What makes a good HDD for gaming?

Zero1

Limp Gawd
Joined
Apr 26, 2003
Messages
324
Hi guys
This actually pertains to the Playstation 3, but I guess it's relevant for any HDD based game system, or PC. I'm looking to upgrade the HDD, for no other reason than I want more speed, and I love to mess around with things. I've got a shortlist of two 2.5" HDDs that are good all round performers, but I got wondering, what is an important attribute in a HDD for gaming? For example, a low access time is more likely to benefit a game system than a high sequential read rate, but how do things like I/Os per second factor in?

The two I am looking at are:
Seagate Momentus 7200.4 250GB
Western Digital WD Scorpio Black 320GB

They are compared here:
http://www.tomshardware.com/charts/...compare,1110.html?prod[2433]=on&prod[2431]=on

Interesting that the WD did so much better at simulated video editing. I guess that's down to the lower access times?

So the question is, which would be the best drive for the PS3, and what makes it better than the other? The thing that bugs me at the moment is the lengthy install process for demos and content. First it downloads the content and installs it straight after, so it ends up copying/moving/extracting data from one part of the drive to another. Kind of like unzipping a big archive.

Eventually I'm hoping I will be able to install games to the HDD. If this works Ok and brings a decent improvement, I may consider cracking open an Xbox360 HDD and see how I go on with replacing that.

Thanks guys. If you have any suggestions for other drives that may be even better, I'd be glad to hear them. Maybe you guys know about some non mainstream HDD that is pretty kick ass (like a 2.5" equivalent to a WD Raptor).
 
Harddrive speed effects level load times, and that's about it in my experience.

With any hard drive (standard, raptor, SSD) if you get to the point where the game is no longer primarily running out of system/video RAM and is hitting the HHD, you're going to have severe hitching.

h2benchw 3.12: Avg Read Throughput
Read Transfer Rates
([MB/s, sorted by average])
Score in MB/sGo 80.12 63.96

h2benchw 3.12: Max Read Throughput
Read Transfer Rates
([MB/s, sorted by average])
Score in MB/sGo 101.32 84.24
This is what you're likely most interested in, and the Momentus wins.

Without looking, IIRC the Velociraptor is 2.5" form factor. It fits in a 3.5" bag using a big heatsink adapter around it. Physically you don't need this heatsink... thermally, you may or may not . Hard to say WD's intention here, enthusiast appeal? innovative way to provide 3.5" bay adapter" or truely thermally needed? combination of the above?
The thing that bugs me at the moment is the lengthy install process for demos and content. First it downloads the content and installs it straight after, so it ends up copying/moving/extracting data from one part of the drive to another. Kind of like unzipping a big archive.
Nothing will make this speedy with any drive, without having two different drives to do the operation between.
 
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Hitachi Travelstar 7K320 should be on your short list. Hitachi's mobile drives are excellent, and thay have the most experience in 7200RPM laptop drives.
 
Thanks. I was just wondering what might have been more beneficial to the type of access patterns the HDD would have. For example the 500GB Momentus has a higher read rate but the access times aren't as low. I have this gut feeling that access times could play a major part in the performance for gaming rather than sequential speed, but I'm not sure.

All I'm really going on is that the performance HDDs I saw a few years ago generally had a high spindle speed and low access time. Same with access times and SSD.

As for the Hitachi, this looks like a good middle ground, nice suggestion.

Do Seagate still have a good reputation for reliability? As well as the performance, long term reliability is also a big factor. I've been a Western Digital man for many years. Fortunately out of the 20 drives or so I must have had, only 1 has partially failed (still accessible but it's hit and miss). I know a server admin that had a bunch of WD's die on him, but I haven't heard any Seagate horror stories.
 
Thanks. I was just wondering what might have been more beneficial to the type of access patterns the HDD would have. For example the 500GB Momentus has a higher read rate but the access times aren't as low. I have this gut feeling that access times could play a major part in the performance for gaming rather than sequential speed, but I'm not sure.

All I'm really going on is that the performance HDDs I saw a few years ago generally had a high spindle speed and low access time. Same with access times and SSD.

As for the Hitachi, this looks like a good middle ground, nice suggestion.

Do Seagate still have a good reputation for reliability? As well as the performance, long term reliability is also a big factor. I've been a Western Digital man for many years. Fortunately out of the 20 drives or so I must have had, only 1 has partially failed (still accessible but it's hit and miss). I know a server admin that had a bunch of WD's die on him, but I haven't heard any Seagate horror stories.
All manufacturers generally have a good rep these days. Each one chips their lemons, they are mechanical devices afterall. Seagate had a bad run with their .12 drives, but other than that pretty solid.

You'll have various users who have had a bad experience with one brand or another swear them off, but they are largely isolated incidents. I'd generally look more toward warranty time length + maintaining regular backups (though maybe not applicable for a game console hdd)
 
Thanks. I was just wondering what might have been more beneficial to the type of access patterns the HDD would have. For example the 500GB Momentus has a higher read rate but the access times aren't as low. I have this gut feeling that access times could play a major part in the performance for gaming rather than sequential speed, but I'm not sure.
There's three roughly equally important components to single user hard drive performance

Seek performance
Linear transfer speed
Buffer size / strategy

Seek performance and linear transfer speed compete against each other. In order to increase seek performance, the drive makers have to space the data sectors further apart, which lowers linear transfer speed. The drive makers usually try to balance these two mechanical metrics

Buffer size is an easy metric to guage ... it's the amount of cache the maker puts on the drive, and bigger is always better. However, buffer strategy & firmware code is very jealously guarded by drive makers, and is not disclosed for any reason. It has a sizable impact on performance. You may want to look at some of the TechReport's hard drive reviews. They have a number of synthetic file system tests that show just how big of a difference buffer code makes in storage performance. Drives of comparable design and physical metrics can vary widely in performance in different scenarios.

IMO, Hitachi and WD have the best buffer strategy out there. Samsung is pretty good, Seagate not so much.
 
Hmm. I'm being tempted by the 500GB Seagate despite my original thoughts. Looking at the benchmarks, it is as good as, if not better than the WD in most areas except for the video editing benchmark. Which sounds good, but then again video editing tends to be a mix of high speed reads and seeks, so that would make me assume the WD would be ideal for the job at hand.

:confused:
 
screw it use a velociraptor

Screw it, if I were you I would just go with a 7k drive, SSDs just for gaming is too expensive in high GBs and now with SSDs I find vraptors to be useless ( I know I wouldnt buy another raptor). I know once I get my SSDs for OS/apps, Im going to unload all my games to my 1TB 7k drives.
 
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