replace SATA drive with a faster SATA?

[jopa]

My current hard drive is a SG 80 gig, SATA , 8 mb buffer. Would it be worth the trouble to buy a Western SATA2 with 16 mb of buffer. I am not a gamer. My board, an ABit, supports the newer, faster Sata and the CPU is an Athlon 64 X2 4600. BTW, its only speed I am wondering about, not capacity. My vid card is only a 7300GT, but I do plan to upgrade that soon to a 7600GT. Also an EVGA.
One last thing, would a switch be very difficult, as far as moving all the content to the new one and removing the old one?

 

[Cleric7x9]

it would not be that difficult to move your content, but there is always a chance something could go wrong and you will lose your data. but upgrading form an 8mb buffer to a 16mb buffer is not going to make that big of a difference.

 

[jopa]

it would not be that difficult to move your content, but there is always a chance something could go wrong and you will lose your data. but upgrading form an 8mb buffer to a 16mb buffer is not going to make that big of a difference.

Thanks for the answer! Would it make much of a difference going from SATA to SATA2?

 

[Cleric7x9]

well, SATA, SATA2, IDE, all of those are just interfaces. some are potentially faster than others, but what really matters are drive speeds and seek times. i would recommend checking the more in depth specs of the harddrives. newer SATA drives tend to be faster because they are more modern, but it is the drive that is faster, not the interface. maybe you could post which drives you are considering and we can go from there

 

[jopa]

Ok, well I see I have a lot to learn here.
This is the drive I am thinking of buying:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822136062
This is the one I have:

Series
Barracuda 7200.9
Model
ST3808110AS
Capacity
80GB
Cache
8MB
RPM
7200 RPM
Average Seek Time
11ms
Average Latency
4.16ms
Interface SATA
3.0Gb/s
Form Factor
3.5"
Warranty
5 Years Manufacturer Warrant

I see that it is actually a SATA 2 also. That ends that. Thanks for your help, it got me off my butt to figure that out. Its close enough to the WD that I better find something else to worry about.