SATA and WD

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I'm thinking of buying a "Western Digital Raptor 36.7GB WD360GD 10,000RPM SATA 8MB Cache" and using it for my Windoze installation.

Would it really provide that much of a speed boost compared to a 7200 2MB cache IDE drive?

Worth it for £80ish?
 
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If you don't need the space £80 would get you with a normal drive, go for it.

I did.

I didn't need ~ 200GB space for my Windows drive, so I'm using a 36GB Raptor for Windows and a 200GB for storage (MP3s / games).

I think a Raptor makes a good OS drive, simply because of the access times, not the transfer speeds.
 
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Well the idea would be to have my 60GB and 160GB drives for other stuff and the 36GB WD for windows (Along with any huge games that I feel are taking too long to load :p )

Does it shorten the time it takes for windows to load, a lot?
 
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Ok well if I put it like this.

It usually takes around 3-5 mins for windows to start up and THEN another 5-8 mins for the desktop and all my startup rubbish to load (NIS is horrible for startup times).

Would a WD drive reduce that a lot?
 
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I've cleaned it out and defragged it more then i shoulda done :p

Its completly blue in defrag window thing and no spare files or what not. Then again, the drive is about 4 years old.
 
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Ive got the 36gb raptor for my windows drive, and im pleased with it. As said though, if your boot up times are literally that long, then you really could do with some spring cleaning. Have a look at the sticky in the windows and software section of this forum. Also once you have 250posts, it might be worth looking on the Members Market for a raptor. I picked mine up for £50.
 
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I can't believe it takes you 10+ minutes to boot, either that's a massive exageration or your PC has got something more wrong with it than a slow windows drive.

Do me a favour, time your PC with a stopwatch from power on to the moment everything is loaded, if it's genuinely as long as you say, I'll conceed.

Some of the larger 7200RPM drives, such as the 3200JD Western Digital are almost as fast as the 36gig Raptor, and the largest Seagate 7200RPM drives are faster still. The smallest raptors are value for money anymore unless you plan on using 2 for RAID0.
 
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It didnt take even half that time on my old 27gb 5400rpm Fujitsu. Something must be wrong with your windows install, either that or your hdd is dying. Do a full virus/spyware scan and also check the smart status of your harddrive.
 
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NightmareXX said:
I took almost exactly 5:30 for my entire system to start up including startup programs.

But it seems like forever :(

Looks like a candidate for a clean load of windows!

If you've done a few gfx card swaps, plus the usual run of application installs/de-installs over the years windows gets a bad case of the bloats.

I use a 36GByte Raptor as a boot drive. It seems more reponsive than when I had a pair of 7200 rpm 120's in Raid 0 (not SATA), and I think 36 GBytes is plenty for a Boot disc, so the extra for a 74 seemed a waste to me. Yes you get more storage space per pound, but my second system boots from an 80 GByte 7200 UDMA drive and that is mostly empty, so the extra capacity is no benefit.

I have a 250GByte SATA drive as a data disc on the system with the Raptor, with Win XP, all updates, full Office, Adobe CS2 and loads of other apps I still have not half filled the Raptor.
 
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mosfet said:
Some of the larger 7200RPM drives, such as the 3200JD Western Digital are almost as fast as the 36gig Raptor, and the largest Seagate 7200RPM drives are faster still. The smallest raptors are value for money anymore unless you plan on using 2 for RAID0.

It's not about sustained transfer speed though, it's about random access time. (At least it is for me, and for the application we are disussing - ie OS use).
 
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how do people go about backing up their windows installations with these bigger drives.

Do you just install only windows onto this drive and all other apps onto another drive. As 70 odd gig for just windows seems extreme.
 
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Jimbo Mahoney said:
It's not about sustained transfer speed though, it's about random access time. (At least it is for me, and for the application we are disussing - ie OS use).

Access times are marginally lower, higher sustained throughput will make a more noticable difference than 2 or 3ms less latency.

The poster of this thread has got something far more wrong with his system than a slow hard-drive, a 5 minute load is a candidate for a windows reinstall.

How do people go about backing up their windows installations with these bigger drives.

Do you just install only windows onto this drive and all other apps onto another drive. As 70 odd gig for just windows seems extreme.

I have OS + Apps on a single drive. I prefer to have Windows, Program files and Documents and Settings on the same volume because that's where Windows expects them to be. I've got 80 for OS+Apps, then 2x250 for storage.
 
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messiah khan said:
It didnt take even half that time on my old 27gb 5400rpm Fujitsu.

Then you aint got NIS installed. With a clean install of windows it takes about 20-30 seconds to get to desktop and its useable. With NIS, it becomes about 2-3 mins!

The drive is getting old and when my new system arrives, I'm gonna reformat it :)
 
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Use it only for Windows?
That mean install games and progs on a seperate hard drive and run them from that?
I know people who do that and end up coming unstuck when they find out they have to delete all the"installed"games and progs on the other hard drive everytime they reformat the Windows one.
Same goes for installing and running games and progs on another partition away from the"boot"one.
And the ones who insist they should be able to install and run stuff on a different partition/hard drive from Windows and even expect to after reformatting the Windows partition without re instaling the games and stuff all over again.
I thought about tryin but gave up.
At the min I have two Western digital sata2 160 gig drives.
 
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mosfet said:
Access times are marginally lower, higher sustained throughput will make a more noticable difference than 2 or 3ms less latency.

The poster of this thread has got something far more wrong with his system than a slow hard-drive, a 5 minute load is a candidate for a windows reinstall.



I have OS + Apps on a single drive. I prefer to have Windows, Program files and Documents and Settings on the same volume because that's where Windows expects them to be. I've got 80 for OS+Apps, then 2x250 for storage.
That's the only way anyway.
No use installing and running games and progs from a different partition or hard drive because you only have to reinstall them again when you reformat the windows partition or drive.
Can't just reinstall Windows and carry on using all the other stuff if the refs and things to windows and drivers have gone.
:eek:
 
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Norton Internet Security. Does me fine thank you :p

Never had a problem with it. Except the loading times for windows.

Well my 60 for windows has some games and stuff on it but i got a 160 for backup. Before I format my windows drive, all the important stuff gets shifted over to my 160. Once re-formatted, just move back into place :)

Ahem, contrary to what you say "musicman53", I've got quite a few games installed on my 160 that after formatting my 60, still worked :p

Got some programs on their that work fine too. Some do, some don't. Depends on the program.
 
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