Hard Drive Question

[napes22]

I just built a new pc, and I am now looking at my hard drives. I thought i was ok because I have two 74 Raptors, and a 250 Seagate 7200 drive. After browsing online, I saw that now 16MB Cache is more common, and all three of my drives have an 8 MB cache, and are ATA150. The raptors cost 140 each when I bought them, and the Seagate like 95. Right now I use one of the Raptors for Windows/System, and the other for Programs/Games, and the Seagate for straight storage.

My question is this: Will I see a major improvement if I were to upgrade to an SATA 300 (16 MB cache) drive for storage, and upgrade those Raptors to maybe a 150 gig drive with 16MB cache?

 

[Bobthelost]

SATA300 is a marketing gimic, it's completely irrelevant to HD speed. Last time i looked the Raptor 150GB was a SATA 150Gb/s interface, if that isn't going to be bottlenecked by it then there's no way a 7200 drive will. A newer, larger drive will be faster, but the difference will be small.

Would you see a speed increase going to a 150 instead of your 74 for the games? Yes, is it worth it? Not if you ask me, unless of course you get a decent price for the old raptors.

 

[napes22]

Thanks, much appreciated.

What about the increase in Cache...would I notice that?

 

[Bobthelost]

The cache does seem to make a bit of a difference, but the question is more "is it economical" than "is it faster". The second quesiton is yes, the newer 74GB drives with 16meg caches are notably quicker than the 8meg ones, and the 150 is even faster still. However upgrading to the 150 is going to be fairly expensive and the performance increase from a 74 8meg is hard to justify.

If you're talking about the storage drive, probably, but again it's a question of is it worth spending the money on it. Personally my storage drives don't have to be quick as anything time sensitive goes on my raptor (8meg 74 )

 

[napes22]

Thanks for all your help.