Best Kind of Hard Drive?

[prism]

I'm in the market for a new hard drive to replace my old 40GB 7200 RPM IDE drive, but I'm confused with all of the newer formats of hard drives. I'm looking for something in the 80-100 GB range, at least 7200 RPM with an 8MB buffer, and I have a new MSI Nforce4 mobo that supports all the hard drive formats. Which format gives the best transfer rate?

 

[araczynski]

format as in SATA or IDE?

sata/ide perform about the same, might as well get sata if you can.

your choices in that size range point basically at either a seagate raptor or anything else. the raptops will be slightly faster, but more expensive. depends on how much money you have to spend. personally any small speed benefits that the raptors have are negated by their small sizes, so i doubt i'll ever bother to buy one. i tend to upgrade my drives based on their storage amounts, not really their speeds.

granted i won't get something slower then what i have, i don't know if that's even technically possible these days, but every drive upgrade i get has to be double the storage (minimum) of what its replacing.

 

[brxndxn]

SCSI gives the best transfer rate But.. that's expensive, hot, and loud and I doubt you want to do that.

Or, you could get a 10,000rpm WD Raptor - but I think those are stupid and I'll tell you why. A Raptor spins faster to move data faster - that's great and all, but it sacrifices size and it creates a lot more heat than a normal hard drive. You can usually buy a 250gb PATA (Parallel ATA - old style) hard drive for the same price as an SATA 74GB Raptor.

However, the larger the hard drive, the more dense the data. So, in theory, a 400GB hard drive with two 200GB platters would have to travel less distance (thus spin slower) to transfer the same speed as a 100GB hard drive with two 50GB platters.

So.. after this.. here's what I'd recommend: Buy the hard drive with best price to storage ratio regardless of interface. The transfer speeds among hard drives are not going to get you better frame rates in video games. Hell.. the transfer rates between 7200rpm PATA and SATA hard drives isn't exactly that great. Fast hard drives will get you faster boot times, unzipping, cd-burning, or game-loading..

But, if you're like me, you might not want to trust all your data to a single drive. So, in that case, keep two hard drives in your computer and make sure your important data is on both of them.

Hope that helped.. now go browse the Hotdeals forum to get a good deal on a hard drive.

 

[ValuedCustomer]

why only 80-100 gig? here's a 160 gig SATA WD for 85 bucks.. I'd get this if I was on a budget.

 

[foodfightr]

New seagate .9 series coming very soon! Worth waiting for!

 

[DerelictDev]

Def. get either a seagate 7200.8 or the newer 7200.9 series drives.

Fast (scores better on benchmarks than raptors - in most cases), quiet, reliable, and dont heat up too much.

 

[prism]

What are the differences between SATA, Ultra ATA and Serial ATA?

 

[tweekah]

SATA=Serial ATA
PATA/UDMA= Ultra ATA/Parallel ATA/IDE

Right now the speed of the two are nearly identical. However SATA has more bandwidth potential versus IDE especially SATA II/III
I'm pretty sure your nforce 4 mobo has SATA connectors. Rumor states SATA drives draw less power.

I'd hop on a 7200rpm SATA drive if I were you =)

 

[TraumaRN]

Or you can get this samsung drive 200GB for under 100 bucks, it's the drive I use in my new system, works great and whisper quiet

 

[w00t]

Originally posted by: DerelictDev
Def. get either a seagate 7200.8 or the newer 7200.9 series drives.

Fast (scores better on benchmarks than raptors - in most cases), quiet, reliable, and dont heat up too much.

the only hd's companies i would buy

seagate
samsung
hitachi

 

[Bona Fide]

Originally posted by: DeathBUA
Or you can get this samsung drive 200GB for under 100 bucks, it's the drive I use in my new system, works great and whisper quiet

 

[foodfightr]

Originally posted by: w00t

Originally posted by: DerelictDev
Def. get either a seagate 7200.8 or the newer 7200.9 series drives.

Fast (scores better on benchmarks than raptors - in most cases), quiet, reliable, and dont heat up too much.

the only hd's companies i would buy

seagate
samsung
hitachi

or western digital

me personally, don't settle for less than seagate especially when .9 series comes out!

 

[alimoalem]

it really depends on what you do with your computer imo. if shedding a few milliseconds here and shedding a few seconds there doesn't really matter and you're just looking for reliability at a cheap price, i'd go with SATA or possible even IDE. if you want performance, go either SCSI u320 or raptor.

 

[TGS]

Find a suitable size to cost ratio. Find the drives that fit the bill, and check out the benchmarks at storagereview.com.

 

[love2skate824]

well 250gb is the sweet spot right now for price-performance, but theres some nice seagtes and wd's for 100gb. id go for the 160gb for like 5 bucks more.

 

[alimoalem]

agree with ^^ 160 gb drives are some of the cheapest and have very low cents/gb cost. 160gb drives can easily be had at under$80.

 

[furballi]

160GB 7200 rpm 8MB Seagate drive with 5 yr warranty costs about $30 if on sale.

 

[navyac]

Originally posted by: furballi
160GB 7200 rpm 8MB Seagate drive with 5 yr warranty costs about $30 if on sale.

link?