A newbie-ish question on HD's

Ender

Golden Member
Jul 24, 2001
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Hi, I was wondering, which would HD would offer me the higher performance in gaming, and net surfing. The IBM Deskstar 60GXP 60 Gig HD or the Seagate Cheetah X15 36LP 36 Gig HD.

I understand that the cheetah has over double the RPM of the IBM.. but it also has tripple if not quadruple the price of the cost for the 60GXP and am wondering if it will offer me a significant performance boost to justify it's cost. I am mainly into gaming and net surfing so I won't be doing any office applications but will be learning C++ or a similar language this year.

Cost isn't really a big issue.. but I rather go away from the table with the better deal in terms of my needs. If anyone can help me.. thanks.
 

lilnnjaboy

Senior member
May 1, 2001
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Well seeming that the IBM deskstar is a IDE drive and the Seagate is a SCSI drive, you should understand the differences there. Always SCSI would be faster and better. SCSI devices can read multiple devices at once, and IDE only one at a time, which explains the large difference between the access times.

The IBM would be sufficient in doing the gaming and web surfing. SO it merely comes to the cost issue and how much money you are willing to spend.
 

Ender

Golden Member
Jul 24, 2001
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Ugh, sorry for my idiocy but i'm not really familiar with IDE vs SCSI conflict.. but thanks for the helpful advice.

So the seagate would perform MUCH faster then the IBM, enough to rationalize it's cost in the areas of gaming and net surfing?

Again, sorry for my stupidity.. just starting to learn in the areas of computers =(
 

lilnnjaboy

Senior member
May 1, 2001
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it's ok...if you want to really learn about SCSI go to the Adaptec Website and they have some good reading on it. that's why we have this great forum. To learn =).
 

wfbberzerker

Lifer
Apr 12, 2001
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i dont know if it would rationalize the cost, as not only would you have to buy the more expensive hard drive, but you would also have to buy a scsi card (in order to use the hard drive). in my opinion, you should buy the ibm hard drive. and, if you want, you can later buy a second hard drive, and a RAID adaptor (or raid motherboard). RAID is a way to hook up 2 hard drives, so it appears as one drive (it also gives a performance boost of 5-10%). so, for now you should really just buy the ibm drive.