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Buying a Harddrive - Recommendations?

N

Noctaurus

Weaksauce
Joined
Feb 8, 2004
Messages
64
Are there any cross-compatibility issues? The harddrive is relatively urgent, but I'm waiting until late summer till I totally refit my computer with the new AMD proc, R423, the works. Using a Pentium 4 at the moment, so would it be okay if I switched it over?

Next inquiry, regarding the technology. Should I go with 7200 or 10000rpm? SATA/RAID or no? Is now even the right time to buy? I don't want my shiny new harddrive made obsolete because I lacked the foresight to stall until the new 15000rpm model was released.

Any extra things I need, like cooling equipment or additional specs? Thanks ahead of time.
 
right now for PATA drives im very happy with seagate stuff...with SATA im happy yet again with my segate :) since it is native SATA not bridged like maxtor or WD's stuff.
However WD's 10,000RPM drives are very fast !
but i hear they are really loud...anyone confirm thi?
 
Oh yeah, and advice on interface? NewEgg has SCSI, USB, IEEE, and I don't know what the difference is.
 
Of course the first big question is how much do want to spend!

If you're on a budget then grab a 8mb buffer IDE HD. Cheap and decently fast.

If you're on a moderate budget then definitely the 10k SATA drives are great. Especially with the introduction of a larger Raptor a while back! They are louder than normal HDs but not that much more. If you were going to be using this for a media PC then I might not recommend it based on noise.

Of course if you have the cash then slap together an array of blazing 15k SCSI disks. But that will be VERY expensive and may not net you much of a real-world benefit.

The above assumed that you want a moderate amount of storage (80-250 GB). If you are in the market for MEGA (say 250GB-1TB) storage then I think it is time for you to look at IDE RAID array... Relatively good performance and fairly cheap.
 
grab a 36.7 gb raptor and a large 8mb buffer sata drive. Put all your apps on the raptor and movies and such on the larger drive.
 
Can't go wrong with anything that says Seagate on it, in my book.

The speed difference between the drives *excluding the 10k Raptors in the ATA/SATA between vendors is minor, and the Seagates are quiet, which makes them my first choice for a drive...

Yes, I know, this rig is running two non-Seagate drives. They weren't my first choices. :rolleyes:
 
The WD Raptor 74GB (10K SATA) is damn fast. Installed XP Pro last night in ten minutes flat start to finish. During full load it sounds like a very light grinding; I can barely notice it. Just keep in mind if you buy the 36.7GB it will be a bit louder; the 74GB uses fluid dynamic ball bearings.

Def. recommended.
 
IDE = traditional 5400 and 7200 RPM harddrive...
Whats the difference between SATA and SCSI? And what are RAID cards for? My family only has experience with IDE harddrives. My brother's new computer came with a SCSI harddrive in it, and the one thing we noticed is that it loads things a LOT faster.
 
Thanks for the advice.
However, using a 40GB (external?) drive plus a larger (internal?) one would require SATA/RAID, right?

Are fans a possibility?
 
SATA = Seriel ATA. Essentially the format that will replace IDE in the future. It has a whole raft of advantages... many of which are still to be implemented in drives. (Like the +3.3v logic thing)

RAID = Redundant Array of Inexpensive Disks. Basically RAID can mean one of two things. 1) An array of disks in which data is spread between several disks to increase hard-drive performance. 2) Anyone of a number of schemes to provide fault-tolerance for hard-drives. (i.e. the ability to have one drive in the array fail, yet you lose no data) You can read more about it in the sticky on SCSI.

Older and non-performance mobos often lack RAID controllers (i.e. the interface between the array and your computer) so you have to buy an aftermarket one.

SCSI = Small Computer System Interface (right?). I'll leave it to SCSI gurus to give a more complete treatment to it but basically SCSI is a hard-disk standard (just like IDE) that used to be used in many desktops but now is primarily used in server environments.

At one point SCSI had a pretty significant advantage in terms of performance over IDE but, from what I hear, the gap between the two has increasingly narrowed. While SCSI drives (at least the most modern ones) still maintain a slight performance edge over their IDE or SATA counterparts (in desktop use... servers, databases, and some media work are different stories) most people won't see enough of a speed advantage to justify the expensive and complexity of SCSI.

I'd guess that the loading time improvement has to do with more/better memory rather than SCSI. Or it might come from having had a really slow harddrive before.

Noc:
No you could have two drives internal drives on a standard IDE chain. Not sure if I'm following your question...
 
