Performance upgrade?

[hopar]

I currently use a 80GB 7200rpm Hitachi Desckstar 8mb cache, I have upgraded the rest of my system, but left my HD alone. Its working fine and I don't really need more capacity. Will I see a significant improvement if upgraded to a current drive, say maybe a WD Caviar black 640GB? Again it would not be for the capacity but purely for performance. I also have 4gb of ram.

 

[Mimoso]

The transfer rate is 3 to 5 times higher and the access times are about 2x lower (assuming you will only use the first 80GB of the WD) so you will definitaly see a significant improvement when booting and starting applications.

 

[hopar]

After doing some research I stumbled upon the Segate 7200.12 500 GB for $55, which is $20 cheaper than the WD. As I said earlier capacity is not an issue for me, that extra 140gb on the WD would be wasted.

From what I read the Segate runs cooler and draws less power due to the single platter design, and it also a little quieter, the WD outperforms in seak time and burst transfers while Segate does better on consistent speeds, but the differences for both drives are minor. I am leaning towards the Segate due to the lower price and the reduced heat/power/noise, but I am alittle afraid as the previous generation (.11) had documented firmware problems, anyone have problems with the current (.12) generation?

 

[sub mesa]

the .12 series is just fine.

If you want a real improvement in booting, application loading and other disk related tasks, you can consider the Intel X25-M 80GB G2 SSD, as its many many times faster. If the money is not worth it to you, the single platter 7200.12 seems a nice compromise, but the performance gain would be small, like 20-40%, while SSDs can improve performance by many thousands of percent.

 

[hopar]

I would love an SSD, but there are 2 reason why I am not going to buy it right now:

1: Price, out of reach
2: New tech, still being perfected.

Maybe in 2-3 years when SSD become mainstream, all the quirks are worked out and prices come down, untill I guess I'll do with the Segate, ty

 

[sub mesa]

True, in the meantime you can do with the Seagate.

The SSD i mentioned is decent though, and should be usable even in 10 years. It also allows to upgrade firmware which can improve the product and add TRIM support even though that is not (reliably) available today.

But i concur, in about 2 or 3 years SSDs should have matured a bit more and be ready for the big mass of people.

 

[geofelt]

If you get a large hard drive, (the larger, the better), and only use the first 80gb of it, your performance should improve measureably. That is called "short stroking"

Performance improves for two reasons:

1) Data transfer rates. Larger hard drives are denser, so more data can pass under the read/write heads per revolution. Also, the first(outer) cylinders of the drive contain more sectors than the inner ones. More sectors passing under the heads per revolution results in faster data transfer rates.

2) Reduced seek times. Since your 80gb of data will be confined to a limited number of cylinders, the access arm will have a more limited range of positions. Since short seeks are faster than long ones, your system will average less than average seek times.

I would suggest something in the 1tb range. Use the remaining space for backups, or even not at all.

Do, though consider the 80gb intel X25-M gen 2 version for the best performance.