someone answer this question please....big IDE vs. small IDE

[MrDudeMan]

my friend seems to think that a 10gb IDE drive is faster than a 60gb ide drive that is 7200rpm ata100

his reasoning: it has less to catalogue on startup, no matter how fast the big one is or how slow the small one is

i tried explaining the fact that what he was saying was not true and the buffer has a LOT to do with it

a small 7200rpm ata100 drive and a big 7200rpm ata100 drive with a bigger buffer...which one really is faster??

everything ive ever read tells me the bigger one is faster because it is the same amount of physical disk space but its more compact so the lens has a LOT less further to go to find the data...

maybe that is totally skewed from the real reason, but someone please inform me of the true answer please

 

[John]

Tell him to check out storagereview.com and draw some conclusions.

 

[MrDudeMan]

another thing i just thought of...if small drives were so much faster...then why doesnt EVERYONE have a 10gb hard drive for the OS and a 60gb "slower" storage drive? just a thought

 

[MrDudeMan]

wow that site is great...

if you click on the WD800AB link, it shows that even a 5400rpm 80gb drive owns smaller drives


thanks for the link

 

[jcovercash]

yeah smaller drives are slower, a good point about everyone having a small drive, if smaller drives were faster, then drives like the WD1000JB would not be so popular just because of the 8mb buffer.

BIGGER IS BETTER

Josh

 

[human2k]

its all starting to make sense now..........................BIGGER IS BETTER

 

[oldfart]

Small drive = old drive
Old drive = slow drive

The fastest "small" drive would be in the ~ 20 Gig range.

 

[jcovercash]

<< its all starting to make sense now..........................BIGGER IS BETTER >>



Yes my son you will soon see the light

Josh

 

[ChrisIsBored]

<< The fastest "small" drive would be in the ~ 20 Gig range. >>




And even then... most of the platters in todays drives are 30-40G's a piece...

 

[MrDudeMan]

but wouldnt the "fastest small drive" still get owned by the bigger drives?

 

[oldfart]

<< And even then... most of the platters in todays drives are 30-40G's a piece... >>


Yup. I have a Maxtor D740X 20 Gig drive. It has one 40 gig platter, but only one drive head. Only use 1/2 of the platter!

 

[Pariah]

A large 5400rpm compared to a small 7200 is not a valid comparison, nor is a small 2MB drive vs a large 8MB. Comparing drives from the same family, the smaller drive will be faster. The additional mass in the read head assembly from more read heads slows down drive access. In IDE drives, the difference isn't really that big a difference, nothing you would notice. However, in high RPM SCSI drives this can have a more noticable affect in performance. If you look at the Cheetah X15-36LP from Seagate, the 36GB version has slower specs than the 18GB version.

"his reasoning: it has less to catalogue on startup, no matter how fast the big one is or how slow the small one is"

That's not really an issue, but try defragging a full 100GB drive vs a full 30GB drive and your computer will be obsolete by the time the 100GB is done.

" if smaller drives were faster, then drives like the WD1000JB would not be so popular just because of the 8mb buffer."

You're comparing apples to oranges. The reason the JB is faster is because of the additional cache, not the larger capacity.

 

[Trader05]

I think it's actually how much you use of the drive.....for example, when you use hd tach, you see that at the middle to end of the drive it gets slower. So a smaller drive has less room to be on top end, big drive has lots of room to play around with. I'm not a hd genious but i gave it a shot lol.

 

[Pariah]

That is true, but the flipside to that is true as well. You do have more storage space in faster parts of the drive in a large drive, but you have equally more space in slower parts of the drive vs a small drive. It would certainly no be cost effective to buy a 100GB drive if you only have intentions of using 20GB. You're not going to boost your performance any appreciable amount. Buy the drive capacity that best suites the size you think you'll use with a bit a extra space to spare. You're truly wasting your time if you are picking your capacity based on performance.