New Hard Drive

[Starsky303]

Hi all,

Am close to buying a new HD (Western Digital WD5000AAKS 500GB SATA II) and I currently have a 300GB Maxtor 6B300S0.
I've had my Maxtor HD for about 3 years now. Will I notice an increase in speed when running apps or games?

Cheers.

Asus P5KC
Intel Core 2 Quad Q6600 2.4GHz (OC'd to 3.3GHz) - Arctic Cooling Freezer 7 Pro
XFX GeForce 8800 GTX XT
4GB Corsair DDR2 1066MHz/PC2-8500 XMS2 Dominator
300GB Maxtor 6B300S0
SB Audigy Z2
Coolermaster eXtreme Power 650W
Windows Vista x64

 

[captaincranky]

That depends.......

.....on if the Maxtor is running correctly. The 2 drives should read and write at or near similar speeds. But, the larger drive may actually take longer to initialize, simply because the OS has more data to read. The seek time (read and write) specs are the thing to look at, if they're similar, and everything is working correctly, then not too much difference. Manufacturers tend to lie about specs or they're "subject to change without notice". So at the end of the day, it's likely to still be a surprise. Let us know what happened, won't ya?

 

[mailpup]

If you were to buy a WD 10,000 rpm SATA Raptor HD, you might notice a speedup of loading applications as well as quicker loading of games, game levels and saved games. I realize the capacity of the Raptor is smaller than the one you are considering but with the rest of your PC specs, it looks like you are going for the extra speed. Anyway, just a possibility.

 

[captaincranky]

You could back up your data, wipe the Maxtor, and re-install it as a "Volume" drive, mounting the OS on the Raptor. Then set the Maxtor as the target for "My Documents", "My Pictures", "my this and that", and so on. Just remember to back up you data frequently and if old Max dies of natural causes one day, no harm, no foul.

 

[SNGX1275]

Are you replacing the 300 or just adding too it?

The 300 and the 500 should be so similar in speed you won't notice a difference in the real world. But if you put the 500 in and begin installing stuff to that, like games, then you will probably see an increase in speed. The speed increase will be more because you aren't loading the game from the same drive as the OS rather than because of a faster drive.

Its a lot of trouble, but if I were you I'd consider cloning the 300 to the 500, then wiping the 300 and installing all your programs and games to it, leaving the 500 for the OS, and then another partition for movies and music and other crap. Probably not worth doing just because of the level of effort involved.

 

[Starsky303]

That's what I was thinking about doing but if the speed change isn't THAT different I'm gonna sack it!

I am filling up my HD faster nowerdays (graphic designer + avid gamer = big annoying files) so I'll buy the drive at some point, just not yet! Thanks for all your info guys!

 

[SNGX1275]

Yeh, there will be a difference, the 500 is newer and likely has that perpendicular recording over the 300. But really the difference in them won't be very big, definately not like the difference in a 60 gig and a 200.