Faster?

[=98=]

Which of these two options is quicker at reading data for things like BF2?

I am going to buy one of the two

Don't post unless you know...

[Argo91]

Re: Faster?

I only know a bit about hard drives, but I would go for the 2 x 80 SATA300 setup because for a start that uses SATA2 which has double the bandwith of SATA150 in the raptor, which should mean faster loading times and such. I have an Hitachi Desktar 160gb Sata2 and it loads games pretty quickly, and at the time was cheap, and probably cheaper now (say around £40). Also i've heard running in RAID0 should increase performance. Hope this helps. :)

[megawhompertoo]

Re: Faster?

Don't post unless you know...

Ill infomed question. Post the specific "80gb SATA 3.0gb/s" you are considering. A 16mb cache in a decent 7200 rpm drive closes the gap substantially (and it will be cooler, quieter, and suck less energy) against a 10,000 rpm drive; put two decent 80gb's in RAID0 and the difference is basically null, except that you keep alot more money in your pocket.

edit: sorry. see your hd's in your sig.

you're better going with the maxtors in RAID0 if you must squeak out every last bit of performance. word of caution: don't keep the only copy of your dissertation (or any other critical information/data) on a RAID0 array.

[Mad Ad]

Re: Faster?

The real bottleneck (and slowest part) of a drive is the speed of the platter vs head mechanism, not whether it has SATA, SATA2 or an 8GB cache. The sata bandwidth is constant so it just sends less data bursts the faster the interface operates and to make use of a cache, the unit must do lots of things but most importantly, you must stop demanding data from the platter for one to fill with what it thinks you want next.

If it gets it right you get a nice little burst, otherwise it throws it away and your back to the limits of the platter speed. Back to your original Q, the chances are the maxtors are single platter units, in which case in raid 0 on an str test they will be marginally slower than a single raptor (double, much slower) but in a seek test the maxtors will be poor- as with all raid questions, it all depends what kind of data you are expecting to use in the stripe as its not just as simple as combining the numbers from both drives.

[=98=]

Re: Faster?

Both the drives have 8mb cache and an average seek time of about 9ms. I am planning just to keep Windows XP and a few games on it as i already have a 400gb SATA drive for keeping everything else on E.g. Music, videos etc...

Plus, by getting the two Maxtors it saves me about £20 which will hopefully go towards a new Scythe Ninja HSF.