cache or rpm?

my choices are

Maxtor 6B300S0 Maxline III 300gb 16mb Cache 7200rpm SATA - OEM

OR

Western Digital WD740GD 74gb Serial ATA 150 10,000rpm 8mb Cache - OEM


i might not get either (but i def am getting a SATA drive) but the point of this thread... Which is better a more RPM or a bigger cache? and please dont turn this thread into a 'dont get a maxtor, maxtor are crap!'

thanks

in this case, the 2nd option will be faster, but it costs about the same and has 4x less storage space.

go for both!

It seems like you don't know if you want disk space or pure speed. I do have a raptor for my OS / programs and a caviar for the other stuff and it goes very well. 74 Gb got better specs than the 36 Gb one, but you should maybe consider to go for a 36 Gb and a second HDD for storage. It is just a matter of how much money you want to spend on that...

btw, how much costs the 300 Gb guy?

Id go with the rpm over cache. I ran some hdd diagnostics on my 5200rpm and my 7200 rpm and my stepdads 10k rpm, the speed is much better the higher up. i got about 20mb/s more from 5200 > 7200, then from 7200 > 10k i got almost 40mb/s more.

Sjaak said:

in this case, the 2nd option will be faster, but it costs about the same and has 4x less storage space.

Click to expand...

so extra RPM make a drive faster than having a bigger buffer?

storage isn't really a concern for me. My current HD is 80GB and i'm probably using 25gb... who uses more than 50-60 anyway? unless your recording TV or ripping millions of DVD you will have a lot of trouble filling up 80GB... well i would anyway.

The Maxtor 16mb cache costs £172.67 which equals $318.26 (USD)
The WD 10,000RPM costs £146.49 which quals $270.01 (USD)

Those prices are not including delivery which will be around £15 ($27)

ahh sorry mate i didnt see you were in canada, ok the maxtor 300gb would cost equal to $416.67 (CAD) or if you like

257.62 euros
35,222 Jap yen lol

Then in your case, get the raptor. Will provide the best performance for your use. If you handle alot of smaller files, cache will help more, but a higher rpm is always better

Gorilly said:

who uses more than 50-60 anyway?

Click to expand...

i have 400GB now, and its decreasing fast. 150GB movies, 100GB games, music, videoclips. It fills up faster then you'd think. 2 extra 60GB are on the way for backup and extra storage

i have MOHAA, MOHSH, MOHBT, Americas army, Joint Ops, UT2003/2004, Vietcong. About 300-400mp3s, 20 WMA albums, Paintshop pro, Movies etc.... you have to think to yourself how many games can one person play at once while watching films and listening to music... surely half the stuff on your HD you never even look at?!!?

My pc acts as a server often on LANs, and i usually organise a compo or two. that way im responsible for the files that people need to play those games (patches etc.) I need to keep those files to provide a good LAN with decent compos. I keep every game i have not only on cd, but i make ISO's to prevent the discs from getting damaged. They take alot of space, yeah, but its nothing compared to the cost of a new disc when its damaged.

yeh i get your point

just checked my HD (i was at work earlier) and i'm using 29Gb

i also have a folder containing patches for about 20 different games (thanks to a certain blueyonder site), drivers for anything and everything (even for things i dont have), programs, AVG+All latest updates and a few iso's for when i have lan with my mates, its only about 2.5GB. you must be hosting for a hell of a lot of people

i see that you need a huge HD but i can never understand it when my friends go out and buy 120GB drives when they do less than i do... it seems a huge waste of money...

ohh well

on E8ay there are 250GB hitachi 7200 SATA 8mb cache going for under £100

worth it or just go for WD?

thats cheap, get it if you want. could even get 2, raid em, have 500GB and beat the raptor on speed by loads

I'm not sure a RAID-O setup on SATA 8mb drives beats a raptor. Check anandtech.com for a review of RAID drives vs. a single raptor. I believe the individual raptor won for "real world" performance.

I would think this applies to say playing games, running applications, etc. I'm not sure if I agree with anandtech that RAID-0 is slower for installing games or windows or transferring files around, etc.

My 2 cents from what I've read.

A link to that study:

http://www.anandtech.com/storage/showdoc.aspx?i=2101&p=1

SunTzu69 said:

I'm not sure a RAID-O setup on SATA 8mb drives beats a raptor. Check anandtech.com for a review of RAID drives vs. a single raptor. I believe the individual raptor won for "real world" performance.

Click to expand...

My raid setup beats a 73GB raptor bigtime: 112MB/s write average 132mb/s read average. Loading of games is faster than on my friend's pc (with raptor 73GB), though not by much. And don't forget the price tag. He bought his single 73GB raptor for 220€, i bought my dual 200GB for 280€.....

RAID-0 is faster for large file IO, but that's about it. Latency is higher, even if the drives are the same type. With your setup, you probably have disk access times of around 13ms, while the 73GB Raptor has times of under 9ms. When dealing with smaller files, this difference quickly adds up to a substantial penalty.

the factory given acces time for my drives is 12ms if im right, and sandra says '6ms (estimation)'

I dont use alot of small files...i DO however, use alot of huge files like .pk3 and .bin for games, ISO's, movies, etc.

Sandra is a synthetic benchmark and notoriously inaccurate for HDDs. Accounting for normal access patterns and parallel seeks 13ms is about right. There will be a slight increase in latency for processing dual MFTs.

Yes, you will have an advantage while accessing the larger files, but unless you are running a large quantity of RAM(usually over 2GB), there will still be substantial page file access(windows houses many kernel functions on disk). In addition, your OS, AV, firewall, drivers and etc are all composed of "small" files. These will lose a portion of the effectiveness of your advantage as well.

RAID is always a double edged sword, no matter which level. The ideal setup for a person using large files will always be a very fast, low latency OS disk, coupled with a high speed array for working files and redundant storage for permanent storage. Always with a good disaster recovery plan.

My main issues with IDE(SATA or PATA) RAID are with data safety. Even when working with a perfectly functional RAID, data errors are likely, due to the lack of verification on writes. These are called soft errors and acceptable levels of soft errors are usually less than 10^-8 writes. This risk is increased by writing to dual disks. A good backup is vital.

oh geez, that's expensive! a 74 Gb raptor can be found at 250 $CDN here in Montreal!!!

I dont use antivirus, and i dont use a firewall (running on server/router only) My (former, soon to be again) 1GB of ram prevents portion of the swapping. (especially during games like Far Cry which are heavily optimized for 1GB+ ram)

As for data security: my backup disk will be here tomorrow Just to have my photo's, savegames and emails stored safely. I don't care if i lose my movies, ISO's and music because after the next LAN i will have them all back again.

If your willing to spend you can have both actually. The Promise Tech S150 SX4-M is one of the best PCI SATA Controller Cards available on the market & comes with 64MB ECC Cache, you then have the option to choose either a Write-Back or Write-Thru storage setup. You also have the option to increase the onboard Cache to 256MB ECC for increased performance.