from seagate 7200.7 160gb to 7200.12 500gb speed noticable?

[smellyfungus]

hello i searched from this but couldnt find anything specific.

i got a coupon from staples for 15 off 25 or more purchase and was thinking about getting a low costing new hard drive for a little extra space and speed boost. the seagate would cost 40 without taxes.

i couldnt figure out how much real world difference there would be or if i would notice at all.

i looked at old reviews and the 7200.7 160gb i have had a read avg of 44mb while the 7200.12 500gb read avg was around 105mb

it sounded a lot faster but i wanted to make sure i wasnt wasting cash unnecessarily.

i use my pc for watching hi def files, general computer use and pc games like cs:s and sc2.

also my specs are 3800x2, 2gb ddr400, 7800gt if it matters.

thanks for your time.

 

[retnuh]

for $40, sure will. Your HD is the slowest part of your system, well unless you spend all day working with thumb drives, but it should be a noticeable change.

 

[bobross419]

Might be worth checking on http://www.hdtune.com/testresults.html#Seagate to see if the particular models have any test data showing up. Not all models have test data though.

 

[Emulex]

7200.12 has extra cache the 250gb model doesn't this helps a bit. i'd save my money for ssd - honestly.

 

[jiffylube1024]

You will notice a massive upgrade in boot time and system speed from a 7200.7 160GB to a 7200.12. I recently upgraded a client's 7200.9 160GB (single platter drive - about 75% faster than your drive) to a 7200.12 and the 7200.12 is noticeably faster.

As for the cache on the 250GB and 500GB versions, it really doesn't make that much of a difference. The main thing is you're going from a two-platter 160GB drive to a single-platter 500GB drive, which accounts for the massive transfer speed difference.

 

[Emulex]

16meg of cache does make a difference. benchmarked - most certainly does. doesn't hurt to use both sides of the platter to increase read/write as well 🙂

 

[Rifter]

those 7200.12 drives are fast, you will notice the differnce.