A new 7200 drive on a BH6 (ATA/33) board, is it worth it?

[elgeorge]

Hello Guys,

I'm currently shopping for a new HD for my computer, a P2-450 on a BH6 mobo(ata/33), I can only spend $100. I'm trying to decide between a 60GB-5400rpm western digital or a 40Gb-7200rpm Maxtor(both less than $100). What would you recommend?. Having a 7200rpm drive on a ata/33 board would be like wasting it?. Should I stick with the 5400 and have those additional 20Gb ?

Thanks in advance for your opinions.

George

 

[oldfart]

ATA33 will limit you to ~ 33 MB/sec STR. That Maxtor is good for ~ 42 MB/sec. You can get a PCI ATA66 or ATA100 card pretty cheap. That would allow the full speed of a faster drive.

 

[4824guy]

The 7200 rpm drive probably performs faster than the 5400 rpm HD. So, if this new HD is to be your boot-up HD with the OS, get that. Your PC will perform faster. But, If this new HD is to be used as a secondary HD for storage purposes, the bigger 5400 rpm drive would be fine.

 

[eplebnista]

Yes.

EDIT: Yes, it would be worth putting a new 7200RPM drive with a new PCI controller card with your existing set-up.


My $.02,
eplebnista

 

[elgeorge]

<< Yes. >>



Yes.....what?

Thx

 

[Jhhnn]

You can't judge a drive by it's spindle speed or ATA rating, you have to get a little deeper, like they do at Storagereview.com.

If the WD drive you're considering is of the same family as the 80gig model they recently tested, you won't really lose much of anything, particularly on your system. The only time the ATA33 limitation would be noticeable is when transferring large files from the outer part of the drive. Check it out.

7200rpm drives are "generally" faster, but that doesn't mean always faster, or that you'll actually benefit from that.