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does system performance inprove with a small gb fast hard drive?

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scottl08

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May 15, 2008
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uk cumbria
System Specs
System Name ANTEC TRACER 900
Processor INTEL Q6600
Motherboard ASUS P5K DELEUXE WI/FI
Cooling ARTIC FREEZER PRO 7
Memory 4GB CRUCIAL BALLISTIX TRACER 6400
Video Card(s) 8800GTS 320MB EVGA
Storage SAMSUNG F1 750GB, SEAGATE 160GB
Display(s) SAMSUNG 22" 226bw
Case ANTEC 900
Audio Device(s) ONBOARD HD! :D
Power Supply ANTEC TRUEPOWER QUATRO 850W
Software WIDNOWS VISTA HOME PREMIUM 64 BIT
Benchmark Scores HAVNT STARTED BENCHMARKING YET, ANYONE KNOW ANY GOOD LINKS FOR BENCHMARKING SOFTWARE?
does system performance inprove with a small gb fast hard drive? i have a samsung f1 750gb i use for my main drive, os and all my stuff, thats quite alot. i have aload of 160 and 80gb drives also, is it worth putting the os on the smaller drives and using the 750 for programs etc?
 
Ever computer I build gets 2 hdd. Its always a good idea to have a OS drive and another hdd for storage, etc ...

is the drive you wanna use for the OS an IDE or SATA II?

You would see a noticeable increase in the OS if its installed on a fast another SATA II hdd
 
i would prob buy a raptor or somthing if the ones i have arnt good enough, erm i have a 160gb seagate sata, its just a standard seagate babdboy, nothing special, and the rest are pretty much ide 80gb's. is the samsung stil a good drive to have? i cant belive how much components lose value.
 
having Raid-0 is a great "can feel" performance increase !:toast:
 
ahh thats somthing ive never ever looked into, "raid" and are asus p5q motherboards compatible?
 
Your Samsung drive is probably faster than the other drives you have. What I'd recommend though is partitioning it, like a 100g and then the rest by itself.
 
If you have the funds then for sure get a raptor for the main drive... But the 160gb sata drive you have would work just fine...
 
and would be faster than partitioning the 750gb f1?
 
Assuming the large and small drives both have the same RPM, larger drives are usually slightly faster than smaller drives because of the density of data on the platters, assuming that your large drive didn't just add platters to get to its large size. The speed bump is very small, however.
 
If what you're asking entails this question, the answer is in real-world performance, it will not make a difference.

"If I have a 640 GB hard drive, and partition it to 100 GB and 540 GB, will the 100 GB partition be faster because there is less space to look for files in?"

Seems like it would be yes, but it's not like looking for a specific file in a large or small cabinet, because files on your OS drive are indexed, so your HDD knows exactly where to find it.

What CJCerny said about platter density is however true. That's why the WD3200AAKS and WD6400AAKS drives are such wonders. Single and dual 320 GB platters, respectively make for a very cool and quiet 7200RPM drive with sustained read speeds of about 95-100 MB/s.
 
Higher density drives that run at the same RPM are faster than smaller drives. If you have a 160gb 7200rpm drive vs a 1tb 7200rpm drive with the same number of platters on it then the 1tb drive will be ~6.25x the density and so will be faster (that is if the have the same number of platters of course) - it is more than a slight improvement. This is because more data is squeezed onto the same space and the read/write head moves over the same distance in the same time, so the more data there is in that distance the faster the drive. If your 80 and 160gb drives are old models with 3/4 platters then the 750 will be faster, but if they are new drives with only 1 platter then the speed difference will be smaller and maybe negligable depending on the ages of the drives in question.

I'd say a new partition on your 750 should be faster than a 160gb drive, however you'd need it partitioned on the faster outer edge of the drive which can't be controlled when formatting/partitioning - the best way to get the partition there would be to have the whole drive as empty and to then partition it for the OS before putting anything else on it (as HDDs fill from the outside first as that is where they perform best). It may pay to backup everything you want to keep off the 750, completely reformat and parition it for an OS partition, then install the OS and then restore all your backed up data onto the larger, slower partition.

**edit**

yes your motherboard can do RAID with the southbridge and putting 2/3+ drives in the raid will be faster than the 750 but you'll want to look at the advantages and disadvantages of the various RAIDs as some can lose data if one drive fails, where others can lose 1 drive and still keep your data, so you want to be sure on which you want to use.
 
Last edited:
i understand now thanks ppl, hmm now its getting everything off the 750 to format and partition it.
 
scottl08 said:
ahh thats somthing ive never ever looked into, "raid" and are asus p5q motherboards compatible?
Click to expand...

Yes your mobo will do Raid-0:toast:
 
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