New hard drive - Will it improve my performance on the OS / Apps?

[bigbong]

Currently got a SATA 7200.7 Seagate ST380817AS, and get a 119.4 burst speed read in HDTach. with a average read time of 48.4MB/s

It seems a bit sluggish when loading apps, lots of initial disc access (I have 2 gig memory and a P4 3 gig processor)

http://www.seagate.com/cda/products...081,645,00.html

Is its full spec.

Would I see much an improvment if I got a SATA 7200.10 Seagate ST3320620AS Barracuda with 16meg cache ? (it has a 258.8Mb/s and a read time of 66.3MB/s in the results I have seen.

[Kumagoro]

If you have windows when was the last time you reinstalled it.

[Will]

Yes, it would improve performance. Perhaps go for raid 0 for an extra boost.

[ash_rm]

7200.10 would definitely make a difference. Also keeping windows on a small 20-30GB partition at start of the drive would help.

How often do you defrag the hard drive?

[5aboy]

yes!

I have done exactly the same thing, although not quite finished moving my system over to the new drives yet!

all i know for sure is that the 7200.10s in hdtach start at 140 ---> 80 (stays at 120 for much of it!) and the 7200.7s go 100-60, although staying at 80 for much!


i dont think they are all that loud either, i think they are a lot quieter than the 7200.7s (although i do have them in the wonderful cooldrive 6's - an absolute steal at £15-ish each (other places sell them for £40+)!

well, have fun with it all!