what would make more sense for a hard drive configuration

ok right now i have a 100 gig 7200 rpm hdd as my default hard drive and the second hard drive is the 250 5400 rpm gig hard drive
i want to buy a new hard drive a 320 gig 7200 rpm and put it as my default hard drive. the question is for the second hard drive would i be better of using a 250 5400 gig hard drive or the 100 gig 7200 rpm?
hope this make sense

 

I would use the 250GB 5400RPM drive. Just use it for storage of data, not programs, so speed won't make a huge difference. Plus, the throughput of a 250GB 5400RPM drive isn't much different than that of a 100GB 7200RPM drive anyway.

 

yeah hep has the right of it.

You want the most storage in a 2nd drive that you can get. If your main drive is already a 320gb 7200rpm drive then all your wanting the 2nd drive for is mass storage so it really doesnt matter how fast it is

 

definitely go with the 250gb drive. in laptops, internal storage is a premium, and one i wouldn't voluntarily sacrifice.

 

ok thank you guys! another question i have though:
if i bought a 320 gig 5400 rpm since it is much cheaper would i notice a difference at all in gaming and photoshop then a 320 7200 rpm? i have been searching the internet and the difference seems to be like a 1-2 seconds? and i know the 5400 will be cooler and will have the fans spin less.

 

The difference is always going to be pretty small, but a single platter 7200rpm 250GB laptop drive is the fastest available, next is a 7200RPM 320GB/single platter 160GB. If I were you, I wouldn't try to save the what... 15 bucks? downgrading to a 5400RPM drive, especially for my boot drive. Besides, power consumption and heat output are negligible.

 

you wont notice a difference gaming (due to HD's only effecting load times) but you might in something like photoshop if you break your RAm limit, though it wont be something earth shattering. 1-5 seconds longer would be my guess if it was a very heavy fetch.

And yeah the 5400 will typically run cooler and usually draw less power

 

A 7200rpm Hard Drive is nice in Gameing when you are loading into areas alot like Everquest2, or WoW, I see a diffrence, other than that, not too much. As far as a OS Ddrive a 7200rpm will make your system alittle more "zippy", and with the prices now days, I would go 7200rpm every time.

 

ok thanks guys
i am either buying a 250 gig or 320 gig 7200 rpm hard drive.

 

Go for a cheap OCZ Core v1 SSD - the best upgrade I have every made. Period.

 

cant... waiting for that 500gb drive thats being released q2 of this year

1TB SSD RAID here i come

 

Mr bank manager here you come!

 

yeah, but i've been saving up and i'll reuse the drives once i get my Nehelam notebook at the end of this year (or beginning of next when ever an FX is released)

Plus i just paid off almsot all of my bills (save my house) so i have a lot more free money now so new toys and savings accounts are in my near future (its been so long since i've had a savings account lol)

 

Cheap SSD? Lol.

 

Actually yeah, IIRC iata got his 128gb for 195 dollars.

Which is about 1.52(usd) per gb so quite cheap. I remember when hard drives were dollars (yes more than one) per megabyte. So 1.52 per gb for a drive "potientially" that fast is mind blowing

 

Exactly right Kamin. For a performance boost per $ it cannot be touched.

 

Still pretty pricey, and a raid setup with 7200rpm still beats it.

 

A hard disk RAID setup beats 0.3ms access times? I think not. An SSD demolishes a 7200rpm RAID setup.

Also as I said before the increase in performance far outweighs any other upgrade I have ever performed on any PC, desktop or laptop. So on reflection $195 is not much at all.

 

Ok, your right, but read this, (especialy the disadvantages), power, slower write speeds, pricey, limited write cycles, they are just not worth the money at this point. Its not all about access time, thats about the only thing it brings.


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solid-state_drive

more;

http://www.yoz.us/archives/3

 

It uses less power than my WD 500GB, sequential write speeds are far quicker on the SSD, with wear levelling the limited write cycles are not worth worrying about as we'll have 10TB SSDs by the time the drive fails. You say low access times are the only things they bring but they are the most important factor when you are talking about speeding up your system. Waiting for a mechanical arm to move around over a disc platter is not good. Having a near instant access time means everything you run loads pretty much instantly. SSDs are brilliant technology.

 

All true, but my point is the price point for most users, is 11 sec bootup time, and a couple of secs worth the money for most users at this time? As with everything, SD Drives will be a great option when the price comes down, awsome stats btw

 

You can pickup a 64GB Core v1 for under a hundred bucks which is more than enough for a system partition. A steal for this sort of performance increase, for any type of user.

 

Show me were, that would be a good deal

 

Directron have been running a number of rebates since October on the Core v1 32, 64 and 128 but the latest (to take the effective price of the 64 down to $99) has just finished. Give it another week or so and it'll be back on I'm sure. That's where I picked up my 128 for $195.

 

I'll be the odd man out here...

