I'd just watch Newegg.com during the week for their Shell Shocker deals, nearly every day they will have a a full system build on a deep discount at or below your $400.00
Originally posted by InfusedEMP Originally posted by Ridelynn If the only thing that is wrong with your current computer is that the HD died, you could just get a PCI SATA card and a new SATA hard drive and patch it right back up. Doing video editing you may even want to do some research into RAID arrays (for most people I advise against them, but they do make sense for video editing). Then when GW2 does finally come out, you can save the rest of your money until then, look at what GW2 actually needs, and make a more informed decision about upgrading the rest of your computer at that time (and maybe have a few more dollars to do it with).
That actually would be a superb idea. I asked an online friend who builds computers if it was possible to get some sort of conversion kit that I could put into my current pc to support a SATA hard drive and he said it was impossible, so I took his word for it and resigned myself to having to build a complete new pc with what little cash I have just so I could get a new hard drive. I'm glad to hear there actually is such a thing out there that will do that for me. That would save me from spending all my cash on building a sub-par pc. So with this in mind, what would be a good recommendation on a PCI SATA card? I did a quick search and it looks like they're generally under $50. Are they all about the same or is one brand and / or model better than another?
The difference is going to be the options they support. A basic one will just give you one or two SATA ports, and that's it. Then you can get extra SATA ports, faster SATA speeds (there is SATA1/2/3 now, going at 1.5G/3G/6G), additional PATA ports (the older ribbon cable style), eSATA (external enclosures), and then RAID levels add a whole new level of pain to them ranging from simple software support for striping and mirroring to advanced on-card controllers with dedicated cache RAM that can cost thousands of dollars.
Any simple one for ~$20 will let you plug in a new hard drive (assuming that nothing else on your motherboard is screwy) - you'll have to fidget with drivers to get Windows to boot with it (you'll need to install a driver during the installation process), but they will work. At that level, your more or less paying for the brand name and the availability and robustness of the driver.
Nevermind, it helps to read the whole message you're replying to.
"I used to think the worst thing in life was to be all alone. It's not. The worst thing in life is to end up with people who make you feel all alone." Robin Williams
If the only thing that is wrong with your current computer is that the HD died, you could just get a PCI SATA card and a new SATA hard drive and patch it right back up. Doing video editing you may even want to do some research into RAID arrays (for most people I advise against them, but they do make sense for video editing).
Then when GW2 does finally come out, you can save the rest of your money until then, look at what GW2 actually needs, and make a more informed decision about upgrading the rest of your computer at that time (and maybe have a few more dollars to do it with).
So with this in mind, what would be a good recommendation on a PCI SATA card? I did a quick search and it looks like they're generally under $50. Are they all about the same or is one brand and / or model better than another?
This is actually what I would recommend.
Since you have a Best Buy close by you could pick up a PCI SATAII adapter for $20 with a hard drive to go with it.
If you really want a 2TB hard drive you will have to make sure you are installing Windows XP with SP1 or later. Windows XP without SP1 will only recognize disks up to 128GB.
You may still need to partition the drive due to BIOS restrictions, but I'm not famaliar enough with PCI SATA adaptes to know if using one will get around BIOS hard drive detection limitations.
If you go with a Western Digital drive, do not get the Green series, they use a slower RPM drive which means slower access times to the hard drive. You want at least a 7200 RPM drive.
Hope this helps!
"There is as yet insufficient data for a meaningful answer."
I would save up a few hundred more $$.. if you do that, the performance you gain will be double at least, and last you for a few years. I mean crap, go snag up a credit card (I don't know your financial stand point) but just about anyone can get one with a 500-1000$$ limit. Buy a nice little set up, drop your 400$$ on the first months bill and chip the rest away over the next few months, problem solved...you have a nice little sally to game with and you just helped your credit score out "removes hat and does the jumping heel click"
*Corsair Obsidian Series 650D *i5-2500K OC'd ~ 4.5 *Asus P8Z68-V PRO/GEN3 mother board * Radeon HD 7970 *8GB (4GBx2) 1600MHz Kingston HyperX *240GB Corsair Force GT Series SATA-III SSD
If you go with a Western Digital drive, do not get the Green series, they use a slower RPM drive which means slower access times to the hard drive. You want at least a 7200 RPM drive.
