Faster Hard Drive
 

I have an IBM PIII 800 for which the biggest speed bottleneck appears to
be the hard drive. What is the fastest HD I can put in this sytem?
ATA133 controller and drive? RAID 0/3/5? 15K RPM? OS is Windows 2000
Pro.

Re: Faster Hard Drive
 

I haven't seen a 15K rpm ATA drive yet. Western Digital makes a 10K S-ATA
drive. You'll need an S-ATA/P-ATA adapter, or an S-ATA controller to run it
though. Of course, there is also SCSI, which is a tad faster, but given the
difference in price, and the age of that machine, I wouldn't think it worth
it. You could also try one of the Western Digital 7200RPM drives with the
8MB cache memory. Those are pretty quick as well. Go to
www.storagereview.com and you can see how fast the various drives are.


...
"mcp6453" <mcp6453@earthlink.net> wrote in message
news:3FBFD0C9.37C6@earthlink.net...
> I have an IBM PIII 800 for which the biggest speed bottleneck appears to
> be the hard drive. What is the fastest HD I can put in this sytem?
> ATA133 controller and drive? RAID 0/3/5? 15K RPM? OS is Windows 2000
> Pro.

Re: Faster Hard Drive
 

On Sat, 22 Nov 2003 16:10:33 -0500, mcp6453 <mcp6453@earthlink.net> wrote:

>I have an IBM PIII 800 for which the biggest speed bottleneck appears to
>be the hard drive. What is the fastest HD I can put in this sytem?
>ATA133 controller and drive? RAID 0/3/5? 15K RPM? OS is Windows 2000
>Pro.

The hard drive is the bottleneck for all of us.

The fastest hard drive system would be a scsi raid controller with raid 5, but
that would be *very* expensive.

Re: Faster Hard Drive
 

On Sun, 23 Nov 2003 11:36:10 +1100, derek / nul <abuseonly@sgrall.org>
wrote:

>On Sat, 22 Nov 2003 16:10:33 -0500, mcp6453 <mcp6453@earthlink.net> wrote:
>
>>I have an IBM PIII 800 for which the biggest speed bottleneck appears to
>>be the hard drive. What is the fastest HD I can put in this sytem?
>>ATA133 controller and drive? RAID 0/3/5? 15K RPM? OS is Windows 2000
>>Pro.
>
>The hard drive is the bottleneck for all of us.
>
>The fastest hard drive system would be a scsi raid controller with raid 5, but
>that would be *very* expensive.

I just bought a cheap $50 ATA replacement from Comp USA. I have not
been keeping up with the technology and was unaware of all the latest
improvements. The Comp USA brand is apparantly a Maxtor/Quantum
Diamondmax 8 plus series hard drive. This series has fluid bearings
so it is silent and comes with a five year warranty.

www.storagereview.com

I was amazed at the difference in sustained transfer rates. The
Seagate U6 series of hard drives could only sustain about 30 MB per
second of transfer rate, which is about what I expected from the
inexpensive Comp USA brand drive. To my surprise the less expensive
Maxtor sustains over 60 MB per second! What's wrong with this
picture?

Re: Faster Hard Drive
 

On Sat, 22 Nov 2003 16:10:33 -0500, mcp6453 <mcp6453@earthlink.net>
wrote:

>I have an IBM PIII 800 for which the biggest speed bottleneck appears to
>be the hard drive. What is the fastest HD I can put in this sytem?
>ATA133 controller and drive? RAID 0/3/5? 15K RPM? OS is Windows 2000
>Pro.

WD Raptor ... + ide2sata convertitore ..

-- Regards, SPAJKY
& visit site - http://www.spajky.vze.com
Celly-III OC-ed,"Tualatin on BX-Slot1-MoBo!"
E-mail AntiSpam: remove ##

Re: Faster Hard Drive
 

<dsr@Florence.edu> wrote in message
news:dfb1svk0kq5tqvtc69723nv76ea6ee5up5@4ax.com...
> On Sun, 23 Nov 2003 11:36:10 +1100, derek / nul <abuseonly@sgrall.org>
> wrote:
>
> >On Sat, 22 Nov 2003 16:10:33 -0500, mcp6453 <mcp6453@earthlink.net>
wrote:
> >
> >>I have an IBM PIII 800 for which the biggest speed bottleneck appears to
> >>be the hard drive. What is the fastest HD I can put in this sytem?
> >>ATA133 controller and drive? RAID 0/3/5? 15K RPM? OS is Windows 2000
> >>Pro.
> >
> >The hard drive is the bottleneck for all of us.
> >
> >The fastest hard drive system would be a scsi raid controller with raid
5, but
> >that would be *very* expensive.
>
> I just bought a cheap $50 ATA replacement from Comp USA. I have not
> been keeping up with the technology and was unaware of all the latest
> improvements. The Comp USA brand is apparantly a Maxtor/Quantum
> Diamondmax 8 plus series hard drive. This series has fluid bearings
> so it is silent and comes with a five year warranty.

