min uses only plates with 500 Gb volume

otherwise, here are other options to consider :

  • if you need super-large capacity in the latest 2TB range, (IBM-turned) Hitachi comes at the lowest price barely below W200,000 mark .
  • then comes your choice for storage . yes, NOT for your main operating drive BUT the rest where you will store all your tons of movies AND graphic or video processing files . these HDD’s are NOT hyped to run at maximum speed BUT quite the opposite to run slow, one step behind the latest whizzing technology for you don’t ALWAYS to keep accessing these files . here it will be either Western Digital’s Caviar GREEN OR SeaGate’s Baracuda LP models .

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– Korea Tech BLog December 2009 –