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Hard Drive Questions

N

nerdawg4

Limp Gawd
Joined
Jan 20, 2003
Messages
147
I am in the market for a new hard drive soon. I don't want to start a war over which manufacturer is better, so I am not going to. I had some other questions though.

I currently run a Maxtor 80GB 7200RPM ATA133 8MB buffer drive, which is failing for the second time (already RMAed it once). So I am going to order a new one.

My questions:

1. I am going to game alot with this. I am looking at some Seagates which run ATA100. Is there a big performance decrease between ATA133 (like I have now) and ATA100? And would I "need" ATA133 for good gaming experience?

2. I am looking at some drives (Seagate and Others) which have 2MB buffers. I realize that I would notice at least some difference between 2MB and 8MB buffer performance (probably worse with the 2MB buffer), but is it enough to warrant spending more money to get the 8MB buffer? do want to game, and I am willing to spend the extra, but if the benifit is really not worth it, I will keep the money.

Thanks for your advice,
 
nerdawg4 said:
I am in the market for a new hard drive soon. I don't want to start a war over which manufacturer is better, so I am not going to. I had some other questions though.

I currently run a Maxtor 80GB 7200RPM ATA133 8MB buffer drive, which is failing for the second time (already RMAed it once). So I am going to order a new one.

My questions:

1. I am going to game alot with this. I am looking at some Seagates which run ATA100. Is there a big performance decrease between ATA133 (like I have now) and ATA100? And would I "need" ATA133 for good gaming experience?

2. I am looking at some drives (Seagate and Others) which have 2MB buffers. I realize that I would notice at least some difference between 2MB and 8MB buffer performance (probably worse with the 2MB buffer), but is it enough to warrant spending more money to get the 8MB buffer? do want to game, and I am willing to spend the extra, but if the benifit is really not worth it, I will keep the money.

Thanks for your advice,
Click to expand...

First, ATA100 is currently not a downwards step from ATA133. You see, the fastest current IDE hard drives barely start to break the maximum practical bandwidth of even ATA66, let alone ATA100 or ATA133, in terms of sequential read transfer rates.

Second, there is a performance difference between hard drives with only 2MB of cache and those with 8MB of cache - but many applications cannot take full advantage of the extra cache. However, the extra cache does speed up booting into Windows somewhat, and it definitely makes at least some sense in some of the larger-capacity hard drives.
 
E4g1e said:
First, ATA100 is currently not a downwards step from ATA133. You see, the fastest current IDE hard drives barely start to break the maximum practical bandwidth of even ATA66, let alone ATA100 or ATA133, in terms of sequential read transfer rates.

Second, there is a performance difference between hard drives with only 2MB of cache and those with 8MB of cache - but many applications cannot take full advantage of the extra cache. However, the extra cache does speed up booting into Windows somewhat, and it definitely makes at least some sense in some of the larger-capacity hard drives.
Click to expand...

I always wondered about that, the first question.

And I am looking, to go with an 8MB buffer my only cost around $25 or less in addition, so I may go for it.

Thank You.
 
*Looks at maxtor 80gb 8mb cache drive that is only 3 days old and knocks on wood.*

All brands are decent but if you've had bad luck with maxtor then another brand is a wise choice. However, I would replace power supply since it may be causing the hd failures. Good luck :D
 
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