school me on HDDs

McClintoc

McClintoc

Fully [H]
2FA
Joined
Sep 27, 2005
Messages
17,396
I currently have a Velociraptor HDD (see sig) but am wanting to upgrade my machine. Lately I have been looking at the Caviar HDDs. My question is, for speed/gaming, what is better: the rpms or the buffer? Which is faster: an 10,000 rpm HDD with a 16mb buffer or a 7200 rpm HDD with a 32mb buffer?
 
Buffers help with better sequential read/writes as well as random read/writes, but it can't stop the fact of a faster rotational spindle speed, which contributes to faster random access speeds.

For gaming, you want something with fast random access speeds as files that are read (especially for games that load textures during gameplay) are read quickly.

As for load times, a 10,000RPM drive would invariably have pretty decent sequential speeds for good load times, though some 7,200 RPM drives trump 10,000 RPM drives in sequential speeds only, not access times.

If storage isn't a major concern (though Velociraptor 300GB gives plenty of headroom), the OS and games installed on the Velociraptor is the simplest, easiest, and most sensical way to use the fast-rotational SATA hard disks.
 
Also, it should be noted that areal density is what has helped the slower 7200RPM drives catch up to the heels of the VRaptor's despite the lower RPMs. The desktop caviars utilize 320GB+ per 3.5" platter. The VRaptors use 2.5" platters of lower density, IIRC.

I agree with Homer... if you want speed, get some SSDs in RAID0. Though, for gaming, VRaptors and SSDs only improve load times. :rolleyes:
 
The Vraptor is still the fastest consumer level platter based drive regardless of buffer size, period, end of story. If you want faster get an Indilinx or Intel X25 based SSD. The latest samsung controllers are nothing to sneeze at either. Avoid any ssd that says "internal raid", Jmicron, or Dual controller.
 
Since you already have it, yeah I'd stick with it for now unless money is burning a hole in your pocket. Maybe switch to SSD when the SATA revision 3 stuff is out.
 
Other than what was said here, do you think that there will be improvements on mechanical HDDs in speeds? Like increased buffers/acess/sata stuff?
 
Wouldn't mind a VR for my PS3/laptop, but I notice it specifcally says not for laptop use even though it's a rather tempting 2.5" form factor. Is this damage control for WD if something does go wrong, or is there a genuine reason why these drives cannot be used in laptops or consoles?

Thanks.
 
Zero1 said:
Wouldn't mind a VR for my PS3/laptop, but I notice it specifcally says not for laptop use even though it's a rather tempting 2.5" form factor. Is this damage control for WD if something does go wrong, or is there a genuine reason why these drives cannot be used in laptops or consoles?

Thanks.
Click to expand...

I think it's a larger than standard thickness, meant for server backplanes, IIRC, as well as heat.

... found it... 15mm vs 9mm
http://www.anandtech.com/storage/showdoc.aspx?i=3291&p=2
 
Yoy0YO said:
Other than what was said here, do you think that there will be improvements on mechanical HDDs in speeds? Like increased buffers/acess/sata stuff?
Click to expand...

For random access where it matters, probably not. I heard that while 20k RPM is theoretically possible, it is heavily experimental and is probably approaching the limits of how fast large mechanical things can spin without exploding or disintegrating. (The same reason why CD ROM read speeds haven't improved much recently)
 
[aside]
I saw this on The Escapist show
CLICK ME

Kinda sucks for PS3s. I hate mine. I hate it ever so. But its well behaved, sits in the corner of the cabinet quietly collecting dust as they should.
[/aside]
 
Don't take too much notice of that, that is simply the Bluray drive being slow. Stuff that loads from HDD is noticably faster.
 
Yoy0YO said:
[aside]
I saw this on The Escapist show
CLICK ME

Kinda sucks for PS3s. I hate mine. I hate it ever so. But its well behaved, sits in the corner of the cabinet quietly collecting dust as they should.
[/aside]
Click to expand...
What a bunch of morons, of course the Blueray ---> hard drive installation will be limited by the speed of the blueray drive. They didn't prove anything. They should have tested something like PSN downloaded Burnout Paradise HDD vs SSD vs Disc based Burnout Paradise or a PS3 Linux Distro boot time SSD vs HDD then they'd see if it's a limitation of the PS3.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top