Is a 10000 rpm drive Worth it???

J

James Padolsey

I currently have 2x 200gb 7200rpm drives on my desktop.

As always, i want it all to go a bit faster:

Is it worth getting a 15000rpm scsi or a 10000rpm sata or just get a
mammoth 500gb drive (7200). I want to speed up boot time and make the
applications run a little faster.

If i decided to get a 36gb sata (10000rpm) and made it my OS and
application drive, would i notice a difference. Or is it worth getting
a 15000rpm scsi --> the specs look awesome, but would i see any
change???
 
S

Synapse Syndrome

James Padolsey said:
I currently have 2x 200gb 7200rpm drives on my desktop.

As always, i want it all to go a bit faster:

Is it worth getting a 15000rpm scsi or a 10000rpm sata or just get a
mammoth 500gb drive (7200). I want to speed up boot time and make the
applications run a little faster.

If i decided to get a 36gb sata (10000rpm) and made it my OS and
application drive, would i notice a difference. Or is it worth getting
a 15000rpm scsi --> the specs look awesome, but would i see any
change???


You are going well into the realms of diminishing returns unless you have
some specific application that needs fast disk access. Try RAID 0 with a
couple of small fast drives. I have a couple of 10,000rpm WD Raptors in
RAID 0 for my OS and apps. Don't use them for data storage, or make regular
automated backups from them, as your risks of data loss from disk failure
are doubled with RAID 0.

ss.
 
R

Rod Speed

Nope, not usually.

James Padolsey said:
I currently have 2x 200gb 7200rpm drives on my desktop.
As always, i want it all to go a bit faster:
Is it worth getting a 15000rpm scsi or a 10000rpm
sata or just get a mammoth 500gb drive (7200).

The last.
I want to speed up boot time

Then hibernate instead of shutting down.
and make the applications run a little faster.

That wont happen.
If i decided to get a 36gb sata (10000rpm) and made it
my OS and application drive, would i notice a difference.

The boot time will be better, but it will be even better if you hibernate.
Or is it worth getting a 15000rpm scsi

Nope, not for a personal desktop system.
--> the specs look awesome, but would i see any change???

Yes, but again, hibernate will be even better.
 
J

James Padolsey

The boot time will be better, but it will be even better if you hibernate.

Yeh, i could hibernate --> but my useless machine has a problem with
hibernating more than once on a single startup. Its very annoying and i
am trying to solve it. Its a stupid system resources problem. (My page
file is 4096mb (as big as it can be) but the machine recomends 4600mb))
What am i meant to do???

Anyway,,, Thanks for the input into the drive dilemna.

How about this config:

2 x 200gb hdd (7200) (already have)
+ one WD 400GB hd [1.5gb/s]
+ one WD 74 GB [10000rpm]

[With this configuration i would have nearly 1TB of storage which is
awesome] COST FOR THIS CONFIG:::::: ---> -----> £204 (EXCLUDING
V.A.T)

I am trying to do a compromise between speed and storage for under
£250.

Q: Would applications like photoshop work any faster?

Thanks for all the help
 
R

Rod Speed

Yeh, i could hibernate --> but my useless machine has a
problem with hibernating more than once on a single startup.

Yeah, can be a problem. Does it sleep properly ?
Its very annoying and i am trying to solve it. Its a stupid system
resources problem. (My page file is 4096mb (as big as it can be)

It doesnt have anything to do with the page file, there is a separate hibernate file.
but the machine recomends 4600mb))
What am i meant to do???

See if it will sleep, or leave it on all the time.
Anyway,,, Thanks for the input into the drive dilemna.
How about this config:
2 x 200gb hdd (7200) (already have)
+ one WD 400GB hd [1.5gb/s]
+ one WD 74 GB [10000rpm]
[With this configuration i would have nearly 1TB of storage which is awesome]

I wouldnt bother with the raptor myself, its unlikely to help
much with the speed if you have an appropriate amount of ram.
COST FOR THIS CONFIG:::::: ---> -----> £204 (EXCLUDING V.A.T)

You'd get more GB for the same cost without the raptor.
I am trying to do a compromise between speed and storage for under £250.

I'd go for a pair of 400G 7200 drives myself.

The bigger ones arent as good value per GB.
Q: Would applications like photoshop work any faster?

Yes, if you configure it properly.
 
K

kony

Yeh, i could hibernate --> but my useless machine has a problem with
hibernating more than once on a single startup. Its very annoying and i
am trying to solve it. Its a stupid system resources problem. (My page
file is 4096mb (as big as it can be) but the machine recomends 4600mb))
What am i meant to do???

Try a smaller pagefile size, perhaps a minimum of 256MB and
max of 2GB. There should be no need for 4GB of paging and I
had a vague recollection that one overly large might even
degrade performance, if not become problematic.


Anyway,,, Thanks for the input into the drive dilemna.

