Hard Drive Questions (SATA/IDE/BLAH)

T

Terra

Contributor
Veteran XX
I'd like to say that I know what I'm taking about when it comes to hardware, but I probably know nothing compared to the masses of TW so I come begging for help.

I have 3 Drives Installed right now on my Asus K8V Deluxe Motherboard

2 of
"Maxtor 6Y160P0 Maxtor 6Y160P0 DiamondMax Plus 9 6Y160P0 160GB Ultra ATA/133 7200RPM Hard Drive w/8MB Buffer & Fluid Dynamic Bearing Motors"

and 1 of
Western Digital Caviar WD2500JB 250GB Hard Drive

--------------------------

I want to and need to get a new hard drive or two, but I'm confused because of my lack of knowledge in this area. I know I have SATA spots, but all i've used so far are IDE. Can you mix? also, What are the advantages? .... and lastly does anyone know a good deal or should I just look at newegg?
 
I think you can mix n match...afaik a popular solution is to get a pair of 74gb raptors and sata raid them...
 
Chikaze said:
I think you can mix n match...afaik a popular solution is to get a pair of 74gb raptors and sata raid them...
Click to expand...
Yeah.. I've heard a lot of about Raid... can anyone explain in more easy terms pls? :)
 
there's a few different ways to do raid. Basically raid takes a couple hd's (or more) and makes it so windows treat them like a single hd. Different raid setups (known by their number) can either give better performance, data backup, or both. The 3 that can usually be found on a desktop mobo are raid 0, raid 1, and raid 0+1

Raid 0 = 2 hd's act like one, data is mixed between the 2. When reading and writing, you can do it to both which almost doubles read/write speed. If one hd dies or any other problems happen, you can lose all your info easily.

Raid 1 = makes 2nd hd an exact copy of the 1st. If the 1st hd dies, the 2nd one will kick in and keep working....but it basically wastes a hd

Raid 0+1 is like taking a raid 0 array and backing it up with another. It's a lot faster, but it basically wastes 2 hd's. You need 4 hd's for this.

There's Raid 3 and Raid 5, but they're rather similar, so I won't explain them too much. They both need at least 3 hd's and can use more. They use all the hd's so you don't waste a hd, you get even better speed than raid 0, and you get very good data backup. They're just rare builtin on desktop motherboards. (or at least they used to be)
 
raid is a huge fucking waste of fucking time and hds

unless your data is fucking worth gold and you cannot lose your data for some fucking reason, raid aint worth the hds

raid 0 is a waste cause if one hd blows, you lose everything on the raid
 
optima spelled it out pretty well. I think the only way I'd raid is if I had the time, hd's, and other devices to do a raid 5.

Just get 1 or 2 of the raptors and put your os and games and swap on those.
 
I haven't tried it myself but i hear there is a noticable difference when switching from IDE to SATA. You can mix and match but i've also heard that problems can occur if you do, like sometimes your SATA HDD can randomly overtake the IDE one or something. Best bet to stick to one or the other.
Besides which, you have VIA chipset and maxtor HDDs, you might as well shoot yourself in the penis.
 
In all seriousness now, most of the major computer parts manufacturers have reached some sort of plateau as of now. It's safe to say you won't see any difference between two brands.

Maxtor, Seagate, and Western Digital. Horror stories on all sides. Just get a reasonably priced one and be done with it.
 
You mean 7200 not 72000.

it depends on the drive, their r/w rates, cache, and a bunch of other stuff.
 
Just so I'm not wasting my money....when using FRAPS, the HD is the thing that is holding the speed down the most, right?

With, 1gb of ram, a 4000+ x2, and a 7800 and that HD setup, I should be able to capture at just about and FPS with no slow down, right?
 
if your hd is really holding you back, you can either

a. go with raid 0'd raptors (and just don't leave anything important on there...raid 0 is the best setup for video production temp space)

b. get that ramdrive thingy and 4gb of sdram.
 
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