upgrading hard drives?

[Refractoryman]

Currently have (3) hard drives (1) Maxtor 52049u4, (2) Maxtor 6y080l0 (3) WD1200BB. One for operating system and two for back-up. Not running raid I do a lot of engineering work "AUTOCAD" and digital photography. I want to upgrade to (3) WD2500KS (WD SE16) for performance increase and cost. Is this a good choice? What do others suggest. Thought about the raptors but "PRICEY".

 

[Bobthelost]

Think about dropping down to 2 400Gig drives instead, the WD4000KD/YR are very fast drives.

The Raptor 74 gig is not worth the money any more, and while the 150Gig is great it's not worth the money you'd have to spend on it.

 

[alimoalem]

Originally posted by: Bobthelost
Think about dropping down to 2 400Gig drives instead, the WD4000KD/YR are very fast drives.

The Raptor 74 gig is not worth the money any more, and while the 150Gig is great it's not worth the money you'd have to spend on it.

OP, you can choose to opt for the 400gig choice which is a good one but the hard drives you chose are also good. just keep it Western Digital and 16mb and you should do fine.

About the 150GB Raptor Bob mentioned, i don't see how he can say it's great because it still gets pwned by SCSI drives. Basically, just stick to the good old 7200 drives you're considering or the ones Bob recommended

 

[Serch]

or you can do 2x250 Gb Wester Digital SATA2 16 Mb cache.. that will be pretty impresive and that will cost around 200 USD

 

[Bobthelost]

147 gig SCSI drives are better than the 150Gig raptor, but the ones that do beat it generally cost 3x the price new (£600 as opposed to £210). I don't have £600 to spend on a single 147Gb HD, let alone the controller card to run them.

The cheaper 37gb SCSI drives are not as fast as a raptor (for single user apps), if you think they are then i'd love to see some benches to back it up.

You do graphics editing so the speed benifits from SCSI or a raptor 150 would be noticable, but the 4000KD are very nippy, faster than the 250Gb drives you are looking at, and they aren't exactly slow either.

 

[Refractoryman]

Also thinking about the MAXLINE III maxtor 7v250f0. Would this drive work with my ASUS A8V Deluxe mob. I am a little confused with SATA 1 & SATA 2? How do I check to see what my mob supports?
Thanks

 

[Serch]

check the SATA details in the manual. I have a NEO 4 Platinum and it doesn't say SATAII, it says SATA..blabla transfer/rates of 300 Mb/s.. thats sata 2.

Sata1 would be 150Mb/s

 

[Bobthelost]

There is NO DIFFERENCE BETWEEN SATA AND SATA2

None

Nada

Zip

Zilch

Zero

(Except NCQ, which you want turned off anyway)

It's the same connectors, the same drivers, the same wires, the same hardware the same everything except for a cosmetic tweak to the bandwidth (which is not a limiting factor) and support for funcitons that you want turned off ie NCQ.

 

[Serch]

? With a WD 250 Gb SE 16Mb cache SATA2 you can pair 2 raided raptors. Not just saying.. friends of mine have these experiencies

 

[alimoalem]

so you're telling him to buy 2 raptors AND a third hard drive? though he hasn't stated, i'm sure money is a factor to the OP.

 

[Serch]

"alimoalem:
so you're telling him to buy 2 raptors AND a third hard drive? though he hasn't stated, i'm sure money is a factor to the OP. "

Don't know who you are talking to, but if the OP wants nice space and speed, then I strongly suggest buying one WD Caviar 250 Gb SE 16 Mb cache SATA2. Thats all.

If OP needs more space, buy another.