My advice would be would be to use only the 7200 RPM drives, like this:

Primary drive: 100GB 7200 RPM. For Vista and program installs ONLY.
Secondary drive: 320GB 7200 RPM with two partitions: The first partition is small - double the amount of RAM in your system (4GB RAM = 8GB partition). Set this entire partition to be the paging file for Vista. The remainder of the drive is for storage. Music, movies, photos, etc.

This is the most efficient way to run. It keeps your big media files from fragmenting your OS drive and slowing it down. It ensures you have the fastest-possible paging file access. It keeps all data on fast spindles, meaning program and file access times are minimal. And it's the best for Vista boot times.

That's what I'm getting ready to do (250GB 7200 RPM primary in my 7811, and I have a 320GB 7200 RPM on order right now). The only problem with this scenario is if you absolutely need more than 100GB of programs installed on the primary drive, which I HIGHLY doubt is the case -- if so, you need to uninstall some old junk. If you're storing your DATA on the secondary drive like you're supposed to, a 100GB OS drive should be more than enough. Worst case, it fills up down the road and you can just mirror it to a bigger drive when you get some extra money.

 

Well yeah I know SSD is superior in terms of performance but currently it cant touch the capacity.

 

Really?

These will be demoed at CES next week.

 

and will probably cost some ungodly amount.....i like speed as much as the next guy here, but for half the cost of my laptop? you can keep it.

 

If you read the previous comment diablo I was referring specifically to capacity. They will be stupidly expensive at first but I predict by the end of 2009 SSDs will start their proper take-over.

 

I will never own a 512GB SSD until the price is like, 30 bucks, and it's as throw away as my flash drives are.
That, or they find some way to beat the set number of read/write cycles. 5 million is way too low for an OS drive.
I'll keep the low end SSDs for netbooks and other high portability devices that can use the extra durability - but never trust an SSD (well, any hard drive but especially an SSD) to retain your data. Always keep a backup!

 

i knew what you were referring to, iaTa, just decided to comment on the probable cost of the drive. though, it does look mighty tempting.

 

With modern SSDs like we are discussing that have firmware based wear levelling, the reliability is expected to exceed at least 10 years with average use as a system disk. I think that's enough for me.

MTRON have previously stated that their 64GB SSD which has 5 million cycles write endurance will last longer than 85 years assuming 100GB per day erase/write cycles which involves overwriting the disk 3 times a day.

 

I've never heard this before. I've also seen many reports of failed SSDs after about a year of regular use. Could you please direct me to some nice reading materials?

 

Nah, not by the end of 2009. Even SATA took time to becoming mainstream over PATA, and the price difference wasn't anywhere as near as SSD. SSD could take quite some time to become the norm.

I love the speed but as diablo85 said not for half the price of my laptop.

 

http://thefutureofthings.com/articles.php?itemId=42/59/

http://www.storagesearch.com/ssdmyths-endurance.html

And those articles are over a year old.

Intel have recently stated a 5-year life expectancy for 100 GB/day for their X-25M. My laptop is on 24/7 and I probably do 25MB per day if that. I download straight to my second drive, temp files, page file and FF/IE cache are all on a RAMDisk which is mounted in the area of memory that Vista/Win7 x86 cannot use anyway (anything above 3.12GB).

Obviously there are too many variables to accurately predict how long an SSD will last, case in point if your SSD has little free space it means the wear levelling algorithms have a lot fewer cells to play with and so those few remaining cells are going to wear out more quickly. However going on the information which is available to us and being aware of the technology and working to it's benefits I think you can be sure that your SSD will last the same as a mechanical hard disk, if not much longer.

agent: remember this thread in a years time, mark my words

 

I expect SSDs to have a longer life than normal hard drives.

As to a year from now iaTa only time will tell. It'll be an interesting year though. That's for sure.

 

well 2 years ago a 64gb SLC drive was like 3500 usd
now you get them for 200-400 dollars, in another year they will be in the 100 or sub 100 dollar range

2 years ago MLC drives were total crap that failed more often than not
now they simply work and as long as they have a good controller (or a alignment/Steadystate fix) they run fine and will for years

2 years ago 64gb was the largest drive available
now a 500gb drive is debuting in a few weeks, and by years end expect the size to reach the 1tb range with the mechanical drives

Now saying all of that a 200 dollar 1tb HDD will be a lot easier sale than a 800-1000 dollar 1tb SSD, but the sheer speed and the fact you can throw your SSD off a 3 story building and still use it, make the price seem alot less insane.

I said i wouldnt get into SSD's until they basically maxed out the SATA2 connection and gave me a 500GB capacity, this year they are doing both at the same time, so it looks like Q2 of this year my 6860 gets a new RAID array

 

2.5 sata hard drives are still not even the norm today that everyone uses. there a lot of EIDEs for laptop being used still.

 

Wow: http://www.marketwire.com/press-release/Puresilicon-936099.html

Yes please - 2 x 1TB SSD total throughput 600 MB/s - yours for just one miiiiiiiilion dollars (no I don't know real price - not sure I want to!).

Military standard

 

Is it wrong to want to hump a piece of technologies leg?

Cause i so would this

 

+1. my face is still in shock.