New Hard-Drive (Desktop)

Toggle sidebar Toggle sidebar
G

Guest

Guest
My 320 GB Hard-Disk died yesterday and now I have to buy a new one without having enough experience.
Therefore I'm looking for some advice considering I'll use it as my primary Hard-drive for OS and Gaming and possibly for storage (but I already own an external drive for that purpose). I don't need a large capacity (500 GB should be enough) but I'm looking for good performance. Unfortunately I can't afford an SSD and in general I'd prefer not to exceed 50/60 gbp. Moreover I own a SATA 2 MotherBoard (Asus P8H61-MLE) so I have a "bottleneck" for performance (I suppose).

I'm thinking about buying a WD Caviar Blue (WD5000AAKX), but I repeat I have not much experience.

Thank You
 
Solution
P
Do NOT consider the SATA II (more properly, SATA 3.0 Gb/s) as a limit. Although HDD's are marketed as SATA 3.0 and 6.0 Gb/s units today (the old SATA 1.5 is no longer sold), those are just the max speeds of the COMMUNICATION INTERFACE between the HDD and the mobo port. In fact, the actual limit on average data transfer rate is from the ability of the HDD's mechanical components to find data and supply it to the communications system. That turns out to be about the old original SATA rate, or, in some of the fastest new units, a little better than that but NOT even as fast as the SATA 3.0 Gb/s rate. The result is that it really does not matter whether you buy a SATA 3.0 or a 6.0 Gb/s HDD, the performance will be almost the same! And the...
Sort by date Sort by votes
G

Guest

Guest


I noticed that WD10EZEX is slightly more expensive than WD5000AAKX. Does the larger capacity limit the performance?
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
P

Paperdoc

Polypheme
Ambassador
Oct 19, 2006
11,260
1,022
69,340
Do NOT consider the SATA II (more properly, SATA 3.0 Gb/s) as a limit. Although HDD's are marketed as SATA 3.0 and 6.0 Gb/s units today (the old SATA 1.5 is no longer sold), those are just the max speeds of the COMMUNICATION INTERFACE between the HDD and the mobo port. In fact, the actual limit on average data transfer rate is from the ability of the HDD's mechanical components to find data and supply it to the communications system. That turns out to be about the old original SATA rate, or, in some of the fastest new units, a little better than that but NOT even as fast as the SATA 3.0 Gb/s rate. The result is that it really does not matter whether you buy a SATA 3.0 or a 6.0 Gb/s HDD, the performance will be almost the same! And the units are backwards compatible, so a SATA 6.0 Gb/s HDD can be plugged into a SATA 3.0 port and work just fine!

Net result, you can buy any SATA HDD you like and the older SATA II (3.0 Gb/s) ports on your mobo will NOT limit their performance. So you can base your decision on other things like capacity, cost, performance rating, and cache size.
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
Solution
You must log in or register to reply here.

TRENDING THREADS

Latest posts

Moderators online

Share this page

COMPANY
RESOURCES
FOLLOW
Top Bottom