Harddrive access speed

[Guest]

I am trying to decided on what type and speed of HD to put in a PC I am building. What determines access time in the real world? As in when I access the HD drive what is the real world time it takes to see the file or app? Wouldn't access time affect start up time?

 

[Lars_Coleman]

I couldn't tell you the exact time that it will take a hard drive to show a file or application. That would have to much to do with the computer as a whole and not just the hard drive.

The access time of a hard drives relys a lot on how fast the rotation of the drive is. If you have a 5400 drive it will be slower then a 7200. If you have a 7200 it will be slower then a 15,000.

Depending on what you are going to be using this hard drive for you have a few options to choose from. You could do IDE, IDE-RAID, SCSI, or SCSI-RAID. That's from cheapest to most expensive.

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