Did I pick a slow hard drive?

T

Trio

New Member
So, since my build, I've always noticed my hard drive hasn't been as fast as I wished it would be. It's a lot faster than my older computer, but whenever I click on folders to see what's inside, it takes a second for the icons to pop up. I'd imagine I wouldn't have to wait for the icons to pop up at all. The same with the Welcome Center, it takes some time for the icons to pop up too. When I click on some folder, it pops up blank for at least a second then everything starts appearing.

I'm not sure if I just picked a slower hard drive, or maybe if this is just normal? It does happen durring start-up most of the time. Here are my hard drive specs:

Western Digital Caviar
Running Vista
500GB
16MB cache
Average seek time - 8.9ms
Average latency - 5.6ms
5400 to 7200 RPM

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822136149

Looked it up in my previous purchases, but it looks nothing like my current hard drive. The one I have has a cover. I was wondering, would it be a good idea to install Vista onto a faster hard drive, and use my WD Caviar as a slave to hold all my files? Or should I RAID? Thanks in advance for answering.
 
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I used to have one of these, they're great drives. Mine is never really noticeably slow. Although how they can slow down to 5400 RPM sometimes is weird.

Trio said:
The one I have has a cover. I was wondering, would it be a good idea to install Vista onto a faster hard drive, and use my WD Caviar as a slave to hold all my files? Or should I RAID? Thanks in advance for answering.
Click to expand...

That's going to give better performance, OS, most apps, and games on a fast hard drive, while using your large one for as a mule for all other data. Best of both worlds.
 
If you can, I'd suggest getting a faster drive, maybe even a Solid State drive, if you are only gonna use it for the OS.
However, it isn't a "terrible" idea to install Vista on that. But, if you got a pure 7200RPM drive, then there wouldn't be any load/shut down problems.
 
A Cheese Danish said:
If you can, I'd suggest getting a faster drive, maybe even a Solid State drive, if you are only gonna use it for the OS.
However, it isn't a "terrible" idea to install Vista on that. But, if you got a pure 7200RPM drive, then there wouldn't be any load/shut down problems.
Click to expand...

Yea, my hard drive does take a while to load. It'll stay on a blank (black screen) for at least 7 seconds before the Vista logo pops up.

I'm not sure if my motherboard can use solid state drives? Do they use SATA too? I don't know much about them. Aren't they insanely expensive? Like around the hundreds? I have a bit of a budget for the hard drive, if I do plan to get one, since I'm already going to buy a new CPU and stuff.



Tuffie said:
I used to have one of these, they're great drives. Mine is never really noticeably slow. Although how they can slow down to 5400 RPM sometimes is weird.

Quote:Originally Posted by Trio
The one I have has a cover. I was wondering, would it be a good idea to install Vista onto a faster hard drive, and use my WD Caviar as a slave to hold all my files? Or should I RAID? Thanks in advance for answering.

That's going to give better performance, OS, most apps, and games on a fast hard drive, while using your large one for as a mule for all other data. Best of both worlds.
Click to expand...

So set the Caviar as a slave and get a faster hard drive for the OS? Would I still notice a slow down when accessing files in the Caviar? What are the specs of todays faster hard drives?
 
Trio said:
Would I still notice a slow down when accessing files in the Caviar?
Click to expand...

Not anymore then your currently seeing, btw I forgot to ask, have you tried Defragging?

Trio said:
So set the Caviar as a slave and get a faster hard drive for the OS? Would I still notice a slow down when accessing files in the Caviar? What are the specs of todays faster hard drives?
Click to expand...

Man you could pick up a 15,000 RPM drive for under $200.

Heres one for example

Fujitsu MBA3147NP 147GB 15000 RPM SCSI Ultra320 68pin 3.5" Hard Drive - OEM

* Cache: 8MB
* Average Seek Time: 3.4ms
* Average Write Time: 3.9ms
* Average Latency: 2ms
Click to expand...
Which retails for $179.99!

You can find all the 15,000 RPM drives on newegg here

Likewise you can find all the 10,000 RPM drives on newegg here
 
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Tuffie said:
Not anymore then your currently seeing, btw I forgot to ask, have you tried Defragging?



Man you could pick up a 15,000 RPM drive for under $200.

Heres one for example


Which retails for $179.99!

You can find all the 15,000 RPM drives on newegg here

Likewise you can find all the 10,000 RPM drives on newegg here
Click to expand...
Aw man, I'll have to spend an extra $200 than, lol. I was hoping I could spend at least $70. Oh well, I guess. Do I have to uninstall Vista on the Caviar and install it onto the new hard drive?

Yea, I defragged last week with Auslogics. I have it set to defrag every sunday.
 
Trio said:
I'm not sure if my motherboard can use solid state drives? Do they use SATA too? I don't know much about them. Aren't they insanely expensive? Like around the hundreds? I have a bit of a budget for the hard drive, if I do plan to get one, since I'm already going to buy a new CPU and stuff.
Click to expand...
Yes they use SATA so you can use it. Yes they are expensive, but since you are on a budget, don't get one.

So set the Caviar as a slave and get a faster hard drive for the OS? Would I still notice a slow down when accessing files in the Caviar? What are the specs of todays faster hard drives?
Click to expand...
Yes set that one as slave and get another one. No, but depending on the file/folder size, it may take a little longer to open.
Hell, you could get 2 of the Caviar's and RAID them together and you got a faster array and don't have to spend more on a different drive.

Tuffie said:
Man you could pick up a 15,000 RPM drive for under $200.
Click to expand...
No he can't. Unless his computer is going to support SCSI, which is a HUGE investment...