Thanks for the tip. I've been looking at hard drives and model numbers on the net for the past couple of hours and I think I'm just getting more confused. I did some research on the caviar green series drive I bought yesterday and you're absolutely right, it turns out it's 5400 rpm. Here's what I'm confused on though: What matters more, RPM's, or the data transfer rate? Also what does cache mean on a hard drive? I'm seeing options all over the place. The one you linked has 7200 rpm, 32mb cache and 3gb/s transfer rate. I'm seeing others with 64mb cache and 6gb/s and still others with 32mb cache and 6gb/s. Those 3 numbers seem to be in every possible combination and the prices on the drives, even with the same combos of those numbers, seems to be all over the place.
I've only ever had 7200 rpm drives and I dont want my new drive to go any slower than what I'm used to. However I've also only had IDE drives, which means the max transfer rate I've ever had has been 130mb/s. Getting a drive with a 3gb/s transfer rate should be like jumping on an express train for me if I'm going from an average of 130mb/s to an average of 3gb/s (or even 6gb/s!)
Oh and one more thing that's confusing me: When I look at specs on some of these drives, such as two different web pages for the same model drive, on one I'll see it's got a 3gb/s transfer rate. On another I'll see it's got a 150mb/s external transfer rate. The only difference I'm seeing is one will say "transfer rate" and the other will say "external transfer rate." What's the difference?
Edit: So I've been doing a lot of reading on 7200 vs 5400 and 32mb vs 64mb and from what I've read from multiple sources I've come to the conclusion that unless you're just doing really ram intesnive stuff (like video editing) that there's really not a noticable difference between them. If anyone would care to refute that statement I would love to hear reasons for a contrary opinion.
Cache size will increase your burst rate (very small files), but it won't do much for sequential (very large files such as video editing). Cache is great, but it only goes so far.
Rotational speed has a lot to do with seek time and transfer speed: the faster the platters rotate, the faster the drive arms are able to get in the right position and the faster the platter spins under the read heads to pull the data off. Faster speed = faster all around drive. Rotational speed is probably the biggest factor in a traditional hard drive.
Max transfer speed basically deals with if the drive is SATA 1, SATA 2, or SATA 3. You can realistically ignore these, as none of these drives can saturate a SATA 2 link, or even come close to the SATA 3 data transfer speed. It's safe to just get SATA 3 card and hard drive so they match, but I wouldn't pay any extra money to do that over any comparable SATA 2 card and hard drive - there isn't going to be any real speed increase, but getting SATA 3 more or less lets you get a few more years out of it. I wouldn't get anything SATA 1 unless you just can't find a good deal on anything: it won't really be any slower, but SATA 2 is more or less ubiquitous by now, and SATA 3 has been out for about a year or so now and is gaining traction (especially among SSD drives).
Most computer tasks are lots of little files: your computer booting, loading up a word processor (they both access a bajillion DLL files), gaming (lots of texture files and mesh maps and such), etc. Video and large graphics editing are exceptions to the rule, because it deals with large sequential files, and not very many processes do that, but those that do can see large performance boosts from faster rotational speeds.
The difference between one 7200rpm drive and another 7200rpm drive is not going to be very much: from the slowest to the fastest is only on the order of a few percent. The same with the 5400 to any other 5400. Now compare any average 5400 to a 7200, and you can expect to see about a 33% increase across the board in speed.
Caviar Green drives are fine, they are very quiet and run cool, but they are very slow, and it has to do with their aggressive power saving: they go to sleep early, and when they wake up, they spin up very slowly (to conserve power). It can literally take something on the order of 30 seconds from the time the drive wakes from sleep until the hard drive actually gets up to speed and gets your file loaded on the computer. I have one in a computer and it drives me nuts when I have to use it. But its a huge drive (2T) for my media library, it's very quiet, it doesn't put off a lot of heat (this is in an iMac), so for that particular application, it works out ok. Once the drive is awake and spinning it's just as fast as any other hard drive (or at least, it's not noticeably slower), but when it has to wake up, it feels like an eternity.
