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8mb cache killing my speed? Barracuda 7200rpm 200gb drive

Matt_Stevens

Matt_Stevens

Senior member
My friend gave me his unused Seagate Barracuda drive to use as a system (OS) HD in my Shuttle. This one...

http://www.google.com/products/catalog?hl=en&q=ST3200822AS&sqi=2&cid=3008150350365976238#p

I had a Green 1TB WD and it was 5400 rpm and certainly slow at times. I've put Win7 64bit on the Seagate and yes, it runs faster than the Green drive, but I feel like at times it is bottlenecking.

Running the Windows performance my score is 5.4. Everything scores 7.0 but the hard drive. It's got the 5.4. I want a better score than that.

So is the low cache the culprit? I'd be happy to be a newer drive for the OS with 32 or even 64mb of cache if I can easily clone over to it. The last thing I want to do is go ahead and do another install, especially since one piece of software I put on this thing is a one shot deal. The license will not allow me to install again. So I need to clone. Which I have never attempted before.

Any advice would be appreciated. I'd like to keep the OS drive relatively small, but I do see that if I want the larger cache, I have to buy much larger drives. Like 500GB+.

Much thanks.
 
It is probably slower than the green drive due to data density, not the cache.

Wipe the drive and use the license key again, this time on the green drive. I've never heard of any (legit) Windows license that can only be used for a single install and never used again after a reinstall.

Also, the windows score is pretty meaningless. Don't worry about it.
 
Software is perfectly legit. It's a downloadable student version that has a single install. That's just how it goes. 🙁

The green drive is too slow for what I want. I really do want a faster OS drive. No more bottlenecks.
 
It is good for a single install, yes. But once you wipe (format) the drive, you can "reuse" it for the new install, since it will be the only copy running that license key.

For speed, you can get one of the fastest HDDs, the Samsung F3 500GB drive for $50.

Drop a little extra cash and you can get a smaller entry level SSD.
 
Yeah, even student keys should be good for re-installs, on largely the same hardware (same mobo as a minimum). If it truely is a one-install, and that's it, key, then it was sold to you illegally.
 
They hit the nail on the head with the data density. Don't expect your windows score to go up even with the fastest HDD though, I don't think I've seen a windows score over 5.9 on a non-raid array. But you'll notice a significant speed increase going to a modern 7200 RPM drive
 
Matt_Stevens said:
So is the low cache the culprit?
Click to expand...

No. The drive being old is the culprit. More precisely, it being an old design (Seagate model 7200.7) as actual age of the drive shouldn't matter as long as it still works properly.

Basically just as CPUs and graphics cards have gotten faster over time, hard drives have gotten faster over time. If you don't need much space and want a fast cheap drive, look for either a Seagate 7200.12 (FIVE generations newer than 7200.7) 250GB or 500GB drive, or a Samsung F4 320GB drive.
 
It wasn't sold to me illegally. It was downloaded officially from the University website under the student account. I don't mess with illegal software. What I am doing is emailing the support contact listed on the page for an answer.

That Samsung looks interesting, but everywhere I go I read of serious reliability issues (as in, high failure rate). Then again, damn near all hard drives have massive failure rates if you look at the reviews. It makes deciding tough.
 
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Matt_Stevens said:
It wasn't sold to me illegally. It was downloaded officially from the University website under the student account. I don't mess with illegal software. What I am doing is emailing the support contact listed on the page for an answer.

That Samsung looks interesting, but everywhere I go I read of serious reliability issues (as in, high failure rate). Then again, damn near all hard drives have massive failure rates if you look at the reviews. It makes deciding tough.
Click to expand...

I believe it is a legit copy, which is why you would be able to wipe the drive and do a fresh install with the key. Only an illegal copy would try to claim you couldn't do that with the license.

Most user reviews will talk about failures because most people only post to say they got a bad drive. Failure rates for drives are U shaped, high at the very start, almost non existent for years, then high again later. If your drive is still standing after a couple weeks, consider it ok. Also note that plenty of hard drive failures are due to temperature.
 
I'm close to snagging the Samsung, but there is a 640GB WD that has very good notes. WD6401AALS. I know two people that have that drive in systems where they edit via CS5 under Win7.

And I can probably find the license key in the Office 2010 that we installed (that is the program in question). Waiting on a response from support.

Many years ago I had a bad run of failed drives. Two WD's, a seagate and two maxtors all in about four years. Since then I have been okay and always always back up stuff externally. SyncToy has been my friend.
 
Matt_Stevens said:
I'm close to snagging the Samsung, but there is a 640GB WD that has very good notes. WD6401AALS. I know two people that have that drive in systems where they edit via CS5 under Win7.
Click to expand...

The Samsung F3 is quite a bit faster than the WD 640 Black. Not to mention it's about 9000x quieter.
 
hmm i found the velociraptors to be really fast. they cost alot but the access time is really low and a pair of them in raid-0 seems to do very fast linear write (without worry about degradation) - good for linear video editing. plus i can pop them out and stuff them into 2.5" SFF frames and use them in servers. nice.
 
Tsavo said:
The Samsung F3 is quite a bit faster than the WD 640 Black. Not to mention it's about 9000x quieter.
Click to expand...
I'm thinking of buying both at the moment. The only thing worrying me about the Samsung is that it has more reports of failure than I'd like to hear. Especially considering not that many Samsungs are sold in this country.

EDIT: Scratch that. I just ordered both the Samsung and the WD. The Samsung will be my OS drive and I'll use the Western Digital as my scratch drive for now. My older WD Green drive will be for storage and all my wife's junk, which is substantial.
 
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SSD is in my future. Just not my immediate future. 🙂 Raid is difficult because I have a Shuttle and my only inclination towards raids is with mirroring. My current system is the only one over the last eight or nine years to not have a Mirrored RAID. That is due to my having an external that i use daily for backup.
 
No raid.

Tech got back to me on the Office 2010 install and basically said, "Find out your product key and you're fine." They didn't tell me how, so I googled, downloaded a program and found the key. Now I am not worried about wiping the drive and starting over.
 
Matt_Stevens said:
My current system is the only one over the last eight or nine years to not have a Mirrored RAID. That is due to my having an external that i use daily for backup.
Click to expand...

RAID1 is not a backup. Sure, you are protected if one drive dies, but what happens if someone accidentally deletes something important, or you get a massive virus infection that overwrites stuff, or the partition becomes corrupted?
 
Not officially, but after numerous HD failures in the 90's, I had had enough. RAID solved that problem. Even if a drive fails and my backup is screwed, I am okay. It happened one too. The RAID saved me. That was many years ago though. Since then I have been a-okay.
 
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