Need a fast, cheap harddrive.

[markusw]

I am going to be doing some testing with server software and I would like to buy a new harddrive to use for this function. Size doesn't matter, anything above 30 gig should be fine, the cheaper the better.

It will be going into an Intel D845PEBT2 motherboard that has onboard SATA (Sil 3112A controller) and PATA interfaces.

The motherboard is pretty old (2002 if I recall correctly). Will this impact SATA performance? Should I not bother trying to find a super fast drive because my motherboard may not be able to utilize it anyway? As the Sil 3112A controller was one of the earlier ones available, does it cause problems? Should I just use PATA instead?

I was considering buying a WD Raptor WD360ADFD from newegg for $90.

Are the Raptors still a good thing to buy, or are they starting to show their age now? Would a newer model 7200rpm be as fast or faster, or are the Raptors still decent?

Any insight you can provide is greatly appreciated.

 

[njalterio]

The 7200 rpm hard drives will never be as fast as the raptors, since they are 10000 rpm hard drives. If your motherboard has an available sata connection then you will not have any compatibility issues.

 

[bobbknight]

One just needs to go to the toms hardware reviews, to see that indeed you can get a new hard drive that in all but one test, beats the Raptor.
That drive series is the Seagate 7200.11 with 32BM of controller cache.
The only models that have the larger cache are the 500GB, the 750gb, and the 1TB drives. Seagate has come out with a 320GB 7200.11 drive but it only has 16MB of cache. All the 7200.11 series are Sata ll, it's unlikely that a board from 2002 would support it.

This drive:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822148309

Will come close to the performance of the Raptor, in Sata l. The main thing is that it's cheaper than the Raptor.

 

[markusw]

So the 7200.11 drives are faster than that ES.2, or vice versa?

Newegg has a 500gb 7200.11 /w 32mb cache for $100 with free shipping, which after $6 shipping on the ES.2 only ends up $14 more than the ES.2.

Both drives are 3gbps sata (I assume that is Sata 2?), so wouldn't both be backwards compatable to Sata 1, just not with the better performance? Is there some reason the ES.2 would be better on Sata 1 than the 7200.11?

I get really confused when I go to look at tom's benchmarks because they never seem to have all the drives I want to compare in the sets, and I don't know if I'm looking at older drives when there's new stuff out there unlisted that's better.

It has been years since I kept up with any of this technology, not since my last computer build in 2002, so I'm out of date on everything.

Right now I have a WD1000BB and a WD1200JB, will putting any of these new drives in give me much better performance?

Thanks, I really appreciate your help!!

 

[panicatak]

I have a couple of 500Gb 7200.11 8mb cache drives and under Vista sp1 I get between 80 and 105 meg tranfsfer speeds

 

[markusw]

7200.11? ES.2? 6400AKS? Spinpoint F1? T?

It seems like results vary so much from site to site.. on one, the 7200.11 will be top, then on another the ES.2 is better.. than on a third the ES.2 is horrible..