Hard drives

[mattjackson]

Buying a new comp soon,

Sorry if sound stupid but what does it mean when a hard drive is say; 7200rpm (I'm guessing this is reads per minute), or 8mb buffer. And are these any good?

 

[crabcakes66]

i dont know alot about HD's but i think this is correct

7200 rpm =7200 revolutions per minute
more rpm = faster seek time......less time spent waiting for hardrive to find the data

the 8mb buffer is completley seperate and has nothing to do with the rpm.

the larger buffer means that it can read 8 mbs ahead and store that info for faster access (i could be wrong, i honestly am not sure)

kind of like a cd-rom


please correct me if im wrong someone :dork:

 

[simmo]

Is there a way if you can find out how much RPM my HDD has ?, I wanna check if I have 7200

 

[mattjackson]

Cheers crab, thats really helpful.

Am I correct in saying that a harddrive that has 8mb buffer is faster?!

 

[SidewinderX]

I great tool for fiding out information about your computer is SiSoftware's Sandra utility. the free version can give all kinds of helpful info baout your mobo, ram, hdd, everyhting.

 

[crabcakes66]

Originally posted by mattjackson
Cheers crab, thats really helpful.

Am I correct in saying that a harddrive that has 8mb buffer is faster?!

Im pretty sure thats thats the way it works.


Another good tool for seeing all you computer specs is this

http://www.aida32.hu/aida-download.php?bit=32

It will tell you the model numbers so you can go the the manufacture's website.

 

[Ridic]

yea, definitly get the 8mb cache, its a lot faster, for maybe $20-30 more. 7200rpm is great, there are like 10,000rpm hdds, but i think they are really really expensive...and 7200 is great.

 

[TrueWeltall]

Western Digital Raptor 36GB SATA WD360GD 10,000 RPM 8MB Hard Drive

Size: 36.7 Gigabytes
Interface: Serial ATA
Seek time: 5.2ms
RPM:10,000
Data Transfer: 150MB/sec Max
Cache:8MB

$138.50
Link

If i had the money id buy it, I dont need anymore then 40 gigs for the games i have.

 

[ankalar]

You still need a power cable and a motherboard that supports SATA or a SATA controller card.

 

[Patten]

I want to get the WD raptor hard drive and have read tests that show it is a lot faster than a normal 7200 RPM HDD.

About needing a motherboard and power cable, almost all new motherboards support SATA. Cables are really cheap too, some some motherboars come with SATA cables in them.

 

[Ridic]

well, insted of paying for a 10,000 rpm hdd, just get the 7200 one, but make sure it has an 8mb cache

 

[ankalar]

It's a lot faster than a normal IDE hard drive because there are no IDE hard drives that spin at 10k RPM. The whole 150mb/s hype isn't that much of a speed difference if it's just a 7.2k RPM SATA hard drive, that's why only the Raptor is worth getting if you're going SATA. Patten, it's true that most new motherboards come with SATA capability, but what if someone was going to get a new hard drive on an old computer? I don't think there are any motherboards that come with a SATA power converter cable, but they may come with a SATA data cable.

 

[Hudson]

Originally posted by simmo2k3
Is there a way if you can find out how much RPM my HDD has ?, I wanna check if I have 7200

if your HDs more then a few years old its prob not 7200rpm