How Good Are My HD's?

[LilBuddy]

So I'm using two drives in my computer and I was wondering how the performance was. I compared it to others and it isn't looking too good:

http://i154.photobucket.com/albums/s264/treyprice/HDTestMaxtor200gb.jpg

http://i154.photobucket.com/albums/s264/treyprice/HDTestMaxtor320gb.jpg

[Malpine Walis]

Are they great? Not really. But they are not automatically bad. You see, the best drives that are out there can saturate the SATA 1.5 bus. However, the SATA 3.0 bus is in place now not so much to service the very best drives (although it does help in some cases) but also so that the controllers will already be in place when HD manufacturers make faster drives commonplace. It should actually be a scheme that will last us for the next few years.

So what you are seeing is that you have drives that can come close to the max on SATA 1.5.

[LilBuddy]

Well the 200gb is PATA and the 320 is SATA. I was wondering if I'd see any improvement going with a faster drive like a 74gb Raptor or the 640gb WD.

[tuskenraider]

So what you are seeing is that you have drives that can come close to the max on SATA 1.5. Not at all. Burst speed measures buffer to controller speed and with 187.5MB throughput of SATA 1.5Gb/s, which HD Tach has clearly errored on, is typically inaccurate in it's measurement. The interface has another 50MB to go before saturation. Of course the more realistic throughput measurement from the disk is a best of 82MB/sec, which is nowhere near saturation of the interface as well.

I was wondering if I'd see any improvement going with a faster drive like a 74gb Raptor or the 640gb WD.Definately.

[LilBuddy]

Which would you go with, used 74gb Raptor for $80, used 36gb 8mb Raptor for $35, or new 640gb WD for $95?

[Malpine Walis]

Not at all. Burst speed measures buffer to controller speed and with 187.5MB throughput of SATA 1.5Gb/s, which HD Tach has clearly errored on, is typically inaccurate in it's measurement. The interface has another 50MB to go before saturation. Of course the more realistic throughput measurement from the disk is a best of 82MB/sec, which is nowhere near saturation of the interface as well.

So what software would you recommend for testing drives? Inquiring minds want to know.

Which would you go with, used 74gb Raptor for $80, used 36gb 8mb Raptor for $35, or new 640gb WD for $95?

What are you actually doing with your drives? The hardware configuration would really help here. Absent that info, I would go for the least expensive drive. Given that info, I would look for a drive that is appropriate for your needs.

Even purchased as used drives, the raptors that you are looking at are north of $1/Gb. However, both Seagate and Samsung make drives that are capable of saturating the 1.5 bus bandwidth and are in the range of $0.15 to $0.20/ Gb.

I would hesitate to tell you to buy a $1/Gb drive unless you have some specific use in mind where such a drive would actually be worth spending the money.

[tuskenraider]

So what software would you recommend for testing drives? Inquiring minds want to know.HD Tach and HD Tune are fine testing STR and average access times. Burst speeds are pretty much worthless values and should just be ignored.

Even purchased as used drives, the raptors that you are looking at are north of $1/Gb. However, both Seagate and Samsung make drives that are capable of saturating the 1.5 bus bandwidth and are in the range of $0.15 to $0.20/ Gb.
Ya know, you clearly have no business giving out advice in this forum. You've been dead wrong on multiple aspects of drive and interface performance in multiple posts, and here you do it again after I clearly explained the bandwidth capability of common desktop drive performance. If you don't have the knowledge or sources to back up what you're saying, don't say it and spread misinformation. There are NO drives that can saturate any SATA interface.

[Malpine Walis]

=Ya know, you clearly have no business giving out advice in this forum. You've been dead wrong on multiple aspects of drive and interface performance in multiple posts, and here you do it again after I clearly explained the bandwidth capability of common desktop drive performance. If you don't have the knowledge or sources to back up what you're saying, don't say it and spread misinformation. There are NO drives that can saturate any SATA interface.

And saint google says that you are advocating 300% of the cost for 3% benefit.

Do feel free to edumacate me on the matter. Until then, I will continue to tell people to buy what actually represents value for the dollar....

