Suggestions: New Hard Drive

M

Marc Ross Miller

Weaksauce
Joined
Sep 23, 2006
Messages
69
Hi.

I use a Velocity Micro ProMagix. The current hard drives are two 250 GB Western Digital WD2500KS 7200rpm SATA/300, 16 MB Cache.

My questions are:

1. In terms of speed of the PC, is it worth it to get "better" hard drives?
2. If so, would I have to back up all onto an external hard drive?

Thank you.
 
1) For a more responsive system, especially after using those old 250GB drives, yes a newer and faster drive are worth it.
2) Yes it's always recommended that you backup your data onto an external hard drive.
 
Thanks very much.

Can you make any suggestions regarding a new (one or 2) internal hard drives?

I'm thinking of a Western Digital Caviar Black 1 TB, SATA, 3Gb/s, 64 MB Cache, 7200 RPM.

Thanks again.
 
Do you want fast, or do you want high performance (not necessarily the same thing, mind you), or do you care primarily about storage space, etc.

Define what you want and then a recommendation can be made. The drive you mentioned specifically is a fantastic all around great drive worth considering, definitely.
 
The new 500GB-platter drives are out: Samsung F3 and Seagate 7200.12, 500GB/1TB. Not sure if WD has started using 500GB-platters yet in any of their drives except for the 2TB. The higher platter density makes them faster than the 333GB-platter drives (640GB/1TB). These are great for OS/App drives, or if you need high sequential speeds but tons of space.

The WD Green and Samsung F2 series are great for storage drives, as they have lower power consumption due to lower spindle speed, but still have good transfer speeds.

If you want lightning fast, you'll want an SSD, but they're pricey and much smaller (both physically and logically, lol).
 
Thanks for your responses.

Sub.genius: What is the difference between "fast" and "high performance?" I want to increase the speed of the PC. I wish I could be more specific but I don't much about personal computers. But we already have a fast processor: an Intel Core 2 Quad Q9650 @ 3.00 Hz, , 3.00 GHz, 2.00 GB of Ram.

I'm afraid I'm also confused about storage amount. All I know is that we need more storage. I'm thinking of one drive having 750 or 1T and the other drive having about 500GB. Or, would one drive be enough? We have many MS Word files and run many programs simultaneously: MS Office, Art software, etc.

Thanks again.
 
It sounds like you don't need uber high performance, so you can avoid an SSD for now, unless you have cash burning through your pockets. :p

Your idea of one 500GB and one 1TB drive sounds good. Use the 500GB drive as your OS/App drive, and store all your data onto the 1TB drive. I'd get the Samsung F3 500GB, and a WD10EADS for your storage. The Green 1TB 32MB buffer HDD will outperform your old WD2500KS drive, yet spin at a slower speed and run cooler along with lower power consumption. The F3 will be faster than both of those drives, so you want it as your OS/Apps drive.
 
I agree with enginurd. Those 500GB platter hard drives are quite fast, and the Green drives are ideal for storage/media files. Might I also suggest overclocking your processor and adding 2GB more of RAM. You'll notice quite an increase in computer speed from that.
 
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