Sata I vs. Sata II

[darkorb]

ok, i gotta type this quick since class is starting very soon!

Currently i have a 250GB Seagate Sata I drive, and a Sata II 80gb drive that i have for a second rig. (server)

Basically, will i see a performance increase in swapping to a Sata II drive, Seagate 320gb/500gb or WD 320gb/500gb, They are around $80/$109 for each size.

Also, i am going to be getting windows Vista (haha laugh at me all you want).

So what should my hard drive layout be? I dont want to keep the Sata I drive for primary or games, since its sata I, and i would be getting nowhere. but i need it still since all my files are backed up onto it.

However, i did HD Tune and it shows that my 250gb Sata I HD has faster burst/sustained speeds than the 80GB sata II drive. This makes me wonder if this is all worth it..

Also (sorry for rant, ) how should my HD's be layed out? I was thinking 80gb for OS and 320/500 for music/games/files etc..

or have the 320gb/500 for OS + FIles games etc.. and have the 80gb just as a spare backup.

Woo, im tired, wrote all that in under a minute

THanks alot guys!! Appreciate it, i was hoping on going today after school, so i hope i get all your input!

:worship:

 

[Rastalovich]

If I assume u`r using the drives on u`r ASUS from u`r sig, then it`s SAII capable and could only offer that u check that the SAII hdd hasn`t got it`s jumper set to SAI mode.

If another mobo, be sure it`s not a SAI capable only, as of course having a SAII drive will be irrelevant.

However, I can envisage a situation where certain SAI drives could have a burst bigger than a SAII. Quality, cache, seek time, and rpms can come into play. Burst aint that much of a key factor outside of using lots of small files. Take a massive file and the SAII factor will come into play more.

Over a network ? SAI will be `fine`. But if u have SAII, it will be `smoother` overall.

Benchmarkers, as with all benchmarks, do have to be taken with a pinch of salt sometimes. Small samples of a units operation doesn`t always give u a fair representation of what it`ll be like in the long run.

For me, 80g for the OS, large drive for the game/util/storage. SAI/II - wouldn`t matter too much to me.

 

[nrage]

ok, i gotta type this quick since class is starting very soon!

Currently i have a 250GB Seagate Sata I drive, and a Sata II 80gb drive that i have for a second rig. (server)

Basically, will i see a performance increase in swapping to a Sata II drive, Seagate 320gb/500gb or WD 320gb/500gb, They are around $80/$109 for each size.

I'm gonna reply with my normal suggestion, check out tomshardwares charts for hdd performance

I loaded up the drives you mentioned (or as near as I could find) and under the "Average Read Performance" test I get (in order of performance low to low):

45.50mb/s - *Seagate, SATA150/NCQ, 160gb, 8mb cache

58.00mb/s - WD, SATA300/NCQ, 500gb, 16mb cache

59.10mb/s - Seagate, SATA300, 500gb, 16mb cache

60.40mb/s - Seagate, SATA300, 500gb, 8mb cache

61.40mb/s - *Seagate, SATA300, 80gb, 8mb cache

63.60mb/s - Seagate, SATA300, 320gb, 8mb cache

* existing drives

I tried a few other tests and for most they stay in this order, however the Workstation IO test showed the old sata 1 drive to be fastest, which seems odd to me.

Also, i am going to be getting windows Vista (haha laugh at me all you want).

So what should my hard drive layout be? I dont want to keep the Sata I drive for primary or games, since its sata I, and i would be getting nowhere. but i need it still since all my files are backed up onto it.

However, i did HD Tune and it shows that my 250gb Sata I HD has faster burst/sustained speeds than the 80GB sata II drive. This makes me wonder if this is all worth it..

Odd, the read tests on toms are sustained reads, or so I thought and it shows that drive to be slower. The random access times for the sata 1 drive should be pretty good (if it has NCQ like the one on toms charts does) so maybe the burst/sustained test in HD Tune does a lot of random access.

Does HD Tune have a benchmark that tests speeds at each location on the disk because IIRC as you get near the end of a disk it slows down, plus larger disks get slower than smaller ones. So, often a small disk will perform better than a larger one.

Also (sorry for rant, ) how should my HD's be layed out? I was thinking 80gb for OS and 320/500 for music/games/files etc..

or have the 320gb/500 for OS + FIles games etc.. and have the 80gb just as a spare backup.

Woo, im tired, wrote all that in under a minute

THanks alot guys!! Appreciate it, i was hoping on going today after school, so i hope i get all your input!

:worship:

I would install the OS on the 80gb drive and install any game you're playing there too. Keep all the rest of your data on the other drive.

 

[Rastalovich]

I would install the OS on the 80gb drive and install any game you're playing there too.

Meh, performance hit. OS is always reading - then the game is reading - physical heads have to do more work. May aswell have a fragged drive.

 

[nrage]

Meh, performance hit. OS is always reading - then the game is reading - physical heads have to do more work. May aswell have a fragged drive.

Maybe, but I don't think it's that simple. If he had another SATA2 drive I would definately put the system on one and games on the other but as it is...

The game probably does a big load at certain points (start of each level) and at that point you need a good sequential read speed which means you want the SATA 2 drive.

I doubt the OS does very many reads while you're gaming and any it does do would have to coincide with the reads the game does for there to be any detrimental effect.

Performance Monitor allows you to add counters to things like disk usage so you could add some of those, fire up a game and see how much of the time is spent reading from disk. Might be interesting.

 

[Rastalovich]

Yeah that'd be a good exercise.

It'd matter differently to different setups of course. Whether there's a network present, how much virtual memory, where your drivers are.

Each time a sound is played, a graphic is drawn, directx is accessed, the mouse is moved, a key is pressed and so on - the OS (windows) jumps into action.

