Should I get ATA/100?

[TheCorporal]

Hey guys I am getting a new HD soon, my current 5400 RPM crap HD isnt cutting it anymore. Yea sure its Ultra SCSI, but any read access stuff takes a while.

SO, my point is that I have a BX6 r2, no on board ATA stuff (well other than ata33) so I was wondering what my best options are?

Should I get ATA66 or ATA100, 7200 or 5400, etc. I have about 200 to spend, and would like a 30ish GB size.

If anyone has any ideas, I would love to hear em, thanx!

TheCorp

 

[Mark R]

Go for 7200 rpm over 5400. That's the only major piece of advice that is worth giving. Ignore ATA/66, ATA/100, etc. it's essentially meaningless.

Go to http://www.storagereview.com and look at the reviews of various drives, and see which one offers the performance, size and price you want.

 

[thorin]

I agree. The things you want to look for are 7200rpm, 2mb Cache (buffer). ATA66 and ATA100 are not as relevant. If you want an answer then go ATA66 there's not enough of a gain going to ATA100. The next significant step will be SerialATA next year.

Thorin

 

[AndyHui]

Get a 7200 drive. Generally they outperform 5400 drives. ATA33 is only just being exceeded by 1 or 2 drives, so don't worry about it. Most drives now come as ATA66 or ATA100, and that is not going to make any performance difference at the moment.

 

[Prodigy^]

hmmmm i DO belive ATA100 will be noticeably faster than ATA33......anymore got direct comparision benchmarks? sure, ATA 66 vs. ATA33 wasn't much, but this is a 200% theoretical upgrade......also, burst speed is good as well when copying loads of files.

 

[AndyHui]

Prodigy^: No, ATA100 will not be noticeably faster than ATA33 because there are only 1 or 2 drives that exceed the limit imposed by ATA33, and even then not by much.

ATA66 gives a higher possible maximum burst, but if those bursts from the hard drive do not even exceed 33MB/s, then there is no point going to 100MB/s is there? You will see no performance improvement simply because the data does not come off the hard drive fast enough to max out ATA66, let alone ATA100.

 

[BuddyHolly]

Nope, ata66/100 is great, but the drives still are not up to the task yet.

 

[4824guy]

Get a 7200rpm, 2 meg cache HD,9ms average access time. It will probably be ata66 capable also.

Don't sweat the working that HD in ata33 mode because you will hardly notice the difference. Then if you want, you can get a ata66 pic card for around $30-40 if you need more IDE ports.

 

[jaydee]

Everyone says RPM'S are everything but they are not in terms of seek times. Overlooked is platter density. Example: an 8 GB platter Hard drive runs for, say 7200 RPM's. But a 15 GB platter density with 3 platters running at 5400 RPM's is 28.8% faster in average seek times. Why? Because 15 GB platter is 87.5% denser than an 8 GB platter. Furthermore 7200 RPM has 33% faster. The product of the two gives you 28.8% roughly. Where does that come in to play? Maxtor has set the precedent. They are the first to develop not only 15 GB platters, but 20 GB platters as well. The most by the competition is 10 GB platters. Thats 100% more density people. Unless you have a 10,800 RPM Hard Drive to compare it to its the fastest thing out there. Do the math.

 

[Pariah]

Your analysis is all wrong JayDee. I didn't have to do the math to see that.

 

[ElFenix]

the storage review did an interesting test where they found that cache was pretty much irrelevant. jaydee, the 75gxp series drives are 15gb/platter. a diamondmax 60 (15gb) does not outperform any of my plus 40s (10gb).