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Would using these older hard drives present a bottleneck?

D

duragezic

Lifer
Ok I'm finally gonna upgrade... should be ordering a mobile 2400+, Shuttle an35n-ultra, 2x256mb buffalo PC3200 ram, 9800 pro, and a new case tomorrow even. I currently have a WD expert 27.3gb and a Maxtor d740x-l. They are both 7200rpm drives. It would cost me $70 to get a new 80gb WD 8mb cache drive, and I could avoid getting it and use the two drives I have now from my old system. They are pretty old drives, especially the WD expert, but were once pretty fast. Do you guys think this would have any major effect on performance of the new system? Is the new WD 8mb cache drive THAT much faster?
 
I think it would be a wise choice to pick up the WD800JB. Take a look at the article in the storage section of the main site called "WD Raptor vs. The World for some convincing benchmarks that compares 8MB cache drives to 2MB cache drives.
 
In a word: yes, using a slower drive will affect your overall performance. Although, I would think the biggest thing that affects drive performance is the spindle speed, and since yours are 7200rpm, they should be good. One thing you might want to try is use your existing drives, THEN if you don't feel like you are getting the performance that you seek, upgrade to the newer drive.
 
I would think the biggest bottleneck for most PC is HD transfer rate right now.
May I suggest at least get a Raptor for your OS, and keep your existing HD for back up or data purpose?
 
I had seen that article posted, but I hadn't known it included older drives (including the 80gb version of the Maxtor I'm using, and the 75GXP is similar to the Expert drives) for comparison sake. It was exactly the article I needed to read.

But after reading it, basically it shows the new 8mb cache drives are like 5-10% faster than the older 2mb 7200rpm drives, and that the newest raptors are 5-20% faster than the 8mb cache drives. So, logically, it would definitely be beneficial to upgrade to a Raptor, but not so much as to upgrade to just a 7200rpm 8mb cache hdd. And I can barely work in a $70 hdd, much less a more expensive Raptor, so that is out of the question. I have to either use what I own now or get the WD800JB. That isn't quite of a clear decision. Yeah it'd be nice to have a brand new 80gb and then still use my older drives for backup but OTOH I could save $70 and have almost no noticeable performance decrease. In fact, the biggest reason I would get a new drive is probably just the security of having a new one so it doesn't die out on me and I loose all my mp3s and data.
 
Would using these older hard drives present a bottleneck?
Click to expand...

yes.

even the fastest hard drives are still the modern day PC's main bottleneck.
the faster the HDD, the faster your computer will be.
 
Once you load a program, there is often little if any disk access for the majority of programs. Thus if you don't mind an extra few seconds load, then stick with what you have. Yes there are exceptions, but the HD speed is meaningless to many programs.

If you have a program where it is the bottleneck, then you'd know it.
 
Well since I've really been meaning to order my upgrade before it gets even more outdated, I just did today without getting the new hard drive. I just ordered the ram, mobo, video card, and cpu and I'll use my current stuff for a month or two and then I will decide on getting a new case, kb, and possibly a new hdd when I take the system to college next fall.
 
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