Which of 2 drives would YOU pick for boot drive??

[Guest]

I got a 20 gig ata 66 7200rpm drive, and a 40 gig ata 100 5400rpm. Which one will have the fastest performance for the boot drive. In essence, will the ata affect performance more so than the rpm?

Cheers,
Greg

 

[Guest]

drive models specifically would help..

***check the jumpers 1st then check em again***

 

[Guest]

sorry, i forgot to add the make of the drives.......the 20 gig ata 66 7200rpm is a western dig. and the 40 gig ata 100 5400 rpm is a samsung.......the samsung is brand new and the west. dig. is a year old.

 

[silverpig]

ata 66 7200 rpm is faster than ata 100 5400 rpm.

Basically, the rpm is what gives you faster sustained transfer rates, whereas the ata rating is just how fast it'll burst it's cache, or transfer at when in a fast RAID 0 setup.

Since you're booting an OS, the 7200 rpm drive would be faster, unless you're going with a 4 drive RAID 0 setup, in which case, the 5400 rpm ata 100 is the way to go.

Lyrics. Wasted time between solos.

 

[Ncogneto]

Typically yes the 7200 RPM drive will still be faster. However there is still one consideration, what size buffer does each drive have, if idential go with the 7200 rpm drive.

Another Cookie? Who is going to pay my dentist bill?

 

[Raila]

Another consideration is the pure size of them.

The smaller a drive, the less file space it has to look through when it does any file searching, therefor it will always be faster to use the smaller drive as the Boot disk simply for that fact.

The less you have ON that drive the faster it will behave as well. Using most of your larger accessesing files on the secondary drive will make it operate quicker as well.

To Be or Not to be... DAMN but that is confusing!

 

[Crashman]

UDMA peek transfer rate has little effect on drive performance. Higher speed (RPM) drives normally have less latency and higher sustained transfer rates. So even a UDMA 33 7200RPM drive will normally outperform a 5400RPM UDMA 100 drive.

What's the frequency, Kenneth?

 

[Ncogneto]

HUH? No, that is only correct when comparing two drives that are identical in every aspect other than pure size. For example an ata100 20 gig drive will stil find data than a 830 meg pio mode 2 drive.

Another Cookie? Who is going to pay my dentist bill?