Most people recommend Caviar Black drives for desktops where they are going to be working a bit: they have a bit better internals and provide a noticeable speed boost for not a lot of money.
If you do a lot of video editing, you may consider a 10k rpm drive (the WD Raptor line) - they are pricey, but for video editing you may get your money's worth out of it.
Thanks for the info, I appreciate it. I think for now I'm going to stick with the caviar green I bought and then when I save up the cash to build a new machine I'll just use it as a storage drive. It should be good enough to last as a primary hard drive on this old piece of junk for a few months, then I can start really shopping around for a decent hard drive for the new build.
Comments
I'd just watch Newegg.com during the week for their Shell Shocker deals, nearly every day they will have a a full system build on a deep discount at or below your $400.00
So with this in mind, what would be a good recommendation on a PCI SATA card? I did a quick search and it looks like they're generally under $50. Are they all about the same or is one brand and / or model better than another?
The difference is going to be the options they support. A basic one will just give you one or two SATA ports, and that's it. Then you can get extra SATA ports, faster SATA speeds (there is SATA1/2/3 now, going at 1.5G/3G/6G), additional PATA ports (the older ribbon cable style), eSATA (external enclosures), and then RAID levels add a whole new level of pain to them ranging from simple software support for striping and mirroring to advanced on-card controllers with dedicated cache RAM that can cost thousands of dollars.
Any simple one for ~$20 will let you plug in a new hard drive (assuming that nothing else on your motherboard is screwy) - you'll have to fidget with drivers to get Windows to boot with it (you'll need to install a driver during the installation process), but they will work. At that level, your more or less paying for the brand name and the availability and robustness of the driver.
Nevermind, it helps to read the whole message you're replying to.
This is actually what I would recommend.
Since you have a Best Buy close by you could pick up a PCI SATAII adapter for $20 with a hard drive to go with it.
If you really want a 2TB hard drive you will have to make sure you are installing Windows XP with SP1 or later. Windows XP without SP1 will only recognize disks up to 128GB.
You may still need to partition the drive due to BIOS restrictions, but I'm not famaliar enough with PCI SATA adaptes to know if using one will get around BIOS hard drive detection limitations.
If you go with a Western Digital drive, do not get the Green series, they use a slower RPM drive which means slower access times to the hard drive. You want at least a 7200 RPM drive.
Hope this helps!
"There is as yet insufficient data for a meaningful answer."
I would save up a few hundred more $$.. if you do that, the performance you gain will be double at least, and last you for a few years. I mean crap, go snag up a credit card (I don't know your financial stand point) but just about anyone can get one with a 500-1000$$ limit. Buy a nice little set up, drop your 400$$ on the first months bill and chip the rest away over the next few months, problem solved...you have a nice little sally to game with and you just helped your credit score out "removes hat and does the jumping heel click"
*Corsair Obsidian Series 650D *i5-2500K OC'd ~ 4.5
*Asus P8Z68-V PRO/GEN3 mother board
* Radeon HD 7970
*8GB (4GBx2) 1600MHz Kingston HyperX
*240GB Corsair Force GT Series SATA-III SSD
Thanks for the tip. I've been looking at hard drives and model numbers on the net for the past couple of hours and I think I'm just getting more confused. I did some research on the caviar green series drive I bought yesterday and you're absolutely right, it turns out it's 5400 rpm. Here's what I'm confused on though: What matters more, RPM's, or the data transfer rate? Also what does cache mean on a hard drive? I'm seeing options all over the place. The one you linked has 7200 rpm, 32mb cache and 3gb/s transfer rate. I'm seeing others with 64mb cache and 6gb/s and still others with 32mb cache and 6gb/s. Those 3 numbers seem to be in every possible combination and the prices on the drives, even with the same combos of those numbers, seems to be all over the place.
