New hard drive, shall I bother moving?

[Simon]

Hi,

I currently have 2x 120Gb HD (6Y120P0 ATA Device,
http://computers.pricegrabber.com/hard-drives/m/636724/)

I ve had them for about 2 years and there is nothing wrong with them as far
as I can tell.

But because they are 2 years old I bough another hard drive as 'backup' as I
suspect they are going to start failing soon.

So I bought a new 500Gb HD(ST3500320AS ATA,
http://computers.pricegrabber.com/h...3.html/search=ST3500320AS/st=product/sv=title).

Originally all I wanted was to backup the other 2 drives, but I wonder if
performance would not improve if I actually moved the OS onto the new hard
drive.
The new drive has 32Mb cache while the other have 8Mb but this apparently
does not mean anything in real terms.

But installing a new OS takes time, (I have VISTA Ultimate), and I would
have to re-install just about everything, (office and so on).

So, is it worth it? Will I see a marked difference between the two Hard
drives?

Is there a way I can use the new hard drive to 'speed-up' my system?

Thanks

Simon

 

[Mike Hall - MVP]

Hi,

I currently have 2x 120Gb HD (6Y120P0 ATA Device,
http://computers.pricegrabber.com/hard-drives/m/636724/)

I ve had them for about 2 years and there is nothing wrong with them as
far as I can tell.

But because they are 2 years old I bough another hard drive as 'backup' as
I suspect they are going to start failing soon.

So I bought a new 500Gb HD(ST3500320AS ATA,
http://computers.pricegrabber.com/h...3.html/search=ST3500320AS/st=product/sv=title).

Originally all I wanted was to backup the other 2 drives, but I wonder if
performance would not improve if I actually moved the OS onto the new hard
drive.
The new drive has 32Mb cache while the other have 8Mb but this apparently
does not mean anything in real terms.

But installing a new OS takes time, (I have VISTA Ultimate), and I would
have to re-install just about everything, (office and so on).

So, is it worth it? Will I see a marked difference between the two Hard
drives?

Is there a way I can use the new hard drive to 'speed-up' my system?

Thanks

Simon

It is always useful to have a large backup drive, especially when it is
installed in a USB enclosure which can be isolated from the rest of the
system..

 

[oscar]

For a speedier system you should start with as much RAM as the system will
allow.
If you're really serious about speed then you might want to look at a new
computer (perhaps 64 bit system) with large RAM and a hard drive that has
high speed access times.

But regarding the computer that you have, you would be better off just to
use the 500GB drive for storing all the stuff that you don't need on the
120GB drives. If you migrate some of your photos, music and videos (the big
disc space hog) onto your large external drive you should have plenty of disc
space for Vista to do its job at the most optimum speed that your system
components allow.

In short, don't bother migrating Vista onto the larger drive.

As far as the 120GB drives failing soon: I wouldn't worry about it unless
you use those drives heavily on a daily basis. I still have XP computers
whose drives are 3-5 years old and they're working fine. So is my 2 year old
Vista machine. Just keep your drives backed-up in case of future failure.

 

[Synapse Syndrome]

Hi,

I currently have 2x 120Gb HD (6Y120P0 ATA Device,
http://computers.pricegrabber.com/hard-drives/m/636724/)

I ve had them for about 2 years and there is nothing wrong with them as
far as I can tell.

But because they are 2 years old I bough another hard drive as 'backup'
as I suspect they are going to start failing soon.

So I bought a new 500Gb HD(ST3500320AS ATA,
http://computers.pricegrabber.com/hard-drives/Seagate-Barracuda-500GB-Hard
-Drive/m91404383.html/search=ST3500320AS/st=product/sv=title).

Originally all I wanted was to backup the other 2 drives, but I wonder if
performance would not improve if I actually moved the OS onto the new
hard drive.
The new drive has 32Mb cache while the other have 8Mb but this apparently
does not mean anything in real terms.

But installing a new OS takes time, (I have VISTA Ultimate), and I would
have to re-install just about everything, (office and so on).

So, is it worth it? Will I see a marked difference between the two Hard
drives?

Is there a way I can use the new hard drive to 'speed-up' my system?

I would not listen to some of the advice you have got so far.

If you want the best performance, you should clone your OS partition onto
the new drive, as it is a fact that it is going to be faster. I would have
made a switch to SATA drives as well. If your computer is so old that it
does not have any SATA ports, I wonder what you are doing running Vista on
that machine. Even so, you could have bought a PCI controller card.