How about this config:

2 x 200gb hdd (7200) (already have)
+ one WD 400GB hd [1.5gb/s]
+ one WD 74 GB [10000rpm]

[With this configuration i would have nearly 1TB of storage which is
awesome] COST FOR THIS CONFIG:::::: ---> -----> £204 (EXCLUDING
V.A.T)

I am trying to do a compromise between speed and storage for under
£250.

Q: Would applications like photoshop work any faster?


Put your OS on a WD Raptor, call it drive #1.
Put your photoshop scratch on one other drive.
Put your source and destination files you edit on two
different drives, neither of which is drive #1.

Put your swap file on the least used drive (unless you want
it to go to sleep and spin-down, in which case put swap file
on the second-most used drive, just not drive #1.

However, two of your primary concerns have little
significance. Who really cares if it takes an extra 15
seconds to boot? Just push that power-on button before the
moment you need to use the system.

As far as application load times, don't turn the system off
so often. Apps reloading from the filecache are multiple
times faster than the fastest hard drive. While this
initially seems to waste some power, not turning system off
as often, so does having several hard drives running...
Everything's a trade-off.
 
P

paulmd

James said:
I currently have 2x 200gb 7200rpm drives on my desktop.

As always, i want it all to go a bit faster:

Is it worth getting a 15000rpm scsi or a 10000rpm sata or just get a
mammoth 500gb drive (7200). I want to speed up boot time and make the
applications run a little faster.

If i decided to get a 36gb sata (10000rpm) and made it my OS and
application drive, would i notice a difference. Or is it worth getting
a 15000rpm scsi --> the specs look awesome, but would i see any
change???

15K Scsi is awesome, but you need a controller. SCSI Also tends to run
a little hotter, and a little louder than IDE. Also, you wont speed up
BOOT time (Not POST anyway), because the controller needs additional
time to to detect devices.

I've not yet dealt enough with SATA yet. So I'll defer to others.
 
J

James Padolsey

15K Scsi is awesome, but you need a controller. SCSI Also tends to run
a little hotter, and a little louder than IDE. Also, you wont speed up
BOOT time (Not POST anyway), because the controller needs additional
time to to detect devices.

I've not yet dealt enough with SATA yet. So I'll defer to others.

On the subject of swapping my OS to the new drive:

Is it possible to to use trueimage to move all my stuff from the 200GB
to the new 74GB?? ((obviously the image will have to be smaller than
74GB) But will it work?
 
R

Rod Speed

James Padolsey said:
On the subject of swapping my OS to the new drive:

Is it possible to to use trueimage to move all my stuff from the 200GB
to the new 74GB?? ((obviously the image will have to be smaller than
74GB) But will it work?

Yes, it should work fine.
 
M

meow2222

James said:
I currently have 2x 200gb 7200rpm drives on my desktop.

As always, i want it all to go a bit faster:

Is it worth getting a 15000rpm scsi or a 10000rpm sata or just get a
mammoth 500gb drive (7200). I want to speed up boot time and make the
applications run a little faster.

If i decided to get a 36gb sata (10000rpm) and made it my OS and
application drive, would i notice a difference. Or is it worth getting
a 15000rpm scsi --> the specs look awesome, but would i see any
change???


Probably you have already, but just in case... I dont know what
software is causing trouble, but apps that do much the same thing vary
greatly in speed and I'd look there first, if you havent already.

Also if youre doing just one task, theres a nice util called winsolo
that gives significant performance boost. It does this by temporarily
shutting down everything except the one app youre using (exploere
included). Once you shut your app down it restarts the other stuff.


NT
 
P

Poly-poly man

James said:
I currently have 2x 200gb 7200rpm drives on my desktop.

As always, i want it all to go a bit faster:

Is it worth getting a 15000rpm scsi or a 10000rpm sata or just get a
mammoth 500gb drive (7200). I want to speed up boot time and make the
applications run a little faster.

If i decided to get a 36gb sata (10000rpm) and made it my OS and
application drive, would i notice a difference. Or is it worth getting
a 15000rpm scsi --> the specs look awesome, but would i see any
change???

You will barely notice the differences. Os out of the question, your boot
time and MANY other tasks will be sped up easily with a ram upgrade.

poly-p man
 
J

James Padolsey

Poly-poly man said:
You will barely notice the differences. Os out of the question, your boot
time and MANY other tasks will be sped up easily with a ram upgrade.


WHat kind of RAM upgrade. I have currently got 533mhz ram, should i
change to 667???
 
P

Poly-poly man

James said:
WHat kind of RAM upgrade. I have currently got 533mhz ram, should i
change to 667???

Again, you will barely notice the difference. Stick to what you've got, but
double it. If you have a small computer store locally, bring in you're
current module, and ask for a matched pair.

With speed, you will notice maybe a few milliseconds in intensive
applications, however the more you have, the better.

poly-p man
 

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