KVR Audio

iDavid · Post by **iDavid** » Wed Aug 04, 2004 7:49 am

I'm up-dating my system

The slowest hard-drive I have is my windows boot disk, with my applications on it.

I think it runs at 5400, would a 7200 drive make a big difference?

Lunch Money · Post by **Lunch Money** » Wed Aug 04, 2004 7:59 am

I'd give that a "yup". Although 5400 and 7200 represent optimal (not constant) speeds, so I don't know exactly by how MUCH. I'm sure the difference will be appreciable, though.

Greg

moldofunker · Post by **moldofunker** » Wed Aug 04, 2004 8:02 am

Of course, there are big differences between them. Not so big between ATA100 - ATA133 -SATA. I did upgraded my HDD recently with an Western Digital (JB series) ATA100 which have better performances than many SATA drives, close to SCSI. So i recommend these models from WD, are very silent and doesn't heat also.

iDavid · Post by **iDavid** » Wed Aug 04, 2004 8:21 am

I thought seagate were the "quiet" drives

uncadave · Post by **uncadave** » Wed Aug 04, 2004 9:03 am

i recently swapped my 5400 for a 7200 rpm drive. of course, this includes a fresh xp installation, too, so some of the speed increase has to be due to that, too.

Kim Lajoie · Post by **Kim Lajoie** » Wed Aug 04, 2004 11:33 am

If you're buying a new hard drive anyway, I wouldn't bother with anything slower than 7200rpm these days... in fact, I haven't seen 5400rpm drives being sold for ages.

However... Speed isn't all that critical for an app/os drive (best to use your fastest drive for audio), so personally, I wouldn't bother buying a new app/os drive unless the current one is too small (mine's almost there... 3gig app/os, 80gig audio!

).

Mind you, hard drives are stupidly cheap these days.

Forever,

Kim.

iDavid · Post by **iDavid** » Wed Aug 04, 2004 2:26 pm

Is it worth using a ATA drive?

What is the difference beteween SATA and ATA...

I know I have IDE drives, but one is using a RAID controller...

I hear SATA new and quick, but don't know much more...

DevonB · Post by **DevonB** » Wed Aug 04, 2004 2:32 pm

SATA and ATA are EIDE. It's the interface design. ATA is 40 pins and parallel transfer mode, while SATA is 7 pins and serial mode. SATA has the potential to be faster than ATA, but it's just starting to come of age, so give it time.

I remember when I switched from an ATA-33 to an ATA-100 at 7200rpm. My boot time went from approx one minute to approx 20-25 seconds. That's a pretty significant difference. That was only a drive replacement, not a CPU upgrade too.

Devon

plastique · Post by **plastique** » Wed Aug 04, 2004 2:34 pm

here's a quick list of advantages of SATA over IDE (from top of my head):
- plug 'n' play
- 150MB/s bandwith instead of 133MB/s

iDavid · Post by **iDavid** » Wed Aug 04, 2004 2:40 pm

Man Devon that is a huge difference...

for ATA's is ATA-100 current or has that changed?

plastique · Post by **plastique** » Wed Aug 04, 2004 2:43 pm

since two years approx. the most common IDE drive types are either ATA-100 or ATA-133.

DevonB · Post by **DevonB** » Wed Aug 04, 2004 2:58 pm

plastique wrote:here's a quick list of advantages of SATA over IDE (from top of my head):
- plug 'n' play
- 150MB/s bandwith instead of 133MB/s

Of course, let's not forget that bandwidth is only 'maximum'. Actual throughput is around 60-70 megs a second, depending on the drive. Last I had checked, there was still an ATA133 drive that was faster than the SATA drives still. Give it time. My 'smokin' ATA100 drive 2 years ago was doing 35megs or so per second, now they are eclipsing 60 megs a second on the same interface.

Devon

DevonB · Post by **DevonB** » Wed Aug 04, 2004 3:00 pm

iDavid wrote:Man Devon that is a huge difference...

for ATA's is ATA-100 current or has that changed?

ATA100, as far as I'm concerned is still 'current' as its speeds are very comparible to all the top drives still. I believe (correct me if I'm wrong) only Maxtor really came out with ATA133 drives, as the rest of the makers all went to developing SATA drives instead. My ATA100 drive is *OLD* and slow compared to the breed that's out today to be bought up.

Devon

Erki · Post by **Erki** » Wed Aug 04, 2004 3:12 pm

DevonB wrote:
I remember when I switched from an ATA-33 to an ATA-100 at 7200rpm. My boot time went from approx one minute to approx 20-25 seconds. That's a pretty significant difference. That was only a drive replacement, not a CPU upgrade too.

Devon

I think that has to do with Windows not scanning for the harddrive, not the harddrive being faster ?

I had the same problem, it took over one minut to boot, someone told me to disable hdd automatic identify thingy for unused ide channels (or something like that) in Windows device manager and now it takes 20-25 seconds to boot up.

plastique · Post by **plastique** » Wed Aug 04, 2004 3:13 pm

DevonB wrote:
plastique wrote:here's a quick list of advantages of SATA over IDE (from top of my head):
- plug 'n' play
- 150MB/s bandwith instead of 133MB/s
Of course, let's not forget that bandwidth is only 'maximum'. Actual throughput is around 60-70 megs a second, depending on the drive. Last I had checked, there was still an ATA133 drive that was faster than the SATA drives still. Give it time. My 'smokin' ATA100 drive 2 years ago was doing 35megs or so per second, now they are eclipsing 60 megs a second on the same interface.

Devon

yep , that's true for sure , the bw difference is still only theoretical and the maxima aren't reached by far physically yet(neither with ATA nor SATA).
fast/quality drives are found in both specifications.

How fast should your apps disk be.