Hard Drive Performance - Real World Results?

diggingforgold · Jun 20, 2004

I have 2x Maxtor 2MB/20GB's in ATA133 RAID0 right now, and has been that way for about 2 years now. I'm wondering how much of a change I would notice if I went down to a single higher cache (and larger) HDD, or if I decided on going with SATA or SATA RAID. Is there really a noticeable difference in performance in real world applications (booting, loading games, programs).

It's sad to see a cheap IBM NetVista from a college computer lab outperform and out-silence my overclocked H2O rig that I have considered to be fairly speedy and quiet in the past, and have payed almost twice the amount for...

So I'm going to build a new rig and the amount of money I'm willing to spend on storage is in question right now.

WildArmSX · Jun 21, 2004

SATA right now is only a minor increase in speed and performance right now unitl the next gen comes out, then there would be a difference as i believe they will be doubling the tranfer rate to 300mb. As fro your setup now. that would probably be the best thing to do for now.

Tebore · Jun 21, 2004

Should be no way a Netvista can outperform your system. You can try a fresh format. Scan for viruses and spyware then defrag it a few times.

theELVISCERATOR · Jun 21, 2004

diggingforgold said:
I have 2x Maxtor 2MB/20GB's in ATA133 RAID0 right now, and has been that way for about 2 years now. I'm wondering how much of a change I would notice if I went down to a single higher cache (and larger) HDD, or if I decided on going with SATA or SATA RAID. Is there really a noticeable difference in performance in real world applications (booting, loading games, programs).

It's sad to see a cheap IBM NetVista from a college computer lab outperform and out-silence my overclocked H2O rig that I have considered to be fairly speedy and quiet in the past, and have payed almost twice the amount for...

So I'm going to build a new rig and the amount of money I'm willing to spend on storage is in question right now.

2 meg cache is killing you for performance

run some disk benchies and post your results..atto or hd tach..

LtBlue14 · Jun 21, 2004

8mb cache over 2mb generally yield about a 30% real world increase, according to storagereview.com. can't find the actual linky

are your drives at least 7200rpm, and do you work with large files a lot? how much storage space do you need?

going to a 74gb raptor for your new system would be ideal

Hookem · Jun 21, 2004

In a non RAID configuration my SATA Hitachi Desk Star scored 1200 with PC Mark versus 1000 with my IDE Western Digital JB.

Same with OTTO and HD Tach...It benched way better than the WD.

The kicker for me is that I could actually see and feel the difference.

Tebore · Jun 21, 2004

Hookem said:
In a non RAID configuration my SATA Hitachi Desk Star scored 1200 with PC Mark versus 1000 with my IDE Western Digital JB.

Same with OTTO and HD Tach...It benched way better than the WD.

The kicker for me is that I could actually see and feel the difference.

It's not really SATA giving you that boost it's I think NCQ and a higher density platter giving you those 200 more points.

Hookem · Jun 21, 2004

I dont care where the numbers are coming from...Plain and simple the SATA is noticably faster.

Western Digital JB's had been my weapon of choice...Not anymore...Hitachi SATA all the way.

Storage Review also seems to think they are better that the WDJB's...In a world where 2% perfomance increases are common when moving to new hardware, I feel going from IDE to SATA is a great upgrade.

Especially considering that hard drive performance is usually the bottle neck on newer machines.

diggingforgold · Jun 21, 2004

Sweet, thanks for the replies guys. It's for a new rig, I was considering going cheap and sticking with a nice single 7200 ata133 8mb cache drive. But if I build new I guess I will have to go with SATA.

My system is just overloaded I think. I need a fresh install to speed it up a bit

. I'll look into upgrading from 2 to 8MB cache drives if I decide to stick with this rig. Maybe it will give me a little bit better performance.

Thanks again.

diggingforgold · Jun 21, 2004

LtBlue14 said:
8mb cache over 2mb generally yield about a 30% real world increase, according to storagereview.com. can't find the actual linky

are your drives at least 7200rpm, and do you work with large files a lot? how much storage space do you need?

going to a 74gb raptor for your new system would be ideal

Sorry, missed your post:

Yeah, I've had these hard drives for a while now, and got them back when 8MB's weren't really the standard. They are 7200RPM's luckily. I'm just now getting into HTPC stuff. My computer has been my entire entertainment center since I've moved. I've been satisfied with my 40GB array (2x 20GB Maxtor DiamondMax 8 Plus's) for a while (as far as capacity), but now I've got a collection of movies, music, and not to mention I have a few games that I regularly use on my hdd as virtual drives- so they are rather large.

A 74GB Raptor would be perfect for the future. I'll look into it.

Hard Drive Performance - Real World Results?

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