update rather than upgrade for vista.

[peter2679]

i had been planning on buying a new computer for vista, coming out at the end of this month, but have recently reconsidered because i don't feel i need a faster computer at this moment.
my current specs are:

s939 athlon x2 3800+
2 giig ocz platinum ddr mem
evga 7900gtx video card
wd 74gig raptor hd

i was planning on jumping to core 2 duo in february but can't seem to justify the cost since i find my computer more than capable at the moment. so instead of upgrading for vista i thought about fixing the little things that annoy me about my computer.

first and foremost is hard drive noise. my computer is very quiet, almost dead silent, but the seeks on that raptor are a killer. they drive me nuts. unbelievably loud. i'm sure the hard drive is defective in some way. it's like a jackhammer. i even have it enclosed in a cooldrive 3 (with the fan off) and it muffles the sound a good deal but it's still way too loud.

what hard drive can i get that will fix the noise issue without taking a significant performance hit.

after a lot of research the only drive i think fits the bill is the seagate 7200.10 320 gig sata 2 hardrive. am i right on this? the wd se16 seems up to par with the seagate with quieter operation but seems to be a little slower but enough for it to be too much.

second little thing about vista is this readyboost feature. i already have 2 gigs of ram. do you guys think i should invest in a quality 2 gig usb stick for this purpose? and which one. it seems to me i need a stick with the best possible response time (sandisk cruzer titanium?) rather than a usb stick that can transfer large files very quickly (ocz rally2?). and would a 4gig usb drive be better. does the pagefile ever grow to 8 gigs?

i've been on and off the vista bandwagon recently, but it seems all my hardware already has drivers, so i see no reason not to upgrade, i've heard more and more good things about vista.

 

[Beatnik]

Uh, depends on what you are doing. OpenGL games in Vista on both NVIDIA and ATI cards are going to be a big negative at this point.

I'm running Vista Business right now, (because I have to as a support task), and truly, it is a big downer for performance.

Other problem is your desire to go 4GB, which will lead you into a different set of problems/questions. If I were you, I would just get an 8800GTX at this point.

 

[peter2679]

the 4 gig thing is not about ram. it's about buying a flash drive for readyboost. i have no desire in investing in another 2 gigs of ddr ram when i know i won't use it in my next build. should i just buy a 2 gig usb flash drive or is it worth it buying a 4 gig one. and then what should i look for in a flash drive specifically.

oh. i just started defragmenting my hardrive and i think i should invest in ear plugs, if someone doesn't help me decide what hard drive to buy to replace the raptor jackhammer.

 

[Kartajan]

If you want on the Vista wagon, and want to game, I would wait for the release of the midrange DX-10 cards to come out. By then you should have much better drivers, and be able to get a decent midrange card for WAY less cash. (Think NVidia 8600 or ATI R600 (As yet unnamed) equivalent)

Not to mention, then you would be able to learn from all of the early adopters mistakes....

edit:
BTW- Concur on your initial choice of 7200.10; newer tech, and very likely to be much quieter (as well as many degrees cooler) than your 10k speed demon drive..

I have not played w/ readyboost, so I cannot advise as to it's benifit- I would wait for buying the flash; let the early adopters/ Bleeding Edgers show you the way.

 

[Beatnik]

You can't lose the raptor and not lose performance. Sorry. The 74GB Raptor's are head and shoulders top performance.

If you want, you could get a $300 ARECA RAID card, and stripe 2 quieter drives, and maybe go as fast as a single raptor. Just a thought. But if you don't have a free PCIX or PCIE slot (8x), then probably not worth it. If it's me, I buy the ARECA, and a 2nd Raptor, and try and get the ARECA to PCIX or PCIE. But that's just me.

 

[Philippine Mango]

Originally posted by: Beatnik
You can't lose the raptor and not lose performance. Sorry. The 74GB Raptor's are head and shoulders top performance.

If you want, you could get a $300 ARECA RAID card, and stripe 2 quieter drives, and maybe go as fast as a single raptor. Just a thought. But if you don't have a free PCIX or PCIE slot (8x), then probably not worth it. If it's me, I buy the ARECA, and a 2nd Raptor, and try and get the ARECA to PCIX or PCIE. But that's just me.

Hate to break your bubble but not only are those drives old since they have 150GB versions but the 500GB and 750GB HDDs by seagate are pretty much on par or faster than the raptors due to the high data density. I believe though one advantage of the raptors would have to be seek times and thats it, can't remember but I do remember seeing benchmarks showing how they didn't really benefit the system...

