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Opinion: Hard Drive Questions

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dheffer

Senior member
Well it's that time again. Time to get a new hard drive. I've been very lucky with my 45gb 75gxp Deathstar in the fact that it still runs after three long years of usage, but I think it's time to upgrade, so here are the options, what would you get? I just use my computer for gaming, programming, and in the future probably downloading movies and burning them to dvds and stuff. Size hasn't been an issue with my 45gb hd, but I wanna be ready for the future.... so....

2 x 80gb Western Digital SATA Hard Drives, RAID 0

1 x 160gb WD SATA Hard Drive

1 x 36gb Raptor

2 x 36gb Raptor

1 x 72gb Raptor

What else?

Looking to spend ~150, but up to 200 if it's really worth my time. Two 80gb WD's looks like the best to me, I can get those for 75 a piece, but what do you guys think? Is it even worth it? Maybe i'll just get the 160gb one for ~115
 
Is it even worth getting? I just ran hd tach and for read, i got 16.9ms random access time, 94mb/sec burst speed, 38.4mb/s average, 9.0mb/s minimum, 29.4mb/s average, and a cpu utilization of 24.7%... why is this so high? I have all the chipset drivers installed for my mobo that came with it. Any opinions?
 
Always pick capacity over speed if you aren't 100% how much space you need. Slow performance may be a bit of annoyance, but not nearly as much as running out of space is. 200GB 8MB drives are under $130 at Newegg with 3 year warranties. That's the route I would choose.
 
I agree with you that the raptors arent very practical with space, but doesnt the two 80gb hds solve the problem? $150 raid o 160gb vs. $135 200gb single hard drive seems like an easy choice to me, it's the best of both worlds. Anyone raid these together? I use to have two deathstars until one died and raided they were much much faster. Ah well that looks like the route I will take, thank you for your opinions.
 
Ok I advise against RAID. Your latancy increases by a signifigant amount therefore transfering smaller files (which is what Windows mainly does) takes longer. RAID has its strength when you got huge continious files and then it beats out any single drive config easy. However how often do you move around 100MB+ files? Good for video editing and to a certain extent server applications.

I say single drive config is still the best way to go either go 160GB SATA or 200GB EIDE. There is no really huge incentive to goto SATA right now anyway unless you want to be able to use this HDD in your next computer easily.
 
If you want performance, then go the 74GB Raptor. Not economic but it is the best you can get for performance. If that's not your thing, then go the 200GB for $135. A single drive is definitely faster than dual drives for anything but what ai42 mentioned, plus it's cheaper. If you think 200GB is way overboard, then grab just one 80GB you mentioned. I'd probably go the 200GB if I were you (even though I just bought one of the 74GB Raptors).
 
It sounds like the 25% boost in speed from the 74G Raptor isn't a real priority to you. The 36GB Raptor is right out, seeing as it's small and not any faster than current 7200RPM drives.

My real question is why do you want a WD? Unless you're getting a Raptor, WD makes the loudest drives which don't perform better than anything else and break more often.

Also keep in mind that WD doesn't differentiate platter counts with their model numbers. If you get an 80GB WD, you may be getting a slow drive with two 40GB platters instead of a moden drive with a single 80GB platter. As a matter of fact, WD's site says that the 80GB drives have 2 platters.

So, my answer would be none of the above. Get a nice fast quiet cheap 160GB Hitachi, Samsung or Seagate for about $100.
 
Thanks for the advice, this seems like a great deal, so I think that I'll go with this. I was just caught up in the wow factor of having a raid, i miss my old one, it sure felt a lot faster, but then again that was four years ago haha
 
Originally posted by: dheffer
Thanks for the advice, this seems like a great deal, so I think that I'll go with this. I was just caught up in the wow factor of having a raid, i miss my old one, it sure felt a lot faster, but then again that was four years ago haha
Click to expand...
I wonder why NewEgg charges for shipping on that particular drive :|

BTW--In a one-drive setup, would the 160GB SATA drive have any speed advantage over a 160GB parallel drive? Also, I have the Abit NF7S with "serillel"--Does that negate any advantage that SATA has?
 
I have one of those too, but never used it. I don't really think that the bus is the bottleneck for hard drive speeds, it's more drive dependant, hence why sata isn't that much faster, but who knows? I was going to give it a shot but knew I was going to upgrade later.

Hey someone take a look at that link and tell me why that drive in particular only has a 1 year warantee? Someone was saying that the 2mb cache ones only have a one year warantee and I want to make sure Im not buying that crap
 
Most SATA drives are PCI dependent (cept Intel's native) so there isn't an increase in performance... The Hitachi HD is very speedy shipping charges or not as I have a couple 80 Giggers in RAID0 and even in single brought 1 smile to my face! 😀
 
Originally posted by: LED
Most SATA drives are PCI dependent (cept Intel's native) so there isn't an increase in performance... The Hitachi HD is very speedy shipping charges or not as I have a couple 80 Giggers in RAID0 and even in single brought 1 smile to my face! 😀
Click to expand...

