Boot drive - Larger size faster?

[dreamx]

Hi

presently my os is running on a sata2 80GB hdd..

im planning to get a larger hdd in the future, probably a 320GB...
should i move my os to the larger drive?
will it be faster? pls advice

 

[yakki1234]

size doesn't matter in this case. speed is determined by the spindle speed, cache size and access time, assuming you're using ntsf (standard windows xp file system).

 

[PurdueRy]

Originally posted by: yakki1234
size doesn't matter in this case. speed is determined by the spindle speed, cache size and access time, assuming you're using ntsf (standard windows xp file system).

Size does matter. In general, larger drives ARE faster. However, in this case I would either partition the 320 for a OS and then a storage partition or I would continue using the 80 gig for windows as I would want much more space as a "storage" drive

 

[yakki1234]

that's news to me... with all other specs being the same, how does size effect speed?

 

[PurdueRy]

Originally posted by: yakki1234
that's news to me... with all other specs being the same, how does size effect speed?

Higher Platter density

 

[yakki1234]

that's factored in with access time so that's all you have to look at. you're assuming all other parts are the same with just different plates or the same manufactorer. to compare how fast the drive is, you shouldn't look at size. the things i mentioned above is more important. if all you want is a speed improvement over your 80gig, you're not going to see much of it if all other specs being the same.

 

[dreamx]

Originally posted by: PurdueRy

Originally posted by: yakki1234
that's news to me... with all other specs being the same, how does size effect speed?

Higher Platter density

thats what im thinking of too...
the 320GB have 160GB/platter compare to the 80GB which only have 80GB/platter

i also want to know is the speed increase obvious? like windows boot-up time etc ?

 

[yakki1234]

i have a sata 75 gig and a 40gig western digital with nearly identical specs and there's virtually no difference when i upgraded from teh 40 to 75. if you want speed, get two hard drives and specify the vitural memory on one and the os on the other.

 

[Suspicious-Teach8788]

Originally posted by: dreamx

Originally posted by: PurdueRy

Originally posted by: yakki1234
that's news to me... with all other specs being the same, how does size effect speed?

Higher Platter density

thats what im thinking of too...
the 320GB have 160GB/platter compare to the 80GB which only have 80GB/platter

i also want to know is the speed increase obvious? like windows boot-up time etc ?

You need to make sure you're not comparing today's 160gb/platter and 3 years' ago's 80gb/platter. Yea my 7K250 which uses 80gb/platter is slow as hell compared to my 7200.10 320gb which uses 160gb/platter, but I'm pretty sure today's 80gb platter drives also have newer firmware which contributes to the speed boost....

 

[mathew7]

Originally posted by: DLeRium

Originally posted by: dreamx

Originally posted by: PurdueRy

Originally posted by: yakki1234
that's news to me... with all other specs being the same, how does size effect speed?

Higher Platter density

thats what im thinking of too...
the 320GB have 160GB/platter compare to the 80GB which only have 80GB/platter

i also want to know is the speed increase obvious? like windows boot-up time etc ?

You need to make sure you're not comparing today's 160gb/platter and 3 years' ago's 80gb/platter. Yea my 7K250 which uses 80gb/platter is slow as hell compared to my 7200.10 320gb which uses 160gb/platter, but I'm pretty sure today's 80gb platter drives also have newer firmware which contributes to the speed boost....

You cannot increase a drives speed without mechanical changes. If you compare 3 years ago 80G HDDs with todays 80GB HDDs, if they have the same platter densities and spinning speed, you will not see much improvement. The only difference could be access time with improved head mechanics.
But todays 80GB HDDs actually can have 160GB platters, but use only one head (side).
Speed is determined mainly by platter density and spindle speed. But latency is also an issue.
For example, the 1st 500GB perpendicular HDD from Seagate had 3 166GB platters, while the competition had 4 125GB platters. Guess which was faster at linear transfers? Same size, but ST had an advantage at burst rates. But with latency, I don't remember which was better.
In conclusion, try to find out how many platters a disk has. Look at platter density and latency, not size. A 320GB disk with 2 platters has identical performance to a 160GB with same platter. They don't implement things like RAID0 with 2 or more platters.

 

[Seekermeister]

I have a Maxtor 250GB and a WDC 40GB PATA harddrive, in addition to my Maxtor 80GB SATA raid array. Maybe it's just the raid aspect, but I can see a definite improvement on the SATA drives. I once had these setup without raid, and it still seemed to be as fast, and that was when I was using raid 0, instead of raid 1, as I now have. Raid 1 is slightly slower, but not enough to bother me.