 

[Towermax]

It's true that the newer drives equal or beat the older 74GB Raptor in throughput--sequential transfers. But, as you note, the Raptor has faster seeks and lower latency. At Storage Review, the prevailing belief is that fast seek/low latency gives higher performance for general purpose computing. So the ideal setup is Raptor for the system drive and something big and fast for storage of large files where throughput really pays off.

I've tried both Raptor and 7200.10 as boot drives, and in my experience, the Raptor makes for a more responsive system. Obviously, depending on how you use your system, YMMV.

As far as quieting the Raptor, in my experience, the biggest bang for the buck in silencing drives is to suspend them. Check out the methods suggested at Silent PC Review or just buy an Antec Solo or P150 since they have built in suspension systems. My drives were also the loudest thing in my system, until I got a Solo and suspended the drives. Now, the only thing I hear is occasional seeks from the Raptor.

 

[Beatnik]

Phillipine Mango,

My reference is this: http://www.tomshardware.com/2007/01/16/2007-hdd-rundown/page17.html

I'll admit I haven't looked at other sites for verification. But the results on that site seem to support my theory about the small WD's being the fastest of the fast. Not to argue, I'm just reading graphs here.

 

[peter2679]

thanks for all the replies guys.

So what is the possibility that my drive is defective and that is why it's so loud. it doesn't make strange sounds in any way, it's just that the seeks are just very loud. unbelievably loud. for people who have heard one before, would you say that the raptors are the noisiest hard drives you ever heard? i wanna get a mic and record it but i don't know if that would prove anything. on the silent pc review site it says that these raptors are supposed to be quiet with sharp seeks, but to me it's much more that sharp.

what is up with all the suggestions of getting a dx10 card for vista? wouldn't my 7900gtx be just fine since there are no games that take advantage of dx10 yet. am i missing something?

 

[ScrapSilicon]

Originally posted by: peter2679
thanks for all the replies guys.

So what is the possibility that my drive is defective and that is why it's so loud. it doesn't make strange sounds in any way, it's just that the seeks are just very loud. unbelievably loud. for people who have heard one before, would you say that the raptors are the noisiest hard drives you ever heard? i wanna get a mic and record it but i don't know if that would prove anything. on the silent pc review site it says that these raptors are supposed to be quiet with sharp seeks, but to me it's much more that sharp.

grab a seagate 320gb ...and if it makes you happy ..forget the clappertrap of graphs and such..<edit> currently happy w/ a pr of seagate 400gb pata drives ..much much quieter than the 2 maxtor 250gb ones they replaced

what is up with all the suggestions of getting a dx10 card for vista? wouldn't my 7900gtx be just fine since there are no games that take advantage of dx10 yet. am i missing something?

same on the vidcard if what you got gets the job done ..just keep watch on the tech

 

[peter2679]

i think i found the solution to my problem. since i don't really want to sacrifice any performance from the hard drive i could just upgrade my raptor to the newer 74gb raptor with the 16mb cache. it's actually a faster drive overall and since i think i just received a bad apple so to speak on the noise issue, maybe i can send back the old drive since it's still under warranty.

i jsut thought of another thing that bugs me about my computer. whenever i insert a disk in my burner (plextor px740) the whole system freezes until the drive finishes scanning the disc. it's a good 5-7 seconds of delay that annoys the hell out of me. what can i do to fix this problem?

 

[betasub]

nvm

 

[AstroGuardian]

Originally posted by: peter2679
i think i found the solution to my problem. since i don't really want to sacrifice any performance from the hard drive i could just upgrade my raptor to the newer 74gb raptor with the 16mb cache. it's actually a faster drive overall and since i think i just received a bad apple so to speak on the noise issue, maybe i can send back the old drive since it's still under warranty.

i jsut thought of another thing that bugs me about my computer. whenever i insert a disk in my burner (plextor px740) the whole system freezes until the drive finishes scanning the disc. it's a good 5-7 seconds of delay that annoys the hell out of me. what can i do to fix this problem?

I would go with the 74 Gig Raptor. Great performance for Vista.

I think the thing with your Plextor is quite normal. Mine does the same...

 

[ch33zw1z]

Originally posted by: peter2679
i jsut thought of another thing that bugs me about my computer. whenever i insert a disk in my burner (plextor px740) the whole system freezes until the drive finishes scanning the disc. it's a good 5-7 seconds of delay that annoys the hell out of me. what can i do to fix this problem?

It's normal, you can fix it by having some patience