Fastest hdd

Whats the fastest hdd above 250gb?

 

Seagate Momentus XT if you do the same tasks over and over. If you do a variety of things, including playing different games, then it would be the Western Digital Scorpio Black.

 

What model/size?
Is the 320gb sb faster than the 500gb?

 

Any differences are attributable to margin of error. You won't notice them in everyday computing. Just get the largest drive that fits within your budget.

 

Isnt the 320 a single platter and the 500 a double platter thus making the 320 marginally faster?

 

Hitachi 7K500 and Momentus XT, depending on usage.

 

WD Scorpio Black 750GB partitioned to 50-100GB's. Make a second partition for the 150-200GB additional storage you require.

 

http://forum.notebookreview.com/har...rket-upgrades/563696-7k500-vs-wd5000bekt.html

Momentus XT is fastest if you do repeating tasks, but some people are having issues with it (BSOD at resume from sleep, spin downs)

750GB Scorpio Black has much slower write access times than it's 500GB brother.

320GB Scorpio Black is not faster than the 500GB Scorpio Black, the bigger is the faster.

 

is this correct? the bigger the faster? i thought the bigger drives were dual platter thus increasing hdd head movement btween the two.

 

most of todays laptop HDDs are dual platters. So the higher the density on the platter, the faster the drive is. Usually. And this is only for maximum speeds ... and does not include random access times, which could screw overall performance of the drive.

so there can be rare case of a single platter HDD that uses higher density platter vs. another dual platter drive with less dense platters (but being higher in size), in which the first is faster. In this case however you'd better look for the dual pratter version of the first drive.

 

well the reason i ask is that the 250gb momentus xt is single platter and iirc is faster than the dual platter 500gb xt.
the 500gb is more dense but the head moving between 2 platters makes it slower. cmiiw of course.

 

If you're simply going to use 'XXX' amount of capacity with no regard to drive size, then the dual platters will be faster. Why? Because when you partition them to the same effective size, they will need half the platters to cover compared to the single platter, but same sized, version.

 

i see...
so if i were to partition a 500gb hdd into the two separate platters how would i do this? is there a partition program that will show me this?

 

I don't think it's possible. Data is usually written pretty much simultaneously to both platters from the outside in, so unless you can somehow get the firmware of the drive to only write to one platter at a time, or choose one platter over the other, it won't work. This is why the HDTune graphs of even dual platter drives resemble those of single platter drives. If it wrote completely to one platter before starting on the other, you'd have a graph that curves down, and then spikes up sharply before curving back down again.

 

trvelbug,

sorry, when I said 'half the platters to cover', I didn't mean half as in count, I meant half as in physically half the width of both platters - with the implication being that both platters can now give much more consistent performance from the fastest, outside edges.

Moving one/two heads over a single platter is not significantly faster than moving two/four heads over two platters. The heads are both connected to the same arm - any differences are more than outweighed by the benefits of short stroking to the same capacity, imo.

 

Tiller,
So what program wpuld i use to make use of the faster,outer half of both platters?

 

For the same size partition, a two platter means less track to track movement which is the biggest dragger in terms of speed.

That is also why I find the 'average' reading of say HDTune meaning less.

 

trvelbug,

Any partitioning program from Vista's, Windows 7 and/or any other will make the partition 'correctly'. This is controlled internally in the drive by the firmware and as far as I know, we do not have any control over this.

 

Tiller,
I dont get your posts. You say that dual platters wil be faster if your are able to partition the outer edges of both platters then you say that no program gives you control on doing this.

 

trvelbug,

sorry I'm not being clear for you.


No program gives you the control to partition a single platter - they will all by default partition both platters starting at the outer/faster edge - always.

Hope we're good now?

 

He is saying if you create a 50G partition for your C:, it would be faster on a 500GB two platter than a 250GB one platter. You don't need to do anything special.

 

So your basically using one platter on the 500gb and it will be faster than a 250gb because of density etc. That i get.
Tillers post seemed to indicate the use of both platters in the 500gb but i guess this is what he was trying to point at.

 

Yup. that is what it is about, density. Just some lost in translation I assume

edit:
and no, you don't use one platter on the 500GB, it is two platter. basically you are using say track 1 - 10 for the 500GB version vs track 1-20 for the 250GB version. Less track used means faster. That is the whole point about short stroking.

 

Or we can look at it this way. Let's say you short-stroke a 50 GB partition on a single platter 250 GB drive, and do the same size partition on a 500 GB 2 platter drive. This means that you'll be using the top 50/250 = 20% of the single platter drive's performance (since the 50 GB will be the outer, faster edge of the single platter). Now, if you do the same 50 GB short-stroke partition on a dual-platter drive, you'll be using the top 25/250 = 10% of each of the 2 platters in the dual platter drive. Now, if we assume that speed drops linearly (it doesn't, but we'll just use it for easier numbers in this example), and it goes from a top speed of 100 MB/s at the outer edge to 0 MB/s at the innermost edge, then the single platter drive will have speeds from 100 MB/s to 80 MB/s, while the dual platter drive will have speeds from 100 MB/s to 90 MB/s (minus any losses from having to manage 2 platters).

 

chimpanzee and Judicator, thanks.

My fingers seem to be mumbling today and can't convey the pretty pictures I see in my head to a written form in this forum.

 

got it! thanks.
so with that explanation im thinking scorpio black 750gb partitioned to 200gb (100gb just seems too small for me) for o/s and progs and additional 200gb for data. or maybe the sb 750gb into 50gb for o/s 150gb for progs and 200gb for data?
what do you guys say?

edit :
ive used the xt before and for my usage pattern the only real benefit i see is boot time. its a good drive though but i use too many progs/games to fit into the nand

 

The way you slice and dice the drive/partitions around depend on your specific usage, but if you follow the setup advice on the following link then the fastest your drive will be is:

Make the C: drive as small as possible while still leaving around 20GB free (after all apps are installed).

If you don't use a temp ('T') partition, then install your programs on the fastest (first partition), outer edge. Install Windows on the second partition and your data on the smallest third partition you can manage (don't forget, with Win 7, you'll be able to 'expand' this last, Data, partition to any size you need in the future - up to the remaining, full size of the drive. However, if you make it as small as you need, this too will keep the system nimble and quick).

See:
http://forum.notebookreview.com/har...-hitachi-7k500-benchmark-setup-specifics.html

 

This makes me wonder, How does the normal hdd's benefit from the new sata3 technology?

 

Unless they're going to get some very, very fast (and much larger) cache - they won't.

 

Pretty much what tilleroftheearth said. The fastest HDD is, what, like maybe 150 MB/s? That's 1.2 Gbps... which doesn't even saturate a SATA I connection... This is admittedly a (relatively) sustained transfer rate, though, burst rates from cache can be higher.