What speed is my hard drive?

[DonNagual]

I recently installed a new graphics card in my system, GTX 260. I have 4gb ram with the Q6600 cpu.

But at times framerates drop extremely low and it seems to coincide with my hard drive churning away. I have defragged etc. but I am wondering if this system simply came with a slow hard drive.

How can I find out the speed?

 

[kimsland]

You could read the label
Or download a System Specs program, and we could look up the Harddrive type stated.

But we all know that its likely 7200 anyway

 

[DonNagual]

Yep. It's a 7200

What's a decent speed to get nowadays?

 

[kimsland]

7200 is still sold brand new
But if you want to go faster then get 10,000

This is a Sata Hard Drive isn't it ? (in your unknown system)

 

[captaincranky]

I recently installed a new graphics card in my system, GTX 260. I have 4gb ram with the Q6600 cpu.

But at times framerates drop extremely low and it seems to coincide with my hard drive churning away. I have defragged etc. but I am wondering if this system simply came with a slow hard drive.

How can I find out the speed?

The system slows down because it's using the page file, and also loading scenery. You can always buy 2 WD "Velociraptors" and put them in RAID 0. At least if you have a few hundred dollars laying idle. Then there's always solid state drives.

HDDs generally are fastest in the first third of their capacity, so if yours is nearing full, it might be time to add another drive to store the photos and video junk.

You can also check "power options" in control panel. If the HDD is configured to spin down after XX minutes, that'll slow you up too.

 

[hellokitty[hk]]

Yes, despite your 4 gb of RAM, the most likely reason your low fps coincides with the hdd spinning up is because of your page file, then again, 4 gigs should mitigate that.
Yes 7200 is normal and should be perfectly fine.

 

[Mictlantecuhtli]

Have you tried reinstalling mainboard chipset drivers? It could be that the hdd controller's DMA is somehow affected by the new card.