Originally posted by blip
Not sure if I'm following your question... [/B]
Click to expand...

Let me try from a different direction. Can SATA, IDE, and SCSI all be used with RAID?
 
A: yes

RAID is just a format for increasing reliability. It does NOT have anything to do with intereface. RAID can be done is software. Not well, not as fast. BUt done.

SATA is the future cheap format. Pretty fast, adds a lot of SCSI only features to the IDE/ATAPI standard 7200-10K RPM spindle speeds, 6-13ms seek times.

IDE/ATAPI is the standard format for consumer HDDs of today. 8MB of cache is better then 2MB. And 7200RPM spindle speed lets you see seek times in the 10-12ms range

SCSI mostly used in server, databse, HIGH end systems. expensive, very few mobos have SCSI controllers built in, and controllers are expensive. Uses expensive cables. Wicked fast transfer speeds (still limited by drives), and 7(15?) devices per cable. Internal/external connection. Drives are expensive (basically, this is the $$ option). 10-15K spindle speeds, 3-4ms seek times (which is why used to servers)

SATA has not yet had any external stuff released (but planned and develop(ing)). SCSI has external stuff. IDE is NOT external. Best bet for external stuff is a USB2/FW(IE1940(?)) setup.

You can have an internal drive for files and stuff and a smaller external drive (UBS/FW) for transfers and stuff, no it does NOT require any sort of RAID. actually, RAID would hurt that kind of setup, as the external would HAVE to be connected to run the internal, depending on the RAID implimentation.
 
The WD Raptor 74GB (10K SATA) is damn fast. Installed XP Pro last night in ten minutes flat start to finish. During full load it sounds like a very light grinding; I can barely notice it. Just keep in mind if you buy the 36.7GB it will be a bit louder; the 74GB uses fluid dynamic ball bearings.
Click to expand...

Hmm, never knew that the 74 GB were different from the 36 GB other than storage size. I would get one of these and if you feel you need more room get another or a large 8mb drive.
 
My very first computer had a 2.5 GB harddrive. This was when I was about 8 or 9 years old. Sigh, as soon as the family got more games it filled up quite quickly... Then I bought Diablo 2 (like a week after it was in futureshop) and that did it, Diablo 2 was virtually the only game I could put on it, and I didn't even do a full install! lol! Gotta leave some room for Windows in it. Anyway, my parents had a 4.5 GB harddrive. They then bought a 20 GB, so I got the old 4.5 GB. Muuuch better. Then, for my birth-day, I got a Maxtor 40 GB 2MB cache harddrive. It has yet to filled up until today! Although I'm thinking about upgrading to a 133MB/s interface soon, with a 8MB cache, since it would probly speed up load times significantly.
 
Originally posted by uB3rn00b3r
Hmm, never knew that the 74 GB were different from the 36 GB other than storage size. I would get one of these and if you feel you need more room get another or a large 8mb drive.
Click to expand...

740GD is 2 platters, dif firmware (of course), adds CQ, fluid dynamic bearings...i think thats the major changes...
 
Is SCSI neccesary? I'll be using this computer mostly for Half-Life 2, 3dsmax, Photoshop, etc.

The final things I need to work out are:
•seek times - how important are they? I presume lower is better :p
•"Requires additional Power adapter" - ?
•Brand name

Maxtor, Seagate, WD, Hitachi. Best?
 
Originally posted by Visable-assassin
right now for PATA drives im very happy with seagate stuff...with SATA im happy yet again with my segate :) since it is native SATA not bridged like maxtor or WD's stuff.
However WD's 10,000RPM drives are very fast !
but i hear they are really loud...anyone confirm thi?
Click to expand...
The native bridge hasn't helped yet; a majority of the bridged sata drives outperform the Seagate native sata atm.
 
Mesa thinking of upgrading to a nice big 80 GB S-ATA drive. Which brand is best again? So far I think its Seagate.

1) They're quiet (from what I have heard)
2) They have a smaller latency time and smaller seek times
 
Seagate. My 160GB - 8mb cache (IDE) has been outstanding. I don't think there's any huge advantage of SATA right now to switch over. The cost difference is nil until you get into SCSI which you don't need in your case.
 
Right now my mobo only supports IDE, so I am currently using a 40GB IDE harddrive, with a 100MB/s transfer time. The S-ATAs have a 150MB/s transfer time, and faster spindle speeds, plus they sound cool. SATA... Rather than, IDE...
 
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