Could I used a new drive?

[airborne_mtrs]

Hard drives are the area of computers I know the least about. I have built a pretty nice system but I am not sure if I could get more performance out of a diffrent drive. I am currently running a WD 1200. It is an IDE drive at 7200rpm's and a seek time of 8.9.


I can't really afford a raptor so would switching to a SATA 7200rpm drive boost my system speed at all?
my system:
AND 64 3400
MSI K8N Neo Plat
XMS 3200 1GB
Radeon X800 Pro
WD 1200

Thanks

[rottweiler]

Most likely you will not notice much, if any, increase in speed.

Personally I wouldn't build a new system w/o SATA drives, but upgrading from IDE to SATA just isn't worth it, unless you find a really good deal.

But, what are you doing with the system?
It's possible that some type of usage will see a useful performance increase.
I won't be able to tell you if what you're doing will see a performance increase, but I know the smarter people here will need to know what your doing to be able to tell you.

[DougLite]

If it's a 2MB buffer drive (WD1200BB) he will see some gain stepping up to a 8MB drive, whether it's PATA or SATA. At that point, there is no reason not to go SATA, better cables, future resistant, etc. I do recommend that any future drives you may buy be SATA. If he's got a WD1200JB, I'd stand pat until it needs to be replaced and buy SATA then. Remember to have backups though ;)

[airborne_mtrs]

Thanks for the input guys. I actually think my WD 1200 is the faster one or the JB and not the BB. So I guess I will stick with it until it goes bad and replace it with a SATA drive.
Thanks again,

Chad