Hard drive question

[Alan]

I have my OS on a what is now a very slow old HDD 7600RPM with 8MB cache. Win7 gives it a woeful rating of 5. My main concern is with HDD intensive games like ARMA2 which really gives the drive a work out.

If I buy a fast HDD and run it as a second drive with the game files on it will there be an improvement or will I have to re install the OS on the the new drive and run it with the games from there which would be a schlep.

 

[The_Unbeliever]

What is it? IDE? SATA?

Remember with IDE you'll have a speed penalty should you have the faster drive on the same channel as the older one. Rather put it on the 2nd IDE channel on its own.

 

[Alan]

All are SATA

 

[Alan]

Perhaps cloning the old hard drive with OS and put it on the new drive is an option.

 

[Wyzak]

7600RPM? You will see an improvement, even if only because the load will be distributed amongst multiple drives. Which means less seeking and spinning time. The harddrives are always the slowest component in my experience. They simply have failed to keep up.

I have always wanted to buy a full speed low capacity harddrive, something like 100GB but with 64MB RAM, and the latest improvements. This drive will be used for OS and the most basic applications. This was never possible, but one of these days I will get myself an SSD to do just that.

 

[TJ99]

A rating of 5 isn't "woeful", far from it in fact. It's quite high for a mechanical drive. The only way you can get into the 7's is probably with an SSD. I haven't heard of anyone having a max score (7.9) yet, maybe the new Vertex 3's can do that, my Vertex 2 can't, it's a 7.4 I think.

 

[Alan]

A rating of 5 isn't "woeful", far from it in fact. It's quite high for a mechanical drive. The only way you can get into the 7's is probably with an SSD. I haven't heard of anyone having a max score (7.9) yet, maybe the new Vertex 3's can do that, my Vertex 2 can't, it's a 7.4 I think.

Oh good news then. Still it only has 8mb cache

Think I'm going to try this

http://www.pcstats.com/articleview.cfm?articleid=418&page=8

Get the OS cloned onto the new HDD

 

[Scooby_Doo]

I don't think you are going to see any marked difference between your dive and a newer mechanical drive. The only real speed increase would be from an SSD, and you will see a huge difference.

 

[TJ99]

Oh good news then. Still it only has 8mb cache

Think I'm going to try this

http://www.pcstats.com/articleview.cfm?articleid=418&page=8

Get the OS cloned onto the new HDD

Cloning the drive also clones your problems, it's usually better to just do a fresh install.

A drive with extra cache isn't neccessarily going to give you a better experience with gaming, it might improve access times a bit but you might not even notice. Maybe you just need more RAM instead? It sounds like that might be the issue, since you say the HD is very active during the game.

 

[Stealth001]

Definitely will see a performance from the drives if you share the load, but agree with rather cloning it on a fresh hard drive than having some things installed on a seperate drive.

 

[TJ99]

I don't think you are going to see any marked difference between your dive and a newer mechanical drive. The only real speed increase would be from an SSD, and you will see a huge difference.

Yup, and you will only see a difference if your swap file, and the game are on the SSD, which is unlikely since most people only buy the 60GB ones, anything more is still stupidly expensive.