Benefit of faster SATA drives

[DougMcDonald]

Can anyone give me some information regarding the performance increases that can be expected from running a 10k RPM SATA drive like the WD Raptor as opposed to a standard 7200RPM drive like the spinpoints?

I am looking to get somewhere between 500-750 of storage and trying to make a decision between spending the extra on a faster 150GB drive for OS and getting a cheaper 500GB drive for storage or just getting two 300-400GB 7200RPM drives and just accepting that it could be quicker.

Does anyone have direct experience with using these two options? is the benefit of a 10k RPM drive worth the extra £70-80?

Options are listed below:

1 x 150GB 10000RPM WD Raptor @ approx £140
1 x 500GB 7200RPM Samsung spinpoint @ approx £70

OR something like:

2 x 500GB 7200RPM Samsung spinpoint @ approx £70 each

Any suggestions appreciated

[kalniel]

Performance increase doing what exactly?

[DougMcDonald]

Just generally to be honest, I'm familiar with the theory behind what I would expect to be faster with a lower access time etc

I just wondered whether anyone would come back and say things like 'the difference is huge, well worth the money' or 'Unless you're using a huge amount of I/O request (database server or something), you won't notice any difference'

[this_is_gav]

In a word, no, it's not worth it.

[kalniel]

'Unless you're using a huge amount of I/O request (database server or something), you won't notice any difference'

[this_is_gav]

I'll put it another way - you'll only notice a difference when you go back to a 'standard' 7,200rpm drive - I couldn't really tell until I used to come to work. You do notice, but it's very subtle. It's not even going to come close to taking a quarter off of a generic (say Photoshop) loading time for instance.

[DougMcDonald]

Thanks for the feedback guys, i suspected the difference noticed may be negligable unless spending days encoding dvd's or something along those lines.

The cost is a little prohibitive unless its going to supercharge me, so i suspect I'll end up going for the 2x7200RPM drive option.

Cheers

[Thoku]

ive got 2 in my new pc. I do notice a significant speed increase however I've been told this is mainly to do with the fact they are in raid0 rather than the speed of the actual drives.
I got them because of the fact I have already over 1TB of storage in another box so didn't need the space so all i'm using it for are apps and OS.

[Clunk]

Yep, its just certain tasks, booting up, any type of scan on the drive flies, program installs, in fact most things are faster, but only some things are really noticable.

For me, the noise of them is the most irritating aspect.

[DougMcDonald]

For me noise is not so much of an issue, I've had some horrendously loud boxes in the past, some that physically shook the side panels into what become a 'soothing' rattle!

Fortunately the Lian-li case I've got at the moment is nice and quiet, my loudest component seems to be the dvd drive (contemplating a pretty silver one to match the front)

Anyone reackon the sata optical drives are worth the extra money over ide alternatives? I haven't really looked into price or benefits

[Dreaming]

Why not with the 2 500gb hard drives use the intel matrix raid manager if you've got a board and stripe the first 75gb of each hard drive giving you a 150gb fast partition for the operating system. Just an idea though.

[DougMcDonald]

Interesting concept 'Dreaming'

Do you know what the pre-requisits would be for using the intel matrix raid manager you mention?

I haven't actually bought any kit yet, and was probably think of getting the Asus P5B Deluxe mobo.

[Dreaming]

The pre-requisits (however you spell that) is an intel chipset. So that's 965, 975x and the new p35 I think. The Asus P5W is 975x, Asus P5B is 965 and Asus P5K is p35.

All you do is press the button on startup to set up a raid array, select the hard drives, but rather than using 100% of the storage specify a smaller amount. Some people have striped the first part and mirrored the second part.

http://www.techreport.com/reviews/20...d/index.x?pg=1 there's a site going through it.

Make sure whatever board you buy has the ichxr version chipset and not the ichx version, r standing for raid. (P5B has ich8 / r depending on the board model)

[DougMcDonald]

Hmm, definately worth looking at, I will bear that in mind,

I was not going to use raid on first install, but i will certainly have a think about using it.

The board I was going for was this one :

http://www.scan.co.uk/Products/Produ...oductID=443853

Which does list SATA Raid,which implies the ichxr version, but does not explicitly mention it.

[Clunk]

Its ICH8R.

[DougMcDonald]

Cheers clunk, i think the board will do fine