Not with the new NForce 3 250 chipsets. These aren't PCI-based.
 
According to what you use your computer for, I wouldn't worry too much about HDD speed. Although load times in games will be decreased significantly, I can't see how programming would benefit too much. I would be much more interested in upgrading my CPU to decrease compile time. Certainly, general useage will feel snappier, but I would rather have the extra space. Trust me, you will fill it up. I never thought I would fill my 120GB drive, but I'm on the verge of having to burn stuff to CDs. I'm even questioning getting a DVD-RW drive.
 
Originally posted by: Jaxidian
Originally posted by: LED
Most SATA drives are PCI dependent (cept Intel's native) so there isn't an increase in performance... The Hitachi HD is very speedy shipping charges or not as I have a couple 80 Giggers in RAID0 and even in single brought 1 smile to my face! 😀
Click to expand...

Not with the new NForce 3 250 chipsets. These aren't PCI-based.
Click to expand...
Yes that one too but remember that once again most SATA drives (cept Seagate) also have 1 PATA to Serial ATA chip in order for them to run in SATA form which limits their speed as well.
 
I'm just a lowly second year programming major. I use mostly Unix, but when I use Windows, I use this. But it's mostly java and c, it doesn't take hardly any time to compile, and takes up practically nothing on my hard drive. I have a dvd burner, but the more space the merrier. I guess Ill just go with that drive I was looking at for, thanks for all the advice.
 
Originally posted by: LED
(snipped) but remember that once again most SATA drives (cept Seagate) also have 1 PATA to Serial ATA chip in order for them to run in SATA form which limits their speed as well.
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Assuming that speeds are limited to the bus and not limited by the drive (that is another discussion), then you are not entirely accurate. If the speed is limited by the parallel bus, then the longer the bus is parallel and the worse it is insulated, then the more you are limited. If you ran PATA for 100' (and actually got it to work), I'm willing to bet you'll have dog-slow speeds compared to an 8" cable. The problem with parallel busses is that each line will throw interference into the other lines due to magnetic fields (this really isn't the case with serial communications). The longer the run, the more the interference. Now if the bus is never parallel until you get onto the HDD's PCB, then the fact that it's parallel doesn't really mean jack squat for interference because at this point in time, the PCB has so many other data leads running around on it.

That make sense? (Sorry if it doesn't, I was kinda rushed in posting it.)
 
raid 0 is for scratch disk. double your chances of failure on a normal drive? eh, not a good idea. with high tolerance scsi its a different thing. russian roulette basically. and at 3yrs a drive needs to go anyways, it will die soon.
 
Originally posted by: LED
That make sense? (Sorry if it doesn't, I was kinda rushed in posting it.)
Click to expand...

😕...Bottom line is that comparing 2 identical HD's (1 SATA and 1 PATA interface) there is Little if any difference
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In that case: PATA=More GB/$ , but looking ahead, I wonder if future mobos would support PATA. I mean: Perhaps I should buy SATA so that when I upgrade my mobo, I can still use the HD.
Of course, trying to future-proof a system can be a idiotic quest, but still . . . 😀
 
Nowaday even the PATA HDD is fast enough for most of the application you will see out there. I played with raid 0, raid 5 with both scsi and IDE, and don't feel the investment in both time and money worth the performance gain.

I think the upper class HDD by any larger company like Maxtor, Seagate or WD will do just fine. But depending on what you are doing with your computer, the configuration of the HDD is important.

I just built a home theater PC and I used to have one large raid 0 volumn for OS/application/data. But when I ripped DVD and play it directly off of the one HDD, I experience interruption. I suspected the computer had to access the OS and application while streaming the data, which all sit on the same volumn and same channel, which caused the interruption. So I got another HDD for the OS/Application, and use the raid exclusively for Data. The interruption was gone.

So really, you will do OK with pretty much anything out there, but be careful with your HDD/IDE device configuration. With ATA you only have two onboard channels which you have to share with Cdrom/cdrw, but SATA give you extra channels. Raid also gives you extra channels to play with if you want to expand in the future.
 
Originally posted by: Mermaidman
Originally posted by: LED
That make sense? (Sorry if it doesn't, I was kinda rushed in posting it.)
Click to expand...

😕...Bottom line is that comparing 2 identical HD's (1 SATA and 1 PATA interface) there is Little if any difference
Click to expand...
In that case: PATA=More GB/$ , but looking ahead, I wonder if future mobos would support PATA. I mean: Perhaps I should buy SATA so that when I upgrade my mobo, I can still use the HD.
Of course, trying to future-proof a system can be a idiotic quest, but still . . . 😀
Click to expand...

LED, I agree that there is practically (not absolutely) no difference in performance.

Mermaidman, I think you have it mostly right in your summary there. Personally, given the choice between PATA and SATA, same drive, same size, difference of $10 (which is pretty much the case now), I'd go ahead and get the more-expensive SATA drive.
 
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