Harddrive speed important??

[gold_eagle]

Sumthin to ask the xperts here:)
i have 5400rpm hdd.
does having a 15kscsi dramatically increase performance
and in what ways??
btw...im new:D

[Beta Geek]

To quote Maximum PC:
"While our real-world benchmark results are by no means definitive, they do suggest that IDE and certainly give you all the performance you need when doing regular-old desktop work. Sure, SCSI is nice for bragging rights, but who wants to deal with the extra cost and complexity? SCSI still has its place in high-end server configs where seek times and multitasking are essential, but for the desktop user, SCSI drives are simply overkill. And not over kill in the good way, but rather overkill in the "burn-your-money-for-no-reason-whatsoever" way.
-Head2Head March 2002 (If you can get your hand on it, read the whole article.)

If you are still using an ATA100 5400RPM or slower drive, I'd recommend upgrading to at ATA133 7200RPM, but only if you think you could use the extra speed. However, if you have to replace the drive (because of drive failure, for more space, etc), I wouldn't go any lower than a 7200RPM ATA133 drive. I still have not had any experience with SATA, so I can't give you any suggestions about that.

Beta Geek

[saphalline]

SATA is good for future expansion, but it's best to have SATA built into your chipset to get the most speed out of it. Unless you feel like upgrading your mobo, don't worry about SATA yet. However, Western Digital makes a killer 10,000rpm SATA drive, but only 36GB. Still, it's a great primary drive if you also get a secondary storage drive.

As for hard drives in general, there are many factors that improve performance, with the most dramatic being rotation speed. Other factors include areal density, drive mechanics, cache size, and the interface protocol. The catch is that more modern drives are better in all of these factors compared to older drives.

So if you've got a 15GB 5400rpm hard drive from 3 years ago, you can expect a modern 80GB 7200rpm hard drive to be 3-4 times faster! :eek: Since hard drives are approximately $1 per GB, you're looking at a mere $80 or so to cut your load times by up to 75%, not to mention dramatically speed up your system every time it hits the hard drive.

Hard drives are the slowest part in any computer, so if you can speed it up, do so!

[gold_eagle]

but im currently using 5400rpm 80GB:)
is it gd enough?
coz 80GB is alot to mi and it is still 64%free
i dun feel like upgrading...:(
any advice?

[Mark Miller]

If you don't feel the need to upgrade, don't. The speed difference between a 5400 drive and a 7200 drive is not that great that it will change your computer experience. I have a 4200 drive on a brand new notebook and I see very little difference between that and my desktop which is 7200.
Don't get caught up in the upgrade frenzy unless you yourself can see a real advantage.
Mark:)

[saphalline]

The speed difference between a 5400 drive and a 7200 drive is not that great that it will change your computer experience.I play a lot of games on my PC (primary use :p) so I do see a big difference everytime I upgrade my hard drive. Load times typically drop like a rock, so does the boot/shut-down time.

But then again, you make a good point for everyone to follow. I see a real advantage so I upgrade my hard drive once a year. For those who are happy with their hard drives (or any computer part for that matter) they needn't upgrade.

My problem is that I keep too close to the high-end hardware curve :D which is costly and requires a lot of part swappings, but playing the latest games usually does that. Next upgrade - WD Raptor 10K rpm SATA! :cool:

[Paul Komski]

Noticed a very appreciable (and appreciated) increase in performance (including boot times) after upgrading from 5400 to 7200. Just love the 10k SATA Raptors, which have pushed things up another gear. Because two of them are configured in a RAID1, my boot time is not noticeably slower but not any faster as the security array has to be setup at startup - but thereafter everything just flies along.

This post started with a query about scsi. For ordinary desktop users SATA will give you equivalent performance at much less cost. Agree with the comments about getting it on board and not on a controller card.

Have bin playing around with RAMdisks of late. Now I'm not a gamer but that would appear to be another way of gaining performance in that field. Anyone bin doing this?

If non-volatile mRAM comes in and one could set up say a 1-4gig RAM drive with it - boy could you boot up and be gaming (or whatever) in a flash.

[Fruss Tray Ted]

Dramatically no, but noticably, yes.

By the looks of your system I would suggest an 8meg cache 7200rpm harddrive and yes, you will see a difference. I did with a WDcaviar series but I hear the Maxtors may even be faster though reportedly noisier as well.

If your mobo supports SATA drives then use one of those instead.