Seagate 7200.8 vs 7200.9

[MrCommunistGen]

Does anyone know of any compelling reasons to buy the new 7200.9 over the 7200.8? I was planning on getting a 250GB 7200.8 PATA based on the Tom's article on HDs, but now there's a new 7200.9. If its faster than the 7200.8 then I'll probably wait. Does anyone know if its faster.

Also, I'm sure this is posted elsewhere, but you need to boot off of a floppy to use a SATA drive with older mobo's even if its not the boot disk right? I have an MSI KT6V-LSR. I'd like to get a SATA, but I don't have a floppy drive.

Thanks!
-MCG

 

[pat]

You can see some difference in benchmark, but in real life, you wont see one. I would buy the cheapest of the 2.

And yes, older motherboard have third party IDE controller to bring SATA so you need drivers to be loaded for the controller. But, if you don't boot from the SATA HDD, then drivers can be installed from windows, just like standard drivers installation. A floppy is only required if you need to install Windows on the SATA drive. Windows install need drivers to be able to talk to the IDE PCI controller added for SATA connectivity.

Because I'm sure that you know that SATA is still only an interface between an IDE HDD and an IDE controller...

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(")<b><font color=red>ώ</font color=red></b>(") This is my bunny.. got mumps from Ned!!!

 

[MrCommunistGen]

Thanks for the info! I was considdering getting the SATA version so that I could take advantage of the NCQ when I decide to upgrade my motherboard... however small of a benefit this may be. Anyhow, I don't need the drive right away so I guess I'll wait for the 250GB 7200.9's to become available and check the prices.

-mcg

 

[emogoch]

I'm pretty sure I read that the 500GB drive is actually 4 platters of 125GB rather than using 160's, 3x160GB is only 480GB