When I buy a 1.5TB or 2TB harddrive

[soccerballtux]

Over my 500GB drive?

I was planning on just using the new one for files; my current 500GB (166GB/platter) is certainly very fast for me. Would the 1.5 or 2TB drive be all that much faster?

Most of the limitations I'm seeing in operation (like when booting up) are seek related right? I've got 8GB of RAM so I hardly wait for an application to start thanks to the Vista Prefetching.

 

[masteryoda34]

I would put the OS on the new drive. It should be faster.

Personally what I do is create a small partition (50-100GB) at the beginning of the large drive and install windows there. Then I use the rest for program installation and storage. If I need to reformat, I only have to wipe the small partition, saving almost all my data.

Plus the beginning of the drive is faster, so isolating the OS there with a partition should give better performance.

 

[bruceb]

Personally I would keep the OS and program installs on a small drive, say 120GB or 250GB .. That will be more than enough for OS and app installs. Keep your personal data files, music, videos, downloaded programs, on the new drive.

 

[soccerballtux]

Originally posted by: bruceb
Personally I would keep the OS and program installs on a small drive, say 120GB or 250GB .. That will be more than enough for OS and app installs. Keep your personal data files, music, videos, downloaded programs, on the new drive.

This is what I'm planning.

 

[ROJAS]

Put in on this and you will have a screamer.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/...x?Item=N82E16822136322

 

[masteryoda34]

Originally posted by: soccerballtux

Originally posted by: bruceb
Personally I would keep the OS and program installs on a small drive, say 120GB or 250GB .. That will be more than enough for OS and app installs. Keep your personal data files, music, videos, downloaded programs, on the new drive.

This is what I'm planning.

The only problem with that is that older drives, like 120GB 250GB etc, are slower than the newer, and larger, ones. I much prefer to have windows on a fast drive.

 

[soccerballtux]

Originally posted by: masteryoda34

Originally posted by: soccerballtux

Originally posted by: bruceb
Personally I would keep the OS and program installs on a small drive, say 120GB or 250GB .. That will be more than enough for OS and app installs. Keep your personal data files, music, videos, downloaded programs, on the new drive.

This is what I'm planning.

The only problem with that is that older drives, like 120GB 250GB etc, are slower than the newer, and larger, ones. I much prefer to have windows on a fast drive.

I'm on a 500GB drive and it feels plenty fast I must say. Speeds would marginally be improved by going to a larger drive IMO; most of the "slow factor" is due to rotational latency in random seek. Sequential speed has been good for years in my opinion....even if you only had 30MB/s, most times where you sit around waiting for something to load (like in a game) you're just reading an un-fragmented package to memory where your processor unzips it and loads the uncompressed data into RAM+Video card.

 

[Fox5]

Speed is dictated by platter size and not total hard drive size. Still, if your current drive is 166GB/platter, new drives are likely 320GB to 500GB a platter.
The only 1.5TB I know of right now if the seagate one though, and it's kind some pretty horrible reviews as far as reliability goes. I have a 1TB seagate as my primary drive at the moment (though all seagate drives seem to be getting hammered in the reviews at this point...shame, they used to be the best, but it seems they need good airflow or they overheat and die now).
I just picked up two Western Digital Green 750GB drives over the 1.5TB. Figure they'll run cooler (if a bit slower) and were cheaper for the same space. Plus, better reviews, and I could always put them in RAID 0 if I needed more performance, though the difficulties in recovering data from a RAID and with moving it to another computer will probably keep me from doing that.

 

[Fox5]

Originally posted by: soccerballtux

Originally posted by: masteryoda34

Originally posted by: soccerballtux

Originally posted by: bruceb
Personally I would keep the OS and program installs on a small drive, say 120GB or 250GB .. That will be more than enough for OS and app installs. Keep your personal data files, music, videos, downloaded programs, on the new drive.

This is what I'm planning.

The only problem with that is that older drives, like 120GB 250GB etc, are slower than the newer, and larger, ones. I much prefer to have windows on a fast drive.

I'm on a 500GB drive and it feels plenty fast I must say. Speeds would marginally be improved by going to a larger drive IMO; most of the "slow factor" is due to rotational latency in random seek. Sequential speed has been good for years in my opinion....even if you only had 30MB/s, most times where you sit around waiting for something to load (like in a game) you're just reading an un-fragmented package to memory where your processor unzips it and loads the uncompressed data into RAM+Video card.

QFT.

Random access times haven't improved much, we've been in the 10-20ms range for access times for close to a decade now. I just loaded up unreal2 earlier today, and load times in levels were still pretty long. The hard drive wasn't that stressed though, it seemed to just be doing a lot of seeking.
Ah, can't wait for a year or two from now when solid state drives are affordable and reasonable large.