How MUCH faster is a 15K SCSI drive vs 7.2K SATA drive at the following

[Handsome Prince]

I was just wondering how much faster a 15000 RPM SCSI boot drive would be over a 7200 RPM SATA boot drive at specific everyday tasks. Hard drive speed probably plays a more important role in some tasks versus others, and may have only a small effect in other cases. Here are some possible examples which I would be interested to know what the time difference in seconds/minutes or percentage would be between the two drives:

1. Moving a 1 GB file from one directory to another

2. Searching through 1000 e-mails in Outlook for a message with particular words in the body

3. Searching through the entire hard drive for files with a certain extension (let's say both drives have a capacity of roughly 140GB and are 90% full)

4. Running Norton AV (again, let's say both drives have a capacity of roughly 140 GB and are 90% full)

5. Booting up and having all startup programs full loaded

6. Downloading 1 GB from a P2P network

7. Installing a particular piece of software (any example of software is fine, it's just the comparative speed difference I am curious about)

8. Burning a CD or DVD

9. Browsing the internet. Sometimes I look at 200+ web pages a day. Would the hard drive play any significant role in web browsing? The temporary cache is continuously being written to, I was just wondering whether a faster hard drive would have a noticeable effect.

I'm just throwing some examples of the top of my head. Some examples may overlap (sorry) and there might be some better examples. My focus is mostly on things I do everyday or on very time consuming tasks.

I realize of course that feedback will mostly be in the form of estimates. I'm just looking for some ballpark info.

Many thanks for any info,

HP

 

[hippotautamus]

The SCSI drive will utterly destroy the sata drive in everything. However, this comes at a rather extreme price premium...get a 15k sata drive at MOST.

 

[w00t]

1st you have to get a SCSI drive than you have to get a SCSI controller these 2 things cost lots of money and are not made for the home/office use this is for servers.

 

[dcdude]

rofl i didnt know anyone still used outlook

 

[gwag]

Originally posted by: dcdude
rofl i didnt know anyone still used outlook

that post made me laugh.

 

[hippotautamus]

As a matter of fact, the entire corporate world "still" uses Outlook. Go home.

 

[Hardlin]

I would disagree that "the entire corporate world" uses Outlook. If that was the case, there would be no other products (such as Notes and Groupwise for two quick examples) in use.

But enough of the derailing, the 15k drive will be quicker on most disk intensive tasks.

1. Moves are near instant on all drives because only a pointer is being changed. A copy actually causes the system move data.

2 - 5. These are rely on disk I/O and would usually be quicker on the 15k disk but factors such as drivers, disk controller, memory dedicated to disk cache, etc. can change the out come.

6. Downloading speed is purely network related (bandwidth, latency, etc.)

7. Depends on the way the software installs. If it copies compressed files to the drive and then decompresses you would notice a speed difference. Otherwise it is more related to the speed of your CD/DVD drive.

8. Again related to the speed of the optical drive.

9. Related more to the speed of you network connection than the speed of your local drive.

 

[Handsome Prince]

With regard to SCSI drives being for servers, from my online shopping experience I would agree, but several people here have mentioned (in other posts) how much they adore their 10K or 15K SCSI boot drives and they are not using them for servers (some even only for games).

Even for an internet-based home business running several (and I do mean SEVERAL) different applications throughout the day, SCSI drives still would not be suitable? Time is money. Even if a SCSI drive only saves me 5 minutes a day, it would be worth the extra thousand based on how I value my time.

By the same token though, I appreciate the words of caution. I would hate to throw money out the window unnecessarily. That is why I asked for some performance comparisons between the two, so I could make a decision.

HP

 

[n yusef]

I don't really know too well, but I know that my uncle has a ~300GB RAID 5 array of Maxtor 15K II's. He's a film producer, and he just got a new setup for video editing at his house... (and I thought my computer was good). He deals with about 250GB of raw 2160p (four times 1080p) video whenever he uses it. The price/performance ratio that come with a 147GB 15K HDD is terrible. The cost ove $1000 each, so they are only really worth it if you are doing serious work (a DB server, non-linear video editing etc.).

 

[mechBgon]

To give an example on software installation speed:

1) make an Office2000Pro Administrative Installation Point

2) pre-patch it with SP3 and all the subsequent patches

3) make a custom transform that pre-options all the stuff you want

4) begin an install of Office2000Pro Disc 1 from the AIP that's located on the same hard drive as you're installing Office on

5) listen to the amazing noises a 15k SCSI drive can make when it has some actual work to do :evil:


Typically, my old-ish 15k drive will hammer this out in 45 seconds on an A64 3000+. The same system with my brand-new Seagate 7200.8 SATA drive will take about 100-110 seconds to complete. Disc 2 of O2kPro is significantly bigger and has more little piddly files, so the gap just widens.

That is a good "showcase" situation for SCSI. There are times when you would not notice much difference, too.

 

[JustAnAverageGuy]

It wouldn't make a difference in 6, 8, or 9.

The rest would make a difference, but how much of a difference I leave to the more experienced among us.