i need a fast hard drive

[andreadebiase]

purchase advice:
which is the fastest ATA hard drive (aprox.80G) i can buy out there? money are not an issue!
thank you

[pentachris]

If it's parallel ATA you're looking for, most of the 7200 RPM 8MB cache drives perform within a hair of each other. I like the price/performance ratio of the Western Digital JB-series drives (the BB drives have 2MB caches).

I don't know much about serial ATA drives, so you'll have to wait on someone else to help you if that's what you're looking for. A review of some 250 GB SATA drives can be found here (http://www.tomshardware.com/storage/200311141/index.html), though.

[saphalline]

I agree with pentachris, there's not much difference between them. I do like WD JB's also, but that's just preference. The one big selling point of Western Digital hard drives is that they still offer a 3 year warranty - most other HDD manufacturers have gone down to 1 year warranties. Just something to chew on...

[Whyzman]

Is there a specific purpose in mind that your looking for an ultra fast harddrive?

I don't know that performance differences, but I was wondering if you might want to consider a RAID set up using something like a Promise Controller Card...

One other option might be an actual SCSI drive setup with a Host Controller Card...I think the latest SCSI drives are spinning around 10,000 RPMS...(Seagate SCSI drives are spendy, but the cat's meow, as they say! ;) )

Again, without knowing your actual intended purpose or goal...I just toss these possibilities out for your viewing pleasure! :rolleyes:

And, soliciting comments from those in the know...;)

[Fruss Tray Ted]

I was going to suggest SCSI too but how would you hook one up efficiently? Isn't it a bottleneck if you use an expansion card? I have a couple BIOS's that have it as option, do they use a pin header on the motherboard?

Almost all my bigger HDD's are JB's. Probably overkill for second drives just for storage but.... I won't lose any sleep over it.

[Whyzman]

Good point Fruss, I'm not sure if there would be performance differences across the buss vs. IDEs...

We need more input... ;)

[andreadebiase]

It`s my pc at work. It`s not mine so i can`t do s**** to it but i can limit myself to order a new hard drive and since i have this degree of freedom I thought to ask you guys for the fastest ATA (non SATA). but i can`t do more than this

[Orion]

I would imagine the fastest would be the jb (the special edition 8mb cache ones) from WD, But I'm partial to that one, cause it was the first. I have also found reviews, however, that state that they all perform quite closely.

honestly, when facing an issue like having a computer that my work won't let me tinker with, but they will let me order a hard drive for, I would just order the most expensive, largest capacity drive on the market. ever since SATA became the focus for most HD manufacturers, I've not noticed much advancement from PATA hard drives performance...and since performance seems frozen at about the same level for all the 8 mg cache drives, I would look at the difference in storage space as the deciding factor.