Hard drive is booting up slowly

[CrysisComa]

I have a brand new motherboard, i5 2500k. 8gb ddr3 Ram.

I just reinstalled windows when i switched to the new motherboard, however it seems to take even longer to boot up than it did before. I know hard drives determine boot speed mainly.

I have two.

1x 250gb Seagate barracuda 7200rpm hdd
1x 120gb Western Digital Caviar 7200rpm hdd

the 250gb is the main.

Could it be that i didnt reformat the HDD when i reinstalled windows 7? Or is it possible its just getting old. I originally got it in an old emachines computer a good 5-6 years ago. Pulled it out of that and i have been using it ever since.

Boot time use to be about 30 seconds at most. Now its at least 90 seconds

 

[kevin83]

I would say the drive is probably getting old. Reformatting probably would have helped on that old of a drive, but not enough. I say get a new western digital drive, or if you aren't using all of the space you can just run on the 120gb.

 

[CrysisComa]

well the 120gb is even older. So i guess time for a new drive

 

[tlmck]

I recently installed Windows 7 on a new system myself. Was using Vista before that. Just like Vista, what I noticed was that Win 7 took about 2 weeks of use on a new install to get "settled in". After that period, the boot sped up considerably to about 15 seconds to the login screen.

Having said that, if you have older SATA I or even IDE drives, these are going to be a bit slower than the more modern SATA II or III drives. My Samsung is SATA II.

 

[CrysisComa]

Pretty sure they are just old drives. Ill give it a few weeks and then grab a new hdd.

When i shop for a hdd, how do i tell if its newer generation or older? and how do i tell how fast a hdd is? besides of course the rpm. Ill most likely get one off ebay, as the prices on the egg are ridiculous right now

 

[tlmck]

Prices are ridiculous everywhere due to the shortage caused by the floods in Taiwan. Basically if you get something either SATA II or SATA III it should be fine. Western Digital is the best, but you may have to take what you can get. And believe it or not, the 1-2 terabyte hard drives are the fastest.

I would suggest my Samsung, but they no longer make mechanical drives, so finding them may be a bit tough, and the few I have seen are at a premium price. In benchmarks, it is as fast as SATA III drives I have tested.

 

[CrysisComa]

http://www.ebay.com/itm/WESTERN-DIGITAL-SATA-400GB-WD4000KD-00NAB0-DCM-HBACAJAH-DATE-06-27-2005-/260936163015?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item3cc101dec7

hows this look?

 

[tlmck]

That is an older SATA I drives which as probably as slow as what you have now. It is also likely used. This is more expensive, but a much better deal. http://www.amazon.com/Western-Digital-Caviar-Cache-Desktop/dp/B00461G3MS/ref=sr_1_1?s=pc&ie=UTF8&qid=1326941379&sr=1-1