Anyway, clone your Vista partition onto the new drive, and use the old ones
for data and backup, if you want to the best performance (even though it
sounds like you are using a computer that is just too old to run Vista
well).

The free trial of Acronis Migrate Easy should work:

http://www.acronis.com/homecomputing/products/migrateeasy/

Please tell me if that trial actually fully works, if you use it.

ss.

 

[Simon]

I would not listen to some of the advice you have got so far.

If you want the best performance, you should clone your OS partition onto
the new drive, as it is a fact that it is going to be faster. I would
have made a switch to SATA drives as well. If your computer is so old
that it does not have any SATA ports, I wonder what you are doing running
Vista on that machine. Even so, you could have bought a PCI controller
card.

I never said that the computer was that old, it has 4 IDE 'slots' and 2 SATA
'solts'
I got the SATA because the size seemed about right. The specs of the drive
seem to be the same, 7200rpm and so forth.

Why do you think the performance will be improved so much?

The fact that it is a SATA seems to be a bit of a, (lucky), coincidence.

Anyway, clone your Vista partition onto the new drive, and use the old
ones for data and backup, if you want to the best performance (even though
it sounds like you are using a computer that is just too old to run Vista
well).

Again, I never said it was soooooo old, what makes you think it is?
Maybe not the new kid on the block but certainly well within the VISTA
specs,

The free trial of Acronis Migrate Easy should work:

http://www.acronis.com/homecomputing/products/migrateeasy/

Please tell me if that trial actually fully works, if you use it.

I'll give it a try, I am very worried that moving will open a whole new kind
of worms.

Simon

 

[Simon]

But regarding the computer that you have, you would be better off just to
use the 500GB drive for storing all the stuff that you don't need on the
120GB drives. If you migrate some of your photos, music and videos (the
big
disc space hog) onto your large external drive you should have plenty of
disc
space for Vista to do its job at the most optimum speed that your system
components allow.

In short, don't bother migrating Vista onto the larger drive.

Thanks for the advice, there seem to be 2 very distinct schools of thought
here.
one that it will improve the overall performance and the other that it will
not make much difference.

I wouldn't mind moving to the new drive, but this involves a few hours of
copying and I have no doubt there will be some kind of problems.

Simon

 

[Simon]

I'll give it a try, I am very worried that moving will open a whole new
kind of worms.

actually, make that a 'can of worms'

Simon

 

[Synapse Syndrome]

I never said that the computer was that old, it has 4 IDE 'slots' and 2
SATA 'solts'
I got the SATA because the size seemed about right. The specs of the
drive seem to be the same, 7200rpm and so forth.

Why do you think the performance will be improved so much?

The fact that it is a SATA seems to be a bit of a, (lucky), coincidence.


Again, I never said it was soooooo old, what makes you think it is?
Maybe not the new kid on the block but certainly well within the VISTA
specs,


I'll give it a try, I am very worried that moving will open a whole new
kind of worms.

Oh, I thought your new drive was ATA (PATA) and not SATA.

All you need to do is move with Acronis Migrate Easy, and then go into the
BIOS and set it to boot from the SATA drive. Then once you are sure
everything has been cloned over, you can wipe the old drive and use it for
files and backups.

ss.

 

[Simon]

All you need to do is move with Acronis Migrate Easy, and then go into the
BIOS and set it to boot from the SATA drive. Then once you are sure
everything has been cloned over, you can wipe the old drive and use it for
files and backups.

Well, I'll try acronis, but the installation is failing, ("Failed to
register product...").

My firewall is not blocking anything, in any case, not sure why I need to
register a trial product.

Simon

 

[Simon]

Well, I'll try acronis, but the installation is failing, ("Failed to

register product...").

My firewall is not blocking anything, in any case, not sure why I need to
register a trial product.

Simon

Well, looking at the forums, it seems to be a very common problem, (since
2006 by the looks of it).

A bit of a shame really, I wonder how many potential customers like me will
not go any further because of the red tape.
But I must admit, it did look good.

Simon

 

[Synapse Syndrome]

I would tend to think the latter, and that you'll be disappointed in
the results.

Do you also think that a processor from 2002 would be as fast as one from
2007? That was around the time drives of these sizes came out, IIRC.

The 500GB is going to be sunstantially faster for several reasons due to
technological advance. The biggest reason would be the areal density of the
platters.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer_storage_density

Try benchmarking any drives you have using HD Tach to see the difference:

http://www.simplisoftware.com/Public/index.php?request=HdTach

You can probably find results for the mentrioned drives on Storage Review,
but I did not bother to try to find out what I already know.

http://www.storagereview.com/

ss.

 

[RalfG]

Seagate has a downloadable Acronis based utility that makes moving the OS a
snap. Similarly one for Maxtor drives, which Seagate now owns.

 

[Ken Blake, MVP]

Hi,

I currently have 2x 120Gb HD (6Y120P0 ATA Device,
http://computers.pricegrabber.com/hard-drives/m/636724/)

I ve had them for about 2 years and there is nothing wrong with them as far
as I can tell.

But because they are 2 years old I bough another hard drive as 'backup' as I
suspect they are going to start failing soon.

Two years old is not very old and there is no particular reason to
suspect imminent failure. However having a backup drive is a *very*
good thing to have, since you can always have a problem (of various
types of problems--drive crashes, sever power glitches, nearby
lightning strikes, virus attacks, user errors, theft of the computer,
etc.) and lose important files regardless of the age of the drives

Whatever drive or drives you use for backup, be sure that they are
external, not internal and stored separately from the computer.
Internal backup drives can very often fail simultaneously with the
original to most of the cause I mentioned above.

So I bought a new 500Gb HD(ST3500320AS ATA,
http://computers.pricegrabber.com/h...3.html/search=ST3500320AS/st=product/sv=title).

Originally all I wanted was to backup the other 2 drives, but I wonder if
performance would not improve if I actually moved the OS onto the new hard
drive.
The new drive has 32Mb cache while the other have 8Mb but this apparently
does not mean anything in real terms.

But installing a new OS takes time, (I have VISTA Ultimate), and I would
have to re-install just about everything, (office and so on).

So, is it worth it? Will I see a marked difference between the two Hard
drives?

Is there a way I can use the new hard drive to 'speed-up' my system?

Putting Windows (and everything else) on the newer, bigger drive will
speed up the system. That's for two reasons:

1. Newer drives are almost always faster than older ones.

2. Bigger drives are faster than smaller drives. That's because the
drives are bigger in terms of their capacity, but their physical size
is the same. That means that everything is closer together and as a
result the heads will very often have less distance to move.

 

[Ken Blake, MVP]

One additional point to what I said below. You asked "So, is it worth
it? Will I see a marked difference between the two Hard drives?"
Nobody can answer that for you definitively, since it depends on
several factors--the specific drives as well as how much you have on
the drives and how it's arranged there.

 

[Simon]

Seagate has a downloadable Acronis based utility that makes moving the OS
a
snap. Similarly one for Maxtor drives, which Seagate now owns.

Thanks for that.

I moved the OS to the new drive, that took less than an hour.

As for performance, I am not sure, it 'looks' a tiny better faster.
But nothing jumps out and strikes me as a whole lot faster.

Simon.

 

[Mike Hall - MVP]

Thanks for that.

I moved the OS to the new drive, that took less than an hour.

As for performance, I am not sure, it 'looks' a tiny better faster.
But nothing jumps out and strikes me as a whole lot faster.

Simon.

Those who suggested that it would were being a little optimistic. You have
also lost a great external back up drive..

 

[RalfG]

I don't imagine it would seem much faster. Your old drives are still quite
up to spec for ATA drives. Unless you went to SATA (any version) you
wouldn't detect much difference. If you test and compare the data transfer
rates you might see a difference in speeds.

 

[Simon]

Those who suggested that it would were being a little optimistic. You have

also lost a great external back up drive..

I am not sure I understand, what external drive is that?

Simon

 

[Simon]

I don't imagine it would seem much faster. Your old drives are still quite

up to spec for ATA drives. Unless you went to SATA (any version) you
wouldn't detect much difference. If you test and compare the data transfer
rates you might see a difference in speeds.

The new drive is a SATA drive.

For the sake of completeness, I'll use some of the tools suggested to do a
proper test to see if there was indeed a difference.

Simon

 

[Simon]

I don't imagine it would seem much faster. Your old drives are still quite

up to spec for ATA drives. Unless you went to SATA (any version) you
wouldn't detect much difference. If you test and compare the data transfer
rates you might see a difference in speeds.

The new drive is a SATA drive.

For the sake of completeness, I'll use some of the tools suggested to do a
proper test to see if there was indeed a difference.

To me it does not 'feel' faster but in reality it might be faster.
Having said that, if it does feel faster to me, it does not really matter if
it is faster in reality

Simon