I want a fast hard drive, and have questions!

[rjcoolpix880]

I was just looking at hard drives and had several questions.

• 1:How much does the drives speed(seek and RPM) have to do with the performance - is a 15000 going to be twice as quick as a 7200 RPM or is it all seek time, or a combo of both?

• 2:how much does the interface have to do with it - SCSI vs ATA/133 or ata/100 is one faster(larger bandwidth)
  2a: How hard is SCSI to set up(i know you have to get a PCI card) compared to IDE/ATA

• 3:Would the faster hard drive even affect the performance of windows and programs as well as copying, moving, and installing etc..?

• 4:whats cache size have to do with performance?

Also note that price is not an issue because i want to get a 10-20Gb one to hold windows and program files only. I have a 30Gb for music games and photos. So speed is key.

 

[cholley]

SCSI drives run faster suspended speeds
IDE drive are nearly as fast but only in bursts
buffer size and rpm affect performance

fast scsi drive are widely used on servers and some require hard drive coolers
if you are primarily a gamer a good fast ide drive should work well for you
i just built a system with a maxtor ata 133 and was impressed by it's speed

also you can improve performance using a raid setup

 

[rjcoolpix880]

will ata/133 basically have the same aparent speed as SCSI. will a 10000 cheetah be overkill for running windows(remember price is not an option)

 

[Willoughbyva]

Since price isn't an option get one of the 15000 rpm drives.

I use mostly ide 7200 rpm drives and am happy with what i have.


Will