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Good Hard Drive for gaming rig?

I

InorganicMatter

[H]F Junkie
Joined
Oct 19, 2004
Messages
15,461
Here are my (future) system specs:

ASUS nForce4 Intel SLI
Pentium D 830
6800GT

As you can tell, I will be gaming with a heavy ammount of multitasking. I need a good cheap fast hard drive to go in here. How does this look:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=22-148-039&depa=0

I see it has NCQ, can my motherboard use the NCQ features? Drive space is a non-issue, 120GB is more than I will ever use. I am open to all suggestions.
 
You won't need to really worry about NCQ as it tends to actually produce slower results for most home users.

Just get something with a high density and a big cache and you should be happy. If you really want you can get a raptor, but, they aren't for everyone and it's mainly a personal choice.
 
Good (read: Reliable). Cheap. Fast. Pick two.

Seriously, NCQ is not going to save the lackluster performance of the Barracuda. For another $1.01 (don't forget to include Newegg's $3.99 shipping charge :rolleyes: ), you can get a 160GB Hitachi (with NCQ if you want) on ZZF.
without NCQ
with NCQ

For another dollar, you step up to a faster drive with 40 more Gigs, and can even get NCQ if you want it. Yes, you do step down to a shorter 3 year warranty, and according to a recent poll here (not scientific) Hitachi warranty service is the worst of the makers. However, I have never had to use Hitachi or Seagate RMA, so I wouldn't let reliability/wrranty service data affect your decision too much.

IMO, it would be extremely foolish to look past the 160GB DeskStars I linked above.
 
Just wondering. Can NCQ be disabled, perhaps in the BIOS or in Windows, or is it an always-on physical feature of the drive?
 
NCQ is not an always on feature. You are able to disable it through either the BIOS or Windows system settings.

-J.
 
I thought that NCQ was something you wanted. It is supposed to increase performance while lowering the wear-and-tear on the drive. Why do you guys seem to be not liking it? And what is the difference between the Hitachi drive you linked to and my Seagate? They both run at 7200RPM, both have NCQ, and both use SATA. What is the difference?

EDIT: Disregaurd this, I just noticed that one is running at 1.5Gb/s and one is at 3.0Gb/s.
 
sac_tagg said:
I thought that NCQ was something you wanted. It is supposed to increase performance while lowering the wear-and-tear on the drive. Why do you guys seem to be not liking it? And what is the difference between the Hitachi drive you linked to and my Seagate? They both run at 7200RPM, both have NCQ, and both use SATA. What is the difference?

EDIT: Disregaurd this, I just noticed that one is running at 1.5Gb/s and one is at 3.0Gb/s.
Click to expand...
Actually, NCQ (or TCQ, for that matter) decreases performance for most users. The only way that Command Queuing can increase performance is in a multi-user environment (such as a server app).

On the other hand, whichever SATA hard drive you end up buying, I'd recommend avoiding most models with a PATA-to-SATA bridge (Raptors excluded). Most such drives actually perform slower than their PATA siblings due to the additional overhead.
 
sac_tagg said:
And what is the difference between the Hitachi drive you linked to and my Seagate? They both run at 7200RPM, both have NCQ, and both use SATA. What is the difference?
Click to expand...

Platter density and the controller can make dramatic increases in speed.
 
slowbiznatch said:
Platter density and the controller can make dramatic increases in speed.
Click to expand...
That's true there - for the most part. But sometimes, the densest platters are more difficult to read accurately (which is why drives with 133GB/platter such as the 400GB Seagate have relatively slow access speeds). And don't expect the latest dense-platter or SATA II technology in most hard drives smaller than 200GB (the Hitachi being an exception).

And judging by that history, I would expect the T7K250 to have slower access speeds than its 7K250 predecessor, even though the SATA versions of the 7K250 are of the bridged PATA design.
 
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