Does NCQ help in Thrashing Situations?

[MyrddinE]

I frequently seem to run into disk thrashing situations... where the drive is reading/writing from two or three different areas continuously. For example, burning a DVD while extracting a RAR set, or launching a game while bittorrent is seeding, or copying files across the LAN while doing a virus scan.

In all these situations, two or more apps are competing for continuous access to the hard drive. In general, all the apps slow down so much that it would be nearly twice as fast to just do one at a time. In situations like this, with more than one app on a single processor requesting drive access, does NCQ help?

I've heard multiple times reviews say 'it does not help the typical user', but I'm not sure I am a typical user. Thrashing seems to be exactly what NCQ is made for, but I have not yet seen any tests that compare the performance of NCQ enabled drives under thrashing situations.

Myrddin

 

[xonik]

It might help, due to the better prioritizing of access requests, but the real limitation is actuator response time. This can only be fixed by faster motors and/or lighter actuator arms. This is where 2.5" enterprise drives will come in handy. They have exceptionally fast access times because the actuator arm can be shorter and thus more responsive.