Perhaps you should double check your harddrive documentation. That drive
series, according to both Maxtor's website, and StorageReview.com only
carries a 1 year warranty.
http://www.maxtor.com/en/support/ser...s_warranty.htm
http://www.storagereview.com/article...6E040L0_1.html


>
> www.storagereview.com
>
> I was amazed at the difference in sustained transfer rates. The
> Seagate U6 series of hard drives could only sustain about 30 MB per
> second of transfer rate, which is about what I expected from the
> inexpensive Comp USA brand drive. To my surprise the less expensive
> Maxtor sustains over 60 MB per second! What's wrong with this
> picture?

Yes, that drive is indeed fast, however also keep in mind that your
sustained transfer rate is actually somewhere between 40, and 60MB/sec
depending on where the data is being accessed from. Data from the inner
portions of the platter only transferred at 40MB/sec.

Re: Faster Hard Drive
 

Thor wrote:
>
> I haven't seen a 15K rpm ATA drive yet. Western Digital makes a 10K S-ATA
> drive. You'll need an S-ATA/P-ATA adapter, or an S-ATA controller to run it
> though. Of course, there is also SCSI, which is a tad faster, but given the
> difference in price, and the age of that machine, I wouldn't think it worth
> it. You could also try one of the Western Digital 7200RPM drives with the
> 8MB cache memory. Those are pretty quick as well. Go to
> www.storagereview.com and you can see how fast the various drives are.


I was thinking about buying a Promise ATA/133 controller and a Maxtor or
Western Digital ATA/133 drive. In view of SATA, is ATA/133 considered
old technology?

Re: Faster Hard Drive
 

"mcp6453" <mcp6453@earthlink.net> wrote in message
news:3FCE0475.6AD@earthlink.net...
> Thor wrote:
> >
> > I haven't seen a 15K rpm ATA drive yet. Western Digital makes a 10K
S-ATA
> > drive. You'll need an S-ATA/P-ATA adapter, or an S-ATA controller to run
it
> > though. Of course, there is also SCSI, which is a tad faster, but given
the
> > difference in price, and the age of that machine, I wouldn't think it
worth
> > it. You could also try one of the Western Digital 7200RPM drives with
the
> > 8MB cache memory. Those are pretty quick as well. Go to
> > www.storagereview.com and you can see how fast the various drives are.
>
>
> I was thinking about buying a Promise ATA/133 controller and a Maxtor or
> Western Digital ATA/133 drive. In view of SATA, is ATA/133 considered
> old technology?

Well, S-ATA is the replacement for P-ATA. So if you are buying a P-ATA
drive, then yes you are buying older tech. Speed-wise they are the same, for
now. S-ATA will ramp up potential drive speeds much higher in the future. So
you won't be sacrificing performance if you get a P-ATA 133 drive right now.


...

Re: Faster Hard Drive
 

Thor wrote:
>
> "mcp6453" <mcp6453@earthlink.net> wrote in message
> news:3FCE0475.6AD@earthlink.net...
> > Thor wrote:
> Well, S-ATA is the replacement for P-ATA. So if you are buying a P-ATA
> drive, then yes you are buying older tech. Speed-wise they are the same, for
> now. S-ATA will ramp up potential drive speeds much higher in the future. So
> you won't be sacrificing performance if you get a P-ATA 133 drive right now.
>

Someone told me today that Maxtor is the only manufacturer making
ATA/133. Is that true? I just bought a Maxtor ATA/133 controller card
for a PIII/500 with a newer drive. It will be interesting to see if it
speeds up the computer. I have not researched the specs on the
motherboard yet.

I have a similar Promise controller in a similar computer, and it does a
good job.

Re: Faster Hard Drive
 

"mcp6453" <mcp6453@earthlink.net> wrote in message
news:3FCEBB10.5588@earthlink.net...
> Thor wrote:
> >
> > "mcp6453" <mcp6453@earthlink.net> wrote in message
> > news:3FCE0475.6AD@earthlink.net...
> > > Thor wrote:
> > Well, S-ATA is the replacement for P-ATA. So if you are buying a P-ATA
> > drive, then yes you are buying older tech. Speed-wise they are the same,
for
> > now. S-ATA will ramp up potential drive speeds much higher in the
future. So
> > you won't be sacrificing performance if you get a P-ATA 133 drive right
now.
> >
>
> Someone told me today that Maxtor is the only manufacturer making
> ATA/133. Is that true?

Um, no. Not yet anyway. As far as I know, ATA/133 drives are still available
from the other brands. Eventually, you'll see S-ATA drives taking center
stage, but P-ATA remains more popular for the time being, because more
people still have ATA controllers than S-ATA.


> I just bought a Maxtor ATA/133 controller card
> for a PIII/500 with a newer drive. It will be interesting to see if it
> speeds up the computer. I have not researched the specs on the
> motherboard yet.
>
> I have a similar Promise controller in a similar computer, and it does a
> good job.

Maxtor's controller cards are made by Promise, by the way.