New system HDD

G

garbagemule

Limp Gawd
Joined
Sep 15, 2009
Messages
148
Hello!

I've been a lurker on these forums for a long time, but I've finally come to a point where I feel my question isn't answered entirely in pre-existing threads.

I currently have two harddrives; a 1TB Samsung SpinPoint F1 (HD103UJ), and a 500GB WD5000AAKS (00TMA0 - I'm guessing it's not one of the newer Caviar Blue-drives, but I'm not sure; it's pretty old, though).

While I don't think more disk space is really needed at this point in time (only for backing up existing data), I'm growing increasingly tired of the drop in system performance when doing harddrive intensive tasks. The reason for this, I'm guessing, is that I have my SpinPoint disk formatted into a 100GB system partition (with Windows, applications and games installed), and an 833GB "secondary" partition containing pretty much all my application and game installers/ISOs, drivers, TV-shows, and documents/projects. To my understanding, the reason things slow down is that the harddisk head has to be in several positions at the same time.

So what I'm after is a harddisk dedicated solely to my "system" (Windows, installed games and applications). I understand that drives like the VelociRaptor models are supposedly very fast, but also make a lot of noise. I'm very easily agitated by computer noise, so I don't think they'll be anything for me.

My requirements shouldn't be too uncommon; I need a fairly quiet and fast drive, and I'm on a fairly low budget. I use my PC primarily as a workstation, and I use Adobe Photoshop, After Effects, Premiere and Flash, as well as Autodesk Maya.

I've seen the new Caviar Black/Blue drives recommended, but 640GB seems like complete overkill for just a system disk. I mean, my current Windows XP installation uses a bit over 50GB. I suppose dual booting would become more easy, but it's still a lot of space I wouldn't know what to make of.

I don't really mind the extra space, it's just that if there's a harddisk that's just as fast at only 100-150GB and a lot cheaper, that's probably where I'd be heading.

Suggestions, recommendations, face-slaps?

// garbagemule

Edit: Just in case you'll need them, here are some relevant (I hope) specifications of my PC:

ASUS P5Q-E
Intel Q9450
4GB Mushkin PC-6400 CL4 RAM
ASUS EAH4850 512MB
 
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I decided on the WD3200AAKS you recommended, gwarren007, but then I realised I'd need a big drive to backup all my data on my 1TB drive to, since I'd need to reformat it to one partition. So I ordered the 320GB WD3200AAKS and another 1TB Samsung SpinPoint F1, but when I got to the store, I was handed one of the "bad" WD3200AAKS's (the model with 5 ribs that's supposed to be much noisier than the 11-ribbed one according to a silentpcreview article), so I ended up just getting the SpinPoint.

Now I have 2x1TB SpinPoints and my WD5000AAKS that I think might be an old model, and I'm going to try and install Windows on the 500GB drive. If it's too slow or too noisy, I'll seek out a proper WD3200AAKS, or just bite the price-bullet and get the 500GB AALS. Unless, of course, there's a better/cheaper solution out there.
 
I have had both the 5-rib and the 11 rib and personally havent been able to tell the difference.
 
garbagemule said:
... I'm growing increasingly tired of the drop in system performance when doing harddrive intensive tasks. The reason for this, I'm guessing, is that I have my SpinPoint disk formatted into a 100GB system partition (with Windows, applications and games installed), and an 833GB "secondary" partition containing pretty much all my application and game installers/ISOs, drivers, TV-shows, and documents/projects. To my understanding, the reason things slow down is that the harddisk head has to be in several positions at the same time. ...
Click to expand...

Your OS loads most of everything it needs into RAM, and whatever it deems secondary into swap. Partitioning your HDD and using one partition as the OS, and the other for data, should not slow a system down dramatically unless you're constantly transferring files between the two partitions. So, my question to you is: in what scenario do you notice a drop in performance?

The higher density platters are faster, so the 750GB/500GB/250GB versions of any caviar line should be slower than the 320GB/640GB/1TB versions until the 500GB platters start making their way into more than just the 2TB drive.

