choice of hard drive

[Jixie]

hey,

im building my own machine for the first time, and im a little confused by the range of hard drives. so far ive selected a pretty *****in' mobo: http://www.cclonline.com/product-compare.asp?Product_IDs=10456,10307,10455&action=compare
and so i need a SATA hd, but i dont need anything much over 150gb but intend to do some pretty high end gaming...what would you guys suggest? i dont see much need to spend highly on the hd, something like this maybe? http://www.cclonline.com/product-info.asp?product_id=8250&category_id=112&manufacturer_id=0

your help is much appreciated,

Jixie

[liam858]

This would be fine for the extra £15: http://www.cclonline.com/product-info.asp?product_id=3293&category_id=112&manufacturer_id=0

Or go with a different make to get a 160gb with an 8mb buffer: http://www.cclonline.com/product-info.asp?product_id=224&category_id=112&manufacturer_id=0


Liam

[Jixie]

thanks dude, i dont think ill go for that model but one that is very similiar - buffer size is important. must remember not to swear as well!

edit: hmm something came up in another post in the mobo forum - this mobo is listed as having eSATA - does this mean my SATA hard drive HAS to be external?

Jixie

[Sterling_Aug]

No.

What this meas is you have the option of using either internal SATA drives or using cable running thru the case to an external SATA drive.

Looking at the pic of the mobo, you will see the SATA connectors on the extreme left side of the mobo.

[rockinup1231]

A major guru on this sight may tell you otherwise, but if I had the money I would buy two 50gb HDD's instead of one big one. Smaller hard drives are often faster than one.

Granted, RPM of the hard drive plays a factor in speed, as well as type and how you hook them up. It would also mean a bit more money for a bigger psu, but since you are planning for gaming I am assuming you plan to get a bigger one anyway...

However, it is just my opinion, you don't need to accept it.

[BipolarBill]

Smaller hard drives are often faster than one. Actually, no. Bigger hard drives have more than one disk and armature in the hard drive, allowing simultaneous access to data on those disks without the need to move the armature.

Also, larger hard drives are generally newer and incorporate techological updates that the older, smaller units lack.

[rockinup1231]

Hmm...I kinda figured the 'Newer Tech" would be in bigger HDD's. I once opened a dead Hard Drive to find two disks in a 2gb hard drive.

How small are we talkin here?

Just because a smaller hard drive is, well, smaller doesn't mean compaines don't use newer technologies in them too.

[BipolarBill]

You opened up an 11 year old drive. Back then, a "small drive" was 500MB. Are you going to tell me that it's faster than a 160GB drive? Hey - smaller is faster, right? If not, you shouldn't have used it as an example.

[rockinup1231]

Looking back, that HDD was old, but I have a better example.

The HDD in my system is a 10gb one. It is dated by the manufacturer at August 20, 2001. I know it was five years ago. It has two disks.

Also, look at todays big 100 to 250gb hard drives. Pictures of those big ones show that they have the same amount of disks in their case.

You know what that means, it means the data has to be further compressed to fit the disk surface. Smaller HDD's are less compressed, and this must be true if the HDD fills up the disk with less data.

Compression slows the data read process.

[BipolarBill]

It's obvious to me that you are just guessing. There is no compression at all in hard drive storage. Compression is done in software and we are talking about hardware.

That said, it's as much a mystery to all of us how the drive makers are finding all the new space in what looks like the same old technology. The thing is that it's *not* the same old technology. The silicon, controllers, disks and heads are all light years better.

Stop guessing and try benchmarking that 10GB drive against a 500GB drive. You'll find that the 500GB drive is at least 3x faster than the 10GB. Your argument flies in the face of known facts. Small drives have no inherent speed advantage over large drives - period. They may be lighter, generate less heat, use less power and make less noise (they actually make more noise), but they are not faster given the same hardware and firmware programming.

[rockinup1231]

Well, sorry if it sounded like guessing, but I was going by what I have learned. Apparently the guy who told me what I have been backing up was either dumb or on drugs; I couldn't tell ya.

Well, thanks for the mind-changer.

You see? This is one of the reasons I joined this site.

One thing, I have never really noticed a difference in noise between bigger and smaller drives. Well, maybe on really old drives, but not on todays small drives

[rockinup1231]

Let us get back to Jixie, K?

[Jixie]

well actually all this discussion has proved intersting and useful, so it never really strayed away from 'jixie'. ive made my decision on hdd now, and im sure it will be fine, and your help, especially on the sata issue has been invaluable. its always nice to know that there are people on the net who dont mind answering questions from a newbie that would otherwise be considered obvious and nto worht bothering with.

expect more of the same...heheheh

[Baddog]

but i dont need anything much over 150gb but intend to do some pretty high end gaming..

Jixie
Just a note...the major use of the drive is not to run games, but stores the game...the drive loads the game into the ram (memory) which will then run the game. Some poeple want to get Raid 0 drives thinking it will make a game run faster...but it does not. it will only load to the memory faster.