fastest HDD? Options

[fajw]

What is the fastest HDD? Still the Velociraptor or is it one of the big capacity ones? How much difference is there?

[bowiee]

SSD is fast, but if we are talking mechanical then it would be the following,

Hitachi Ultrastar 600GB 15K600 3.5" SAS HDD 15,000rpm 6Gb/s SAS 64MB Cache 1.6 million hours MTBF

Western Digital 150G SATAIII VelociRaptor 10000rpm

This post has been edited by bowiee: Apr 14 2012, 06:10 PM

[fajw]

I'm wondering about what the fastest drive suitable for use with Windows XP would be. Could it be a hybrid (SSD + HDD) drive or would Windows XP not deal with that properly?

[aliali]

I'm wondering about what the fastest drive suitable for use with Windows XP would be. Could it be a hybrid (SSD + HDD) drive or would Windows XP not deal with that properly?

You mean like the Seagate Momentus?
http://www.pccasegear.com/index.php?main_p...th=210_902_1205
http://www.seagate.com/www/en-au/products/...ops/laptop-hdd/
Should work on any OS as the caching stuff is handled by the drives firmware, nothing to do with the OS.
According to Seagate everything from Win 2000 up is supported as is Macbook and Macbook pro running intel hardware and OS X or better, mac book mini and Linux.
Will need a 2.5 in to 3.5 in adapter to fit it to a PC.
Ran one of these for a while on my desktop and it did improve things somewhat. Also have one in my laptop and it helped there too. Both run Win7.
In the desktop I now use a caching solution via a conventional HDD and an OCZ Synapse caching SSD. Only supported in Win 7 so no good for your XP box.


If you mean the Revodrive solutions like
http://www.ocztechnology.com/ocz-revodrive...tate-drive.html
then these are Windows 7 only, will not work on Xp or Vista at all (no driver support).

[gts071]

Maybe you should provide more information to what you are trying to do or figure out?

Without knowing how much space you need SSD are very fast and are becoming much larger, but still expensive for the larger ones.

[sora3]

Honestly speaking, I'd be more inclined to think of the Caviar Blacks from WD is the fastest drive you can purchase ATM.

[cohmoddersolo]

I think HDD with SSD cache is the fastest HDD you can get. Even tho its not a hdd by itself, still an ssd for caching wont cost much and it would be super-fast.

[fajw]

I think HDD with SSD cache is the fastest HDD you can get. Even tho its not a hdd by itself, still an ssd for caching wont cost much and it would be super-fast.

And incompatible with Windows XP.

[cohmoddersolo]

I think HDD with SSD cache is the fastest HDD you can get. Even tho its not a hdd by itself, still an ssd for caching wont cost much and it would be super-fast.

And incompatible with Windows XP.

Alright, but if Atomicans and I may know, why are you still on Windows XP?

This post has been edited by cohmoddersolo: Apr 15 2012, 09:45 PM

[fajw]

I wanted to dual boot for compatibility reasons.

[gts071]

SSD for OS/Dual boot
WD Black for other data/apps.

Raptors are very noisey. I just moved from a raptor to SSD and the silence is awesome, plus it is much faster (but I am sure the fresh install of Windows also helped).

--EDIT--

Or just get the WD Black if you don't want SSD, the difference would be minimal between that and the raptor.
But if you still want super fast get a small (150gb) raptor for the OS's and the apps that need the speed and get the black for fast large storage.

This post has been edited by gts071: Apr 15 2012, 09:33 PM

[cohmoddersolo]

SSD for OS/Dual boot
WD Black for other data/apps.

Raptors are very noisey. I just moved from a raptor to SSD and the silence is awesome, plus it is much faster (but I am sure the fresh install of Windows also helped).

--EDIT--

Or just get the WD Black if you don't want SSD, the difference would be minimal between that and the raptor.
But if you still want super fast get a small (150gb) raptor for the OS's and the apps that need the speed and get the black for fast large storage.

I agree, this is probably the most optimal setup you can get.

This post has been edited by cohmoddersolo: Apr 15 2012, 09:47 PM

[aliali]

I wanted to dual boot for compatibility reasons.

What exactly is incompatible with Win 7 that you need to dual boot?
Because I would bet there is either an alternative or the Win 7 incompatibility can be easily worked around.
EG for one bloody ancient 16 bit programme I still use I use an XP Virtual machine Via the free VMWare Player.
This way I am not crippling modern hardware by running an out of date and outmoded OS on it, plus I can access the guest OS and programme without having to close everything I have open in Win 7 and rebooting.

Much much much easier and much much much better use of hardware.

[sora3]

Plus you can use DOSBOX if you need the DOS environment anyway. It's not like all the legacy stuff is gone, just need to look beyond it.