6Gb/s drives set to run at 3Gb/s speed question

[avianrand]

In my other post regarding HDD jumper settings I mentioned the WD6402AAEX drives I'm going to be using in RAID 0. I originally bought these thinking that using SATA 6Gb/s on the Marvell controller would be an improvement. But nearly everything I read now tells me that this is not the case. I'm better off using the ICH10R controller for the array and sticking with 3Gb/s. I know I can jumper the drives to run as 3Gb/s drives. I bought 3 of them (one for a spare which I always do in case of failure). They were around $80 each (USD). So it wasn't pocket change and I cannot return them as they have been opened. But now my question is this: Will I get the same performance out of these jumpered to run at 3Gb/s as I would get with a pair of WD6401AALS drives that are made for 3Gb/s? Or is it going to be a little slower?

 

[sub mesa]

Should be the same, and you may not even need to set the jumper; it should work automatically on a 3Gbps port. First try without the jumper, if it doesn't work set it instead.

 

[avianrand]

Thanks. This is the first time a new build has got me a little frantic. Some newer technology and things I'm doing that I'm not entirely familiar with are making this more frustrating than it should be. LOL.

 

[sub mesa]

Well relax.
Things are not as bad as they used to be. Normally, things just work now. If you do it per the normal/recommended way of doing things.

What is still abundant is the marketing techniques used to mislead, confuse and sometimes simply lie to the customer. SATA6Gbps for mechanical harddrives is not useful at all; it would be like driving a cargo truck on a highway where you can drive 600km/h; but you can only do 100 barely. And HDDs are like cargo trucks: slow to accelerate and decelerate, but once they take up speed they are okay.

If you really want performance, using an SSD as system disk is highly recommended. Especially on an expensive workstation. You can also wait for the newer generation of SSDs, which should arrive by Christmas this year. They should really be able to make use of SATA 6Gbps, so your ports are still useful.

 

[avianrand]

That's great. Thanks for the info. Feels better now. I was thinking of going SSD but it's just not in the budget right now. It's a pretty high end system but that's pushing it just a little to far for now. When the SSD's come down enough I'll make the switch. Trouble is that I can't use the cheaper small drives. 160GB or so would be fine and those are a little pricey for me right now especially doing 2 of them in RAID 0. It could add close to another grand to my system. Funny because I know that in about 5 or 10 years, SSD will dominate the drive market and spinning platters will go the way of the dodo and the SSD's will eventually be cheaper than non SSD as well. Thanks again.

 

[avianrand]

Best answer selected by avianrand.