[LilBuddy]

Well it is going on my main rig with the E8400. I don't use the computer that much and I just like to have a fast rig sitting there. Seriously. If there isn't THAT much of a diff in the Raptor and the 640gb then I'll do the 640gb. No reason to blow that much on a drive that isn't really special.

All I want my computer to do is turn on a little faster. All I use it for is ripping and burning dvd's.

[MadMan007]

Ripping and burning DVDs you'll want good STR as your main goal and a Raptor won't really help that it's good for seek times. A V-Raptor has the best single drive STR atm but that seems like a waste in your case and you didn't mention it so I have to figure it's out of consideration. Go for a top-performing 7200 RPM drive. Now, how much of a difference you'll see is hard to say, it probably wouldn't blow you away but might be a little noticable. i guess what I'm saying there is if you're hell-bent on getting a new drive go for it but it's not going to be a huge difference. The best drives for what you're doing would be the 6400AAKS or a Samsung Spinpoint F1 according to Techreport's reviews.

[tuskenraider]

And saint google says that you are advocating 300% of the cost for 3% benefit.

Do feel free to edumacate me on the matter. Until then, I will continue to tell people to buy what actually represents value for the dollar....:confused: I don't believe I've advocated anything here except speaking about facts, which you clearly have wrong concerning the SATA 1.5Gb/s specification. I don't see any recommendation in this thread telling the OP what drive to get, just that he would get an improvement with either choice asked about over his current drive. What the heck is 300% and 3% concerning? A 74GB Raptor is $150, less than $100 used. A WD 640GB is $95, so that is only a 50% increase of cost, 0% used. STR for the Raptor is typically 78MB/s vs. 94MB/s of the WD 640, a 17% difference. The Raptor has 33% better average read times. If the OP wants his computer to turn on faster and react quicker, the Raptor is the drive for him as the much larger advantage in average read times will benefit boot and app loading times over the touch slower STR.

[hi-yield]

I wouldn't go with a used drive.
I love the sound of my Raptor "Seeking to Saturate"!
It's FAST......PERIOD!

[tuskenraider]

I wouldn't go with a used drive.
I love the sound of my Raptor "Seeking to Saturate"!
It's FAST......PERIOD!Well they have a 5 year warranty, and I've bought 4 out of the 6 I've acquired used and they're still all running fine. I mentioned used, because I certainly wouldn't consider a new one at $150 when you can get a 150GB model for $170, something I suppose I could've elaborated further.

[secure]

http://img116.imageshack.us/img116/2953/st3250410as3aafee3.jpg
This is my hdd running a old p4 3.0ghz lol, these drive are quite nice for the price you pay.
That is a single platter seagate 250gb (st3250410as) they go for around 50 dollars(canadian) around here its a decent drive if you are on a budget, same with the seagate 320 single platter (st3320613as)
so unless your insanely rich go with the suggested raptors lol

[LilBuddy]

I guess I'll be holding off until I really need something....That 640gb WD would be nice just for the storage though.

[MadMan007]

Once again a storage question gets sidetracked by tusken and Malpine arguing for no reason and not listening the the OP's use :argue: you two really need to stop sidetracking these threads. For DVD recoding, not purely ripping since that's limited by the optical drive anyway, a fast 7200RPM drive is the way to go but it wouldn't be any kind of spectacular change. There is no reason to recommend Raptors, especially the older versions, in this case.

[tuskenraider]

Once again a storage question gets sidetracked by tusken and Malpine arguing for no reason and not listening the the OP's use :argue: you two really need to stop sidetracking these threads. For DVD recoding, not purely ripping since that's limited by the optical drive anyway, a fast 7200RPM drive is the way to go but it wouldn't be any kind of spectacular change. There is no reason to recommend Raptors, especially the older versions, in this case.Raptors(new as evidenced by my price quote) are mentioned because the OP asked about them which I didn't even mention in my first reply...............
Which would you go with, used 74gb Raptor for $80, used 36gb 8mb Raptor for $35, or new 640gb WD for $95?
Well the 200gb is PATA and the 320 is SATA. I was wondering if I'd see any improvement going with a faster drive like a 74gb Raptor or the 640gb WD.
The OP then stated:
I don't use the computer that much and I just like to have a fast rig sitting there.
All I want my computer to do is turn on a little faster.
I then stated the advantages and disadvantages of my recommendation of the Raptor. So overall, I think I've answered the OP's questions just fine and responded to a minor detour I didn't create. And then you added your critcism.....:bang head

[LilBuddy]

I know there is this debate about Raptors and other fast 7200.10 hd's. I was wondering if there would be any benefit to getting a Raptor because my drives are so slow. I'm getting that any faster HD won't rip DVD's any faster though. If that is the case I think I'm better off getting the 640gb WD for better speed and a lot of storage.

