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WD 40gig 7200rpm 2mb cache IDE100

B

boatillo

Senior member
First off, 40gigs is plenty of room for me. Secondly computer is mostly used for gaming.

But I am going about building a new system and wondered if I would notice any appreciable difference if I upgraded the harddrive(s) as well. As you can see I run an older Western Digital, 40 gig, 7200 rpm, 2mb cache, UATA100 single drive atm. Would moving to one of the newer drive configurations make any difference? Options:

1) Single drive, UATA133 and 8mb cache, still 7200rpm ---- Would I even notice a difference?

2) Buy a second cheapo IDE hdd and run it with my current in a RAID 0 ---- Good choice or should drives optimally need to match in specs?

3) Single drive SATA with 8mb cache, 7200rpm ---- I have read that a single drive using SATA is totally bogus since a 7200rpm drive isn't ever going to transfer anything that fast??

4) Dual SATA drives, 7200rpm in RAID 0 ---- Cost the $$ but would be like dual channel ram i've heard
 
I'd buy a second HDD (probably a Seagate) and run both of them side by side, non-RAIDed (RAID isn't really worth it on the desktop, unless you need the data security of RAID1 or RAID5). Don't worry about ATA133, since it's basically the same as ATA100.
 
Forget RAID0! Will do nothing for you, loads would be a bit faster but overall it has been proven worthless. Just get another HDD w. 8Mb cache (doesn't matter if it's SATA or PATA) and use it together with the 40Gb you have.
 
Thanks guys, so would there really be *any* noticable difference between a 2mb and 8mb cache when running single drive? Doubtful I could tell, prolly like 1-2 secs load on games or something eh

Guess I'll go SATA when I fry this one, i do like those nice little cables
 
If you do upgrade, get a Raptor HDD so you wont have to upgrade for another 5 years.

If 40gb is enough and you dont find it slow in games and general office tasks, keep it. RAM will be more useful.
 
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