Maxtor Maxline III 7L300SO Question for HDD Expert

[Vektor67]

I just purchased the Samsung T166 500GB Model HD501LJ. I currently Have the Maxtor Maxline in my system. My curent understanding is that the Maxtor while labeled a Sata II drive, it isn't truly, while it has NCQ and a 16MB Buffer
the transfer rate is actually SATA 150. Now my new harddrive is a SATA 300 a true SATA 2. I'm guessing if I have both drives in my system they will both default to 150 even if I choose to use the Samsung as my Primary which it isn't right now. Will I see an actual decent performance gain if I say just install the Samsung and just get an external enclosure for the Maxtor and use it only periodically for backup purposes. I would then buy another Samsung for my system. This Maxtor drive is pretty fast however. I'm hoping there is someone in the know who can conclusively answer this question. I'm reading reviews and tests right now, if I find the answer I'll update this post. Thank you, Mike
Oh my mobo is a DFI SLI-DR so I belive it's good to go for the faster rates. I use lightroom and photoshop and if I can improve the oad time if my images it would be a big benefit to me. Thanks again.

 

[g-paw]

I may be wrong but I don't see why/how the speed of one drive would affect the speed of another given they are on separate connectors. If you can afford it, I'd get a smaller hdd driver 40GB to 80GB for the OS/programs, use the Samsung for storage, and get the enclosure and use the Maxtor for backup. If money is tight, just use the Maxtor as an internal backup drive. If you do this, I'd partition the Samsung with the 1st being 35GB or so for the OS/Programs and the 2nd partition for data. You won't have to worry about losing data when you do a clean Windows install