Benefits of faster hard drive

i have an older pc about 4-5 years old not a dual core system..i dont have the money to fully replace this system right now..but i do think i need to replace the hard drive soon based on various symptoms so i rather be safe then sorry and thats not to much money to put into this pc

my question is what are the benefits of a faster hard drive or newer hard drive

this is the drive in my pc right now http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822144417

and im looking to replace it with this http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822136320 or this http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822136322

will i notice and performance improvements with either of these drives if so what exactly

iamloco724 said:

will i notice and performance improvements with either of these drives if so what exactly

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First thing, don't waste your money on the VelociRaptor.
It's a good drive, but not worth the money.

If you're getting drive errors, then yes, you'd most likely see a performance gain with a new drive.

Whether a new, faster drive will perform better than your old drive when it was new depends on the rest of your hardware also.

What are your full system specs?
Brand of computer?
Processor?
How much RAM? DDR, DDR2?
Motherboard?

If you have SATA-2 ports and want a "boost" to your computer try a SSD drive.
Vertex 2 60GB
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produ...50&cm_re=vertex_2_60GB-_-20-227-550-_-Product
Also buy a 500GB HDD for movies/music/storage and install your operating system/programs/games on the SSD.

SSD is 100x faster at seeking as it has no moving parts and vs a normal HDD it has faster read/write speeds. Also random 4kb reads are superior as Vista/7 its the most common read.
However if your running Windows XP you will have to do some reading. There is a issue with alignment on XP and no TRIM support so it can cause issues. I haven't used XP in 4-5 years so I have no clue how well SSDs will do on them.

thanks for the responses as i said the pc is kind of old not a great pc

its a dell e510
motherboard dell 0WG261
pentium 4 3ghz
3gb ram ddr2

ive just noticed the pc has been kind of sluggish as of late some lockups

smart data reports some issues with the drive nothing major so i figure the drive is goign to have to be replaced soon anyway but it would be nice if ic ould get some sort of performance boost with it whether it be boot up time and some thigns like open programs even..im not sure what a better drive can help with

Well SSD would give you that performance boost. Raptors don't come close to a SSD for the price. What operating system are you using?

oh sorry about that..windows xp sp3

Well to answer the simple question first , yes upgrade to that HDD will be a notable step up in speeds. I went from a 8mb 250GB SATA drive to a 16mb 500GB SATA drive and my transfer/write speeds were 30mb higher and everything seemed snappier.
Now I tried to find specs on your board but oddly enough Dell site said SATA and other sites said SATA2. I would call Dell and make 100% sure its SATA 2 before you do the below.

Another option since you were willing to buy a $170 raptor drive is this.
SSD
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produ...50&cm_re=vertex_2_60GB-_-20-227-550-_-Product
HDD
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822136320

You pay almost the same for a raptor but you get all the speed of a SSD with the storage power of a HDD. OCZ is also very good with rebates...never had a rebate not go through.
You use the SSD as a primary OS/Program/Games drive and you use the 500GB drive for storage (music/movies/anime/etc) stuff that wouldn't see a benefit on a SSD.
This is what I plan to do when I buy my SSD...also note Black Friday is 4-5 days away and there is expected to be $1 per GB SSDs up on Newegg so it might pay to camp your computer during that day
Once again though make sure you call Dell and make sure its a SATA 2.0 connector on your motherboard...otherwise you wont get the promised speeds.
Either way you go you will see a speed boost...but nothing close to what a SSD will do in terms of speed. Go to Youtube.com and look at the SSD videos vs HDDs.

*edit*
I forgot to mention if you do buy a SSD post on the OCZ Forums make a thread and ask what you need to do to run the drive on XP/Dell to make sure there are no problems.

thanks alot for your detailed response twist..i think i pretty much confirmed that its a 2.0 connector

Well then now you have a choice to make between what type of setup you wish to do.


I will add again to read the forums of which ever SSD you do buy. This is important as a SSD is not "ready to go" once you plug it in. Its a few hours of reading and then tweaking for maximum performance. OCZ has a program to automatically do most the tweaking can find that here (works on any SSD) http://www.techspot.com/guides/246-ssd-performance-tweak-utility/
Because a SSD is made from flash there is a limited amount of writes...so the goal to the tweaking is less writes = longer life. Intel for example says you can write 16TB of data to their 80GB drive before it runs out of cycles. I am not sure on the Vertex 2 but it should be similar in claims.


However the speed advantage is worth while...specially @ $1 per GB

thanks for the info..i will be waiting on the sales this coming week no matter which way i go..im leaning more towards the black drive just because it seems a little less complicated right now and is cheaper i dont want to put to much of my time or money into this machine im hoping very soon to replace it just looking for a way to get by and possibly get a little boost in performance from what you tell me and from what i read i can expect some sort of performance boost based of upgrading the drive nothing extreme but something

so i think thats the route i will be going..unless i see a really great deal on an ssd

again thanks for your help and info

NP at all btw here is a 1TB drive for $54
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822152185&cm_re=1TB_HDD-_-22-152-185-_-Product


Has a pretty decent ranking considering. I was told the F3 drives really fast as well. I just bought one for storage so for the prices its great.

Twist86 said:

NP at all btw here is a 1TB drive for $54
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822152185&cm_re=1TB_HDD-_-22-152-185-_-Product

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Yeaahh buuddy !
And with the sales on the vertex2 and phx pro right now, woo hoo !
And you could move those 2 drives to another pc in the future if you wanted/needed. :good:

What sales? These rebates seem pretty much the same as they been for the past 2 months. I am hoping the Vertex 2 is $1 GB for BF

i found a really good deal on a cavier black 1tb from best buy starting tomorrow so i think im going to go with that for now its only 60 bucks...but i have one more question i havnt replaced an internal drive in forever

my question is should i format the drive before hand if so quick or full format or doesnt matter..also if it matter it looks like the oen form best buy is the retail version

Well you format the new drive once just to make sure things are good then install your OS on it. Most people just install the OS but I prefer to make sure things go smoothly

i will be cloning my current drive over to it..does that make a diff..so it wont be a true os install

I never do it myself...some swear by it but I prefer the feel of a fresh format. Cleans out all the crap files that you collect over time and gives your PC that "fast" feeling again. I do formats every 3-6 months on my main system for that very reason.
I dunno if you can clone it though on a OEM install and have it work on new hardware...never done it before. If you own your operating system do a fresh format. Its more work but you will be happy with it. If you use a pre-installed and don't own a disc then a clone is your only option.