Hard Disk bottleneck

I have a Fujitsu 60Gb SATA hard drive. It's generally fine for normal use but it can get pretty bogged down ocasionally especially during multitasking and when loading up new areas in world of warcraft. I'm sure a format and re-install will help a bit but I'm wondering...

Are 7200rpm drives really worth it? I can't imagine having the money to upgrade for a while but 120Gb 5400rpm drives go for around £57, if you want 100Gb 7200rpm it's nearly £100. Is the extra money really worth it? Also a 120Gb 5400rpm drive have a noticeable speed gain over a 60Gb due to the increased density?

 

I suggest you look at the 2.5" HDD benchmark results at Toms Hardware and draw your own conclusions. They ran a series of tests some of which may resemble your situation.

John

 

most of the time but not always, the faster rpms will be better, though, as in most cases it's a personal preferance. I'd say that if the difference in size of the HDs is 20GB or less go with the faster HD. Unless you need every GB you can get. If that's the case go with the larger of the two. If speed and size aren't reall big factors, them go for the cheaper of the two.

 

Thanks, very useful. Looks like Seagate Mommentus are pretty quick so I might get one of them. I think a nice format will help too!

 

Well I think it is a worthwhile upgrade. Having a 7200rpm is getting of a bottleneck that really should not be there. And besides, the power consumption of a 5400 and 7200 are quite similar, so you may as well get the HDD.

 

Ahem - May I point out my recent thread:

http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=103127

Granted I had a 4200 rpm drive, but you'll definitely see an improvement still. Also, I'd recommend the hitachi over the seagate - virtually every test I've seen has shown it to be superior, including better shock resistance. PLus it's cheaper. Sure the segate has a 5 yr warranty, and the hitachi 3 yrs, but frankly if it's good for three years you're gold.

Check it out:
http://www.hardcoreware.net/reviews/review-315-1.htm

Also:

http://laptoplogic.com/reviews/detail.php?id=80&part=full&PHPSESSID=486d20cbf628ad01764f1e7992b717ed

 

u have to blame the celeron

Is there any HD activity light during the loading? coz the bottleneck could be sth else, like memory or gfx or cpu. If you had a 4200rpm, i would understand...but u have a 5400rpm which should be fine for most tasks. Also have you tried disabling any background services like antivirus b4 playing WoW?

 

something to remember when thinking about HDD warranties...make sure the Mfg you are considering offers the same warranty on OEM (bare) drives as they offer on retail boxed drives. it's been my experience that vast majority of the time OEM drive come with a minimal warranty at best (usually under 90-days).

I am not current with the policies of the various mfg's or I could offer more detail. I am sure someone here knows for sure.

Oh, I just got a new C2D system with an 80GB SATA drive in it. It's a 5400 rpm drive and it sure seems slow. I got to thinking that it's actually not that slow compared to my 5400 rpm ATA 100GB drive I had in my old dead system. It's actually that the CPU is so much faster it makes the drive bottleneck seem even more pronounced and obvious...and like ya say especially when running multiple programs that need disk access at the same time.

The apparent lag time issue has me definitely replacing the 80gb drive with a larger 7200gb drive this spring sometime.

 

If your harddrive is a bottleneck (especially when multitasking), you need more RAM more than anything. Upgrading your harddrive may knock 30% off the latency. Adding more RAM, reducing the need to access the harddrive, will speed things up by at least a factor 100,000.

 

I have turned off virtual memory (1.5gb RAM) and did notice a difference with my 5400rpm drive. Yet, it does get bogged down in multitasking (cases in which my CPU does not fall below 30-40% usage at 1.8ghz). Mine own understanding, however, is that if I upgrade the drive to 7200 rpm, I risk to have the drive outlast the laptop. This is why I will spend some more time maintaining the 5400 HDD rather than spending money on a new drive. I'd rather save for a new notebook, which would hopefully use if not flash, then at least a hybrid drive.

 

It is best to keep the swap file (maybe 1GB?), but first defrag the HDD and then recreate the swap file, with a fixed size. That way it should not be fragmented and can be accessed faster (it also helps to get this file near the start of the HDD where transfer rates are fastest).

John

 

The hard drive will always be a bottleneck until flash memory replaces magnetic disks. Adding more ram will certainly help reduce the dependancy on HD access, but only to a point. It all depends on what you really want out of your computer.