SATA Hard Drive Advice

[socalcaz]

I would like to get a hard drive that will take advatage of my SATA compatible motherboard, to improve general system performance (loading times, DVD ripping, etc.)? I plan on getting a fast hard drive for applications and using my 250gb IDE hard drive for music and data storage. I am thinking of getting this drive:

Western Digital Raptor

Any other suggestions or recommendations?

[|CBW|Simon]

Re: SATA Hard Drive Advice

Make sure your MB doesn't support the newer 300 transfer speeds. If it does, I'd take the higher transfer rate over the 10,000 RPM on the 150 you've chosen. If 150 is your MB's max, then this is a great drive.

Make sure your drivers are running at ultra DMA later instead of PIO. Search for a post with PIO and SATA in it and you will find a good 'how to' guide on this.

Simon

[imported_bigpappa]

Re: SATA Hard Drive Advice

hehe, that is the same drive i want to get. i also found this interesting article. from my understanding a raid configuration would be faster than a single raptor.

http://www.tomshardware.com/2006/02/06/wd1500ad_raptor_xtends_performance_lead/page8.html

[|CBW|Simon]

Re: SATA Hard Drive Advice

Your MB would have to support Raid.

Any situation where you have data striping between two or more drives going on will theoretically double the speed. In real practice, it never seems to be as fast as it should be for the money and setup trouble. This is in my limited experience only and I can say that at the time I worked on them, it was all new to me and my issues could have been of my own creation.

[socalcaz]

Re: SATA Hard Drive Advice

Based on the info here it looks like my MB does support "300" transfer speeds. Are the new 300 transfer speed drives you refer to titled "SATA 3.0 Gb/s"? How about this drive:

Seagate Barracuda

Other drive recommendations?

[megawhompertoo]

Re: SATA Hard Drive Advice

Based on the info here it looks like my MB does support "300" transfer speeds. Are the new 300 transfer speed drives you refer to titled "SATA 3.0 Gb/s"? How about this drive:

Seagate Barracuda

Other drive recommendations?

Today's drives are not physically capable of delivering near 3.0gb/s. The plates just don't spin that fast. The drive manufacturer's IMPLY that you are getting 3.0gb/s data transfer. You are not. You are getting an INTERFACE that is THEORETICALLY possible of 3.0gb/s data stream.

It is a marketing gimmick. Pick the SATA-I(1.5gb/s) or the SATA-II(3.0gb/s) based on the price-per-megabyte, keeping your budget in mind, and pay no attention to the silly marketing wh0re behind the curtain.

Don't forget that Samsung makes good, reliable, quiet, cheap (but not bargain-basement) HD's. People report having lots of problems with Maxtors--Dell uses them!

Western Digital makes great HD's too, as does Seagate.

Oh, in case you don't believe me about the marketing gimmick, from Seagate's very own website, read up on it here: http://www.seagate.com/products/interface/sata/faq.html

Or just let me quote the relevant part here:

Disc drive data rates have not exceeded ATA100 limits yet, so why should I switch to SATA?
The maximum internal data rate on an IDE disc drive today is around 72 Mbytes/sec. The ATA/100 data transfer rate has not been reached, but one of the reasons IDE performance is where it is today is the expandable data path PATA has allowed. That data path in PATA has reached its limit. SATA allows disc drives to continue to offer performance and reliability at cost parity to PATA. In addition, SATA interface requires less voltage, meaning better power consumption and management in both desktop and mobile applications. The thinner cable allows for flexible designs and improved airflow in smaller form factors.

The important part here is that if SATA won't go faster than an ATA100, then SATA-I won't go faster than SATA-II.

[venny]

Re: SATA Hard Drive Advice

what mega said is true. the 3gb/s and 1.5gb/s is really not true. u can google it if u are unconvinced. the raptor is really the true performer. especially 2 150gb raptors at 10k rpm on raid 0 will beat almost all the hdd out there. its high rpm + large cache + ncq + raid 0 is pretty much unbeatable. unless of course, 2 raptors will blow an instant hole in your pocket for a few months.

[socalcaz]

Re: SATA Hard Drive Advice

Thank you everyone for the input, very informative. I am going to get the Western Digital Raptor WD740ADFD 74GB 10,000 RPM 16MB Cache Serial ATA150 Hard Drive

[venny]

Re: SATA Hard Drive Advice

if u have the money, put 2 of them on raid 0 to get the ultimate hard disk configuration. though i heard it goes quite hot after some time. might need some fans around it.

[megawhompertoo]

Re: SATA Hard Drive Advice

Thank you everyone for the input, very informative. I am going to get the Western Digital Raptor WD740ADFD 74GB 10,000 RPM 16MB Cache Serial ATA150 Hard Drive

looks like a great hd to me, too. if it is close to the rest of your components (i.e. if you put it in under/on top of your current HD), then you may want to put a fan around it, as ^ suggested.

RAID 0 with a twin brother hd will give you a little more performance, for 2x the money. It's a hassle to set up if you don't know what you're doing, and these set ups are more prone to irrecoverable data failures. Maybe not such a big deal if you just lose your OS and saved games and have to reinstall, but if you've got anything critical on your PC, you need to back it up every week on a DVD-RW or something.

I wouldn't do it, but my budget and my priorities aren't yours.

[socalcaz]

Re: SATA Hard Drive Advice

I agree with you mega, $140 on a 74 gig drive is about as far as I am willing to go for performance. It is the final piece to my rig I built several months ago. Thanks again for your advice.

[megawhompertoo]

Re: SATA Hard Drive Advice

I agree with you mega, $140 on a 74 gig drive is about as far as I am willing to go for performance. It is the final piece to my rig I built several months ago. Thanks again for your advice.

no prob.

if you are running a secondary, fairly modern (>2mb cache, 7200rpm) hd (not RAID 0, mind you, but just a regular secondary), don't forget to put the windows swapfile (pagefile) on it, after you defrag it. this will also help performance if windows is able to access the pagefile on a second hd, at the same time as it's accessing your program info on the primary one.

for more info:

https://www.tweakguides.com