I was considering used Raptors because I could get an older 36gb for $35 or a 76gb off ebay for about $60. The 640gb WD is on sale at Directron for $88 so I think that is the way to go if I decide to get one.

[tuskenraider]

I was considering used Raptors because I could get an older 36gb for $35 or a 76gb off ebay for about $60. The 640gb WD is on sale at Directron for $88 so I think that is the way to go if I decide to get one.At those prices those were likely the old GD models and not the newer ADFD models. In that instance I'd certainly recommend going with the 640AAKS.

[LilBuddy]

Tusken, how would a 36gb Raptor 8mb cache compare to the 640AAKS?

[MadMan007]

The 8MB cache Raptors aren't worth considering although they may be found very cheap. Despite 'just wanting faster startup' as a later post than 'ripping and burning DVDs' I'm not sure that a drive upgrade would do much of anything. The only review that I found quickly includes older Raptors and a 6400AAKS is Techreport's (http://techreport.com/articles.x/14964/4) and the difference is a few seconds, maybe worth it to you but the improvement is small. Oddly they show the old Raptor faster than a VRaptor too so I'm not sure what to think of that.

Reading carefully I have to ask exactly what you do in regards to DVDs? Do you just rip the files and burn exact copies, no encoding or anything? If so changing drives won't actually do much of anything, you'll just be limited by the optical drive ripping speed, ex: a 20x DVD-ROM reads at 27MB/s which is well below the speed of your current HDs.

For encoding, going from one drive to another would be much better than encoding on the same drive but encoding speed can still be limited by CPU speed so it may not matter.

So, if you want to try to get a few seconds boot time (maybe, not sure what to make of those test results) get a Raptor ADFD. Otherwise for ripping DVDs it won't matter because the optical drive would be the limiting factor, for encoding the CPU should be the limiting factor.

[LilBuddy]

I rip from DVD to HD then burn from HD to DVD.

[tuskenraider]

Tusken, how would a 36gb Raptor 8mb cache compare to the 640AAKS?It would still make an OK OS/app drive with it's <8ms vs. 12.5ms access times, but with an average STR disadvantage of 57MB/s vs. 92MB/s, I'd go with the AAKS as an all-around drive. Also the Raptor will be a little hotter, and noisier of course. Considering you can pick one up here and there for $35, it wouldn't be a bad purchase if you didn't need much space and wanted a little bit of an upgrade from the Maxtor drive you have.

[MadMan007]

I rip from DVD to HD then burn from HD to DVD.

In that case the optical drive is your limiting factor so changing HD would do nothing for the ripping and burning. A faster boot drive might save you 10-15 seconds on boot, if that's worth it to you go for it.

[LilBuddy]

If a 36gb Raptor is a little faster and it can be had for $35 I think it's not a bad deal. As I said I don't need a new HD I just want something to mess around with.

I think one thing I would like better is to have my OS just on one HD and all other storage on another.

[LilBuddy]

So I just picked up 2x36gb Raptors and was wondering if something like this would speed them up if run in RAID.

http://www.newegg.com/product/product.asp?item=n82e16815124023

My board does not have RAID so if that card won't help any I'll just use one.

[LilBuddy]

Anyone?

[Xenocide]

Are they great? Not really. But they are not automatically bad. You see, the best drives that are out there can saturate the SATA 1.5 bus. However, the SATA 3.0 bus is in place now not so much to service the very best drives (although it does help in some cases) but also so that the controllers will already be in place when HD manufacturers make faster drives commonplace. It should actually be a scheme that will last us for the next few years.

So what you are seeing is that you have drives that can come close to the max on SATA 1.5.


So your against the upcomming 6.0 bus :beer: