Fastest & quietest Hard Drive for the OS

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Archived from groups: alt.comp.hardware.overclocking (More info?)

Hi,
Which current hard drive is the best to use for the Operating System drive,
for best performance? I'm looking at buying the Samsung Spinpoint 200GB SATA
drive, but I also have a Seagate 7200.7 200gb SATA drive, currently just
used for storage.

I like the seagate because I can't hear it at all, which is what I'm aiming
for with whatever other drive I buy.

Which one of the above drives would be quickest for running the OS?

Does anyone have any other suggestion than the Samsung, for a silent, but
very fast hard disk for the OS?
I don't want to end up with another noisy drive like my (fairly new) western
digitals, which seemed quiet when I got them, until I heard how silent the
seagate is.

Thanks,
Daniel
 
Archived from groups: alt.comp.hardware.overclocking (More info?)

'Daniel Conroy' wrote, in part:
| Which current hard drive is the best to use for the Operating System
drive,
| for best performance?
_____

What OS?
How is the system used?
What difference in performance would you expect?
I assume you will not reserve a 200 GByte hard drive for a 2 - 4 GByte
operating system.
Very possibly you'll not be able to perceive any perfromance differences
among 200 GByte or larger ATA or SATA drives. Sequential data transfer
speed is presently limited by the data recording density, no current drive
passes data under the R/W heads faster than ATA100. High rotational speed
SCSI hard drives can have faster random access than an IDE drive, but the
sustained data transfer rate will be less.

Keep the 200 Gbyte hard drive you have, use it for the operating systems and
most of your applications.

If you are using a Windows Operating System, spend the $42 US for the
Microsoft Resource Kit for that operating system (for Windows XP
Professional, "Microsoft Windows XP Professional Resource Kit" IBSN
0-7356-2167-5 , MIcrosoft Press, 2005, $69.95 US list, widely available
discounted by 40%.) The knowledge in the book/CD will give you the right
questions to ask as well as answers. Especially the interaction of file
caches, paging, and drives.

Phil Weldon


"Daniel Conroy" <danielconroy82@sbcglobal.net> wrote in message
news:u%yGe.618$g53.19@newssvr31.news.prodigy.com...
> Hi,
> Which current hard drive is the best to use for the Operating System
> drive, for best performance? I'm looking at buying the Samsung Spinpoint
> 200GB SATA drive, but I also have a Seagate 7200.7 200gb SATA drive,
> currently just used for storage.
>
> I like the seagate because I can't hear it at all, which is what I'm
> aiming for with whatever other drive I buy.
>
> Which one of the above drives would be quickest for running the OS?
>
> Does anyone have any other suggestion than the Samsung, for a silent, but
> very fast hard disk for the OS?
> I don't want to end up with another noisy drive like my (fairly new)
> western digitals, which seemed quiet when I got them, until I heard how
> silent the seagate is.
>
> Thanks,
> Daniel
>
 
Archived from groups: alt.comp.hardware.overclocking (More info?)

Phil Weldon wrote:
> 'Daniel Conroy' wrote, in part:
>> Which current hard drive is the best to use for the Operating System
>> drive, for best performance?
[...]
> High rotational speed SCSI hard drives can have faster
> random access than an IDE drive, but the sustained data transfer rate
> will be less.

This used to be true, but not any more. 15K drives are doing high-90MB/sec
outer edge and up to 75MB/sec inner edge. 10K drives come below this at
70-80 outer edge and up to about 50 inner edge. 7.2K drives are a step below
again at 60-70 outer edge and up to 40 inner edge.

That said, STR is not particularily important unless you're trying to record
umcompressed video data, photoshop ultra-high-res images, or similar. For an
OS drive you're probably more looking for a fast-seeking drive, and one that
can handle reordering well (TCQ/NCQ/SCSI). For example, your average DLL is
probably around a few hundred KB, which would take a couple ms for a new
7.2K drive to read in. However, you're going to have to wait on average
4.2ms for the data to be under the head, plus however long it takes to get
there (a good few more ms at least). Of course, this only matters for
loading. But there's not much point going out and buying the latest 15K SCSI
drive just so office will load in 8 seconds instead of 10. It's probably far
more sensible to load up on RAM so that you don't even need to hit the hard
drive.

[...]

--
Michael Brown
www.emboss.co.nz : OOS/RSI software and more :)
Add michael@ to emboss.co.nz ---+--- My inbox is always open
 
Archived from groups: alt.comp.hardware.overclocking (More info?)

On Fri, 29 Jul 2005 23:31:38 GMT, "Daniel Conroy"
<danielconroy82@sbcglobal.net> wrote:

>Which current hard drive is the best to use for the Operating System drive,
>for best performance?

>Does anyone have any other suggestion than the Samsung, for a silent, but
>very fast hard disk for the OS?

classic HD? WD Raptor76G, but IMHO not so silent.

Other: Solid State Flash drive : (approx.€ 500) Samsung 8Gb, newest;
ask manufacturer about! (all other SSFDs are 3x the price of this!)

- I-RAM (GigaByte), add on Pci card emulating Sata drive (max 4Gb);
w/o DDRam sticks should be around 100$ ... Should be started producing
it now ...

--
Regards , SPAJKY ®
mail addr. @ my site @ http://www.spajky.vze.com
3rd Ann.: - "Tualatin OC-ed / BX-Slot1 / inaudible setup!"
 
Archived from groups: alt.comp.hardware.overclocking (More info?)

'Michael Brown' wrote, in part:
| This used to be true, but not any more. 15K drives are doing high-90MB/sec
| outer edge and up to 75MB/sec inner edge. 10K drives come below this at
| 70-80 outer edge and up to about 50 inner edge. 7.2K drives are a step
below
| again at 60-70 outer edge and up to 40 inner edge.

_____

You are right. I hadn't considered that 15,000 rpm SCSI drives now top out
at 150 Gbytes rather than 75 Gbytes.

However,
* sustained transfer rate is important for many applications
* random access rates are most important for transactions serving, and much
less so for page files
* OS algorithms (Windows 2000 PRO, Windows XP, Windows Server X) do a lot to
maintain efficient use of swap file and cache (execution from cache,
reordering of storage sequence on the hard drive for executables


I agree with you that money can be better spent on something other than a
new hard drive for the OS.

The original poster's question, posed without ANY information on the system
use really can't have a specific answer. The most likely analysis is that
the choice of hard drive will not make a perceptible difference in
performance. If the system is a server, OS components ought not to be
paging; if the system is used for multiple simlutaneous applications, then
evidently perfromance on any one is not critical, and 'uncompressed video
editing' is not going to be one of those applications.

Phil Weldon



"Michael Brown" <see@signature.below> wrote in message
news:42eafa1e$1@clarion.carno.net.au...
> Phil Weldon wrote:
>> 'Daniel Conroy' wrote, in part:
>>> Which current hard drive is the best to use for the Operating System
>>> drive, for best performance?
> [...]
>> High rotational speed SCSI hard drives can have faster
>> random access than an IDE drive, but the sustained data transfer rate
>> will be less.
>
> This used to be true, but not any more. 15K drives are doing high-90MB/sec
> outer edge and up to 75MB/sec inner edge. 10K drives come below this at
> 70-80 outer edge and up to about 50 inner edge. 7.2K drives are a step
> below again at 60-70 outer edge and up to 40 inner edge.
>
> That said, STR is not particularily important unless you're trying to
> record umcompressed video data, photoshop ultra-high-res images, or
> similar. For an OS drive you're probably more looking for a fast-seeking
> drive, and one that can handle reordering well (TCQ/NCQ/SCSI). For
> example, your average DLL is probably around a few hundred KB, which would
> take a couple ms for a new 7.2K drive to read in. However, you're going to
> have to wait on average 4.2ms for the data to be under the head, plus
> however long it takes to get there (a good few more ms at least). Of
> course, this only matters for loading. But there's not much point going
> out and buying the latest 15K SCSI drive just so office will load in 8
> seconds instead of 10. It's probably far more sensible to load up on RAM
> so that you don't even need to hit the hard drive.
>
> [...]
>
> --
> Michael Brown
> www.emboss.co.nz : OOS/RSI software and more :)
> Add michael@ to emboss.co.nz ---+--- My inbox is always open
>
 
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