I've only ever had 7200 rpm drives and I dont want my new drive to go any slower than what I'm used to. However I've also only had IDE drives, which means the max transfer rate I've ever had has been 130mb/s. Getting a drive with a 3gb/s transfer rate should be like jumping on an express train for me if I'm going from an average of 130mb/s to an average of 3gb/s (or even 6gb/s!)
Oh and one more thing that's confusing me: When I look at specs on some of these drives, such as two different web pages for the same model drive, on one I'll see it's got a 3gb/s transfer rate. On another I'll see it's got a 150mb/s external transfer rate. The only difference I'm seeing is one will say "transfer rate" and the other will say "external transfer rate." What's the difference?
Edit: So I've been doing a lot of reading on 7200 vs 5400 and 32mb vs 64mb and from what I've read from multiple sources I've come to the conclusion that unless you're just doing really ram intesnive stuff (like video editing) that there's really not a noticable difference between them. If anyone would care to refute that statement I would love to hear reasons for a contrary opinion.
Cache size will increase your burst rate (very small files), but it won't do much for sequential (very large files such as video editing). Cache is great, but it only goes so far.
Rotational speed has a lot to do with seek time and transfer speed: the faster the platters rotate, the faster the drive arms are able to get in the right position and the faster the platter spins under the read heads to pull the data off. Faster speed = faster all around drive. Rotational speed is probably the biggest factor in a traditional hard drive.
Max transfer speed basically deals with if the drive is SATA 1, SATA 2, or SATA 3. You can realistically ignore these, as none of these drives can saturate a SATA 2 link, or even come close to the SATA 3 data transfer speed. It's safe to just get SATA 3 card and hard drive so they match, but I wouldn't pay any extra money to do that over any comparable SATA 2 card and hard drive - there isn't going to be any real speed increase, but getting SATA 3 more or less lets you get a few more years out of it. I wouldn't get anything SATA 1 unless you just can't find a good deal on anything: it won't really be any slower, but SATA 2 is more or less ubiquitous by now, and SATA 3 has been out for about a year or so now and is gaining traction (especially among SSD drives).
Most computer tasks are lots of little files: your computer booting, loading up a word processor (they both access a bajillion DLL files), gaming (lots of texture files and mesh maps and such), etc. Video and large graphics editing are exceptions to the rule, because it deals with large sequential files, and not very many processes do that, but those that do can see large performance boosts from faster rotational speeds.
The difference between one 7200rpm drive and another 7200rpm drive is not going to be very much: from the slowest to the fastest is only on the order of a few percent. The same with the 5400 to any other 5400. Now compare any average 5400 to a 7200, and you can expect to see about a 33% increase across the board in speed.
Caviar Green drives are fine, they are very quiet and run cool, but they are very slow, and it has to do with their aggressive power saving: they go to sleep early, and when they wake up, they spin up very slowly (to conserve power). It can literally take something on the order of 30 seconds from the time the drive wakes from sleep until the hard drive actually gets up to speed and gets your file loaded on the computer. I have one in a computer and it drives me nuts when I have to use it. But its a huge drive (2T) for my media library, it's very quiet, it doesn't put off a lot of heat (this is in an iMac), so for that particular application, it works out ok. Once the drive is awake and spinning it's just as fast as any other hard drive (or at least, it's not noticeably slower), but when it has to wake up, it feels like an eternity.
Most people recommend Caviar Black drives for desktops where they are going to be working a bit: they have a bit better internals and provide a noticeable speed boost for not a lot of money.
If you do a lot of video editing, you may consider a 10k rpm drive (the WD Raptor line) - they are pricey, but for video editing you may get your money's worth out of it.
Thanks for the info, I appreciate it. I think for now I'm going to stick with the caviar green I bought and then when I save up the cash to build a new machine I'll just use it as a storage drive. It should be good enough to last as a primary hard drive on this old piece of junk for a few months, then I can start really shopping around for a decent hard drive for the new build.