If you want a faster system drive, your best bet is the 640GB or 1TB black. If you want something faster, get two of those and throw them in RAID0. If you want even faster, your next best option is two small indilinx based SSDs in RAID0, which isn't cheap (at least $200 for only 60GB total space). Here are some numbers to look at:
http://www.alphaq.org/enginurd/hdd/ocz_vertex.html
 
Thanks for the clarification, enginurd! This big drop in performance I talk about comes in different shapes and sizes, so to speak.

First of all, I run an FTP server on my PC and I also use uTorrent often. They both read and write from and to the second partition on my SpinPoint F1 (and Windows + applications are installed on the first partition). When zipping and extracting on the drive while both FTP and uTorrent are running, I'll get between 5 and 20 MB/s according to 7zip. When none of them are up, I get 40+ MB/s when extracting at least (this is both from and to the same partition). My logic was that since Windows is installed on the same drive, this slows the whole thing down as well, but after your clarification, I'm not too sure.

Secondly, I appear to get some kind of a "hang" whenever I've left my PC idle for a couple of hours. I just got back to it now after having watched a couple of movies with a friend, and it took Firefox around 30 seconds to open, and Internet Explorer around 25. Right now I don't see any noticable hangs per se, though.

Could it be that I just need a fresh install of Windows for things to speed back up, or could my SpinPoint be dying on me? Running HD Tune 2.55, in the Health-tab, a line saying (B8) (unknown attribute) is highlighted yellow and shows values 100/100/99/0/Ok (Current/Worst/Threshold/Data/Status) - should I be worried?

On the topic of SSD, I'm given the understanding that they have limited write cycles and thus might end up dying out much earlier than any HDD. As for RAID, it seems a bit too expensive for me at this point in time, and I've been told such setups are quite unstable compared to non-RAID ones. Edit: But if RAID-setups aren't any more unstable than non-RAID setups, and partitioning a drive and using part of it as system disk and part for storage and other stuff... Then I might as well just run my two SpinPoint F1's in RAID 0, and use the 500GB for backing up important stuff?

As you may have noticed, I'm quite green on the harddrive front, so if you have some spare time... Please enlighten me! ;D
 
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SSDs: Limited write cycles, yes, but do you keep a HDD for 10yrs? :p I'm not saying use SSDs for your fileserving, just for the OS/Apps.

If you're zipping/extracting is being done on the same drive as the source, of course it will be slow.

All the fileserving you're doing is probably hitting your disk hard depending on the load. Whats the traffic statistics like on your FTP? ... and are you seeding torrents? If usage is high and you're seeding, that would definitely explain why you're seeing slowdowns. I'd serve off of a separate drive from my OS drive.

RAID0 is not unstable -- it just adds another point of failure to your system, which jeopardizes data. So, without backups, if one of the drives in your RAID0 array dies, all the data is gone. RAID0 would definitely speed things up nicely, since there will be two disks handling the I/O load. However, you wouldn't be getting 2x the performance of a single drive... it'll be a bit less.

I'd try moving all the fileserving duties to a separate drive first. A fresh re-install of Windows is always good. Not sure on that SMART readout, sorry. Also, PM a mod to move this to the storage subforum... they can help you better than I. :eek:
 
Whoops, I didn't realise there was a storage section. I just quickly read through the list looking for "harddrives". My apologies, I'll see if I can get a hold of a moderator - thanks for the heads up!

I've just been reading up a tad on SSDs and they are very appealing, but I can't justify buying such an expensive disk at this point in time. I think when I first heard about SSDs I was told they only had 10,000 write cycles. Good thing they're making progress! ;)

The FTP thingie isn't a great deal. It's just the easiest way to share project files and footage with a couple of friends, so usually not more than one or two people transfering data now and then. But of course it makes perfect sense that all the reading and writing will slow the disk down some, and uTorrent is mainly seeding most of the time, so obviously it adds to the bogging down of the performance.

While RAID 0 seems quite interesting, I'd only do it if I could get two 320GB Caviar Blues (640GB Blacks will be too expensive for two of them), but would it benefit me? I use my PC mainly with Photoshop, Premiere, After Effects and Maya, but are they really that harddisk intensive? I've always thought of them as being CPU and RAM hogs, but I suppose rendering is limited to the harddrive for smaller/less "dense" projects.
 
garbagemule said:
While RAID 0 seems quite interesting, I'd only do it if I could get two 320GB Caviar Blues (640GB Blacks will be too expensive for two of them), but would it benefit me? I use my PC mainly with Photoshop, Premiere, After Effects and Maya, but are they really that harddisk intensive? I've always thought of them as being CPU and RAM hogs, but I suppose rendering is limited to the harddrive for smaller/less "dense" projects.
Click to expand...

They are a bit HDD intensive yes. And here is my reasoning:
Joe Average said:
In other words, as I said, the cost of the devices + the cost of populating them becomes absolutely ridiculous. Grab two Velociraptors and have fun... or even a handful of SSD drives and RAID 'em together. The overall price-to-performance ratio will blow these iRAM devices clear off the planet surface...

Sad, really, because I've been a proponent of actual RAMdisks for decades now. Hell, I used to boot my Amiga 500 off a RAMdisk, so I've seen pretty much every attempt at making such devices as the iRAM that have appeared, and they all suck, period. They just can't do the job adequately and keep the price-to-performance ratio anywhere near a reasonable level.

I built a RAID 0 box for a small image studio 2 weeks ago, a new startup here in Vegas that is making waves. They wanted a "demo" workstation to see what's possible for processing as they don't want to create a massive server-type situation in the office, but 3-4 workstations that are equal in performance and then just using simple file sharing as required. Very simple setup in terms of the network, but the workstation I built used 2 300GB Velociraptors (tried to sell 'em on SSD but the amount of data they're dealing with wouldn't be practical - again, a price-to-performance and ROI issue).

The hard part was getting them to spring for 16GB of RAM because of the cost, but a few weeks ago I saw that sale for 4 4GB sticks of RAM for about $450 and made a few phone calls and snagged a similar deal.

I set up Photoshop CS3 for 'em (their legit retail copy) on Vista Business x64. They started messing around with it, loading some rather large TIFF files in excess of 150MB a pop, several at a time, performing some basic scripted actions on 'em, blurs, filters, etc. Using the Velociraptors in RAID 0 meant very snappy and consistent performance, as well as having 16GB of RAM too. Also, it's a Q6600 based machine running rock solid at 3 GHz.

They were very pleased with the performance at that point, but I had a surprise for 'em. ;)

I asked if I could have 20 mins 'alone' with the workstation to "rewire it" as Tim Allen might say. That consisted of grabbing a trial version of SuperSpeed Software's RamDisk Plus 9 and installing it, doing the simple configuration, and then creating a 10GB RAMdisk and told Photoshop "Ok, you want a scratch disk? Here, try this on for size."

After I did some tests of my own using the same scripts they'd done earlier, boy... I tell ya. You haven't lived till you see 225MB TIFF files literally snap onscreen in the blink of an eye, multiple huge TIFFs with resolutions like 5000x5000 and even higher. That's what's possible with RAMdisks, because even Velociraptors in RAID 0 pumping out something like 280MB/s sustained pales to the close to 5GB a second in bandwidth of that RAMdisk.

I told 'em to come back in and rerun their test scripts.

Jaws hit the floor, folks. Well, not quite but figuratively speaking, at least.

They asked what I'd done, I told them I put the scratch disk in RAM where it should be if you have the RAM to make it happen, and they bought 4 licenses of RamDisk Plus 10 mins later, and I got a signed contract to construct 3 more workstations identical to that one top to bottom and also be their "geek" if any issues come up.

It was a very good week... ;)
Click to expand...
 
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