Not to mention all those services, antivirus, firewall.

In between each time your game wants to read something, the "OS" (meaning pretty much all the above that runs behind a game) accesses the drive.

Lots are loaded into memory and mainly run from there, but they still 'finger' the drive they're installed on.

 

[nrage]

Yeah that'd be a good exercise.

It'd matter differently to different setups of course. Whether there's a network present, how much virtual memory, where your drivers are.

Actual/virtual memory will make a big difference. The #1 cause of slow computer syndrome is not enough physical memory.

Each time a sound is played, a graphic is drawn, directx is accessed, the mouse is moved, a key is pressed and so on - the OS (windows) jumps into action.

When a game uses DirectX it loads it via a DLL, which means that directx is loaded directly into the game memory itself (from disk to memory on startup). So the distinction between the game and the OS becomes a little blurred. Handling mouse and key presses is done by the game via the direct input dll and is all done in memory, no disk access required.

Most games, I imagine, will load their sounds and graphics into memory in blocks, rather than individually. So, at the start of the level or area the game loads all the sounds and graphics it might need. That way when it comes time to play/show them there is no delay from reading off disk.

But, like you said above, if the graphics card or system is short on actual memory (for textures, sounds, etc) then it will use virtual memory and may have to page off the disk and you will notice a slow down when that happens.

Not to mention all those services, antivirus, firewall.

In between each time your game wants to read something, the "OS" (meaning pretty much all the above that runs behind a game) accesses the drive.

Lots are loaded into memory and mainly run from there, but they still 'finger' the drive they're installed on.

Those background services can definately 'finger' the drive, for any number of reasons. But as long as it's only a 'finger' and not the whole fist it shouldn't have too much effect, even if it happens while the game is loading it's stuff.

Now, if your antivirus kicked off a full system scan you would definately notice that!

 

[Rastalovich]

Now, if your antivirus kicked off a full system scan you would definately notice that!

lmao, there`s nothing funnier than experiencing playing some1 in an online game that suddenly gets their antivirus kick in, or they`ve left windows update on (even when off it still runs, just doesn`t go online), or even a folding wu being sent.

Problem with the OS we all love, is that there are so many things. Even if u seemingly have enough physical memory in alot of cases, it`ll use the virtual. I can`t remember which part of windows it is, but it will literally fail/complain even if u have 16gig and set virtual to zero.

 

[BUFF]

there isn't a big performance difference between SATA I & SATA II (SATA II doesn't really exist as a spec. - that was the name of the committee) drives of the same generation. You may see evolutionary improvements between generations & going from a smaller to larger drive though.

The bottleneck isn't the interface but the drive mechanics - WD Raptors are still SATA150 drives because even their 10,000rpm can't saturate the 150MB/s interface, continuous transfer is more like 90.

 

[darkorb]

what about 2 x 320gb Seagate's in Raid 0?

Or just get a singple 500gb and throw everything onto it.

so hard to decide :S

 

[Nagaru]

The new Western Digital 750GB drive is a beast from what I have heard. Just to add to the confusion.

 

[nrage]

what about 2 x 320gb Seagate's in Raid 0?

Or just get a singple 500gb and throw everything onto it.

so hard to decide :S

Raid0 will give a performance boost.

 

[darkorb]

Seagate 7200.10 500GB Sata 2 drive, $115

Microsoft Windows Vista home premium 64bit $119

AuzenTech HDA X-Plosion 7.1 DTS $84.99

Just ordered those. Thanks for the help!

 

[Rastalovich]

what about 2 x 320gb Seagate's in Raid 0?

Or just get a singple 500gb and throw everything onto it.

so hard to decide :S

DONT TALK TO ME ABOUT RAID !!

Outside of an expensive card, redundant & backup raid setup, I`m never setting one up again.

 

[nrage]

DONT TALK TO ME ABOUT RAID !!

Outside of an expensive card, redundant & backup raid setup, I`m never setting one up again.

What happened?

The one time I had a bit of raid trouble was when my windows install (on the raid) wouldn't boot. All my important files were on there too. Luckily I had a few spare drives. I re-installed onto one, installed the raid drivers so I could access the array, then copied the data I wanted off the raid to another spare HDD.

I reckon RAID0 is only a good idea if you want a fast 'drive' to play games off, but I wouldn't keep my important files on RAID0, I'd keep em on a seperate large HDD (or RAID1 if I was being real careful). That way if the RAID died again I could just re-install without loosing anything important.

 

[Rastalovich]

Ya raid0 for games, and games that don`t save their stuff to the same dir. (lost raid0 setups due to crap-arsed ASUS onboard raid thingies too many times) I know they`re games, but it`s a pisher to have to reinstall them just after u think everything is working great.

Out-of-the-blue sheet does my head in.

I`ve tried some raid3 cards recently, work really well, but after 2 weeks or so a drive will drop.. no problem, put another in. Rebuild, then drops after another 2 weeks. Then finally 2 drives dropped - well that`s it. (The drives are fine, imo it`s the cards that are shoddy, or the drivers or the OS or I don`t care at this point)

Don`t get me wrong, raid is great when it works. But for me, long term, forget it, I`d not trust it with anything outside of redundancy/swappable - even then I would search the net for any1 posting a problem, and if there are some found, forget it. Re installing apps/games is fine when u have the patience.

U give me a tech, and it doesn`t do stoopid sheet and I`ll use it. Too many peoples put too many variants on raid. Imo, if u have a raid setup, u should be able to unplug it and stick it in another manufs raid, fire-up and every1s happy - very very rare if ever this has worked. Stick with 1 thing for every1 ffs - /rant

1 drive 1 SA port for me atm, til I get over the greif.