Quick question

[Quitoman]

If I upgrade from a stock 72,000rpm, 2mb cache, IDE hard drive to a Western Digital 72,000rpm, 8mb cache, SATA hard drive how much improvement in all areas of loading will I experience?

 

[englandr753]

Milliseconds. Not enough for the average user to upgrade to. Do you run specific programs that need faster disk acess or are you just trying to upgrade your pc for general use?

If for general use stay with your current hard drive. If you later want to add another hard drive for more disk space and dont mind reinstalling your OS then go for it. Otherwise, dont waste your time.

BTW, just for general knowledge its 7200 rpm. If you find a 72,000 rpm you should upgrade. The time difference would be astronomical... (no such thing as 72,000 rpm)

Also, if your running applications that really benefit from faster disk access then you will want to get to SATA drives and stipe them. This writes part of the data simultaneously to both drives reducing the time it takes to write the data.

 

[Quitoman]

well i just play games so i guess i wont need to upgrade.

 

[englandr753]

Whats the rest of your configuration? If you are looking to upgrade, list your hardware specs here so we can tell u what might be the best area to upgrade so you dont waste your money...

 

[Quitoman]

Gigabyte SLI AM2/AM2+ board
AMD Athlon X2 5000+ OC to 3.02GHz
2.00GB DDR2 800 RAM
8800GT (on its way now, getting another later)
Antec 650Watt PSU
Orca Blue-LED Case
Windows XP 32bit
stock HDD
stock DVD drive

 

[dirtmountain]

Looks good, not worth the money to upgrade unless you need the space.

 

[Quitoman]

thanks guys!

 

[englandr753]

Yes, good setup and you're welcome!

 

[Aircathna]

Rather then make a new post I may as well use this one since it apears to be close to what I am looking for.

I got a semi old computer. 1gig cpu, with 1 gig of ram, and a 128m video card, as well as a 20g hard drive. I am looking for a bigger hard drive as you may have guessed. I saw http://stores.tomshardware.com/search_getprod.php/masterid=34453892/st=product/sv=title/ and am wondering if it is worth it? Price wise I can afford it. Size wise 500gigs is a bit over kill but not a major worry. Main question is well it be worth it in the computer used mostly for gaming.

 

[cjl]

If you need the space, it is worth it, and you'd get a fairly good speed boost too. If you don't need 500GB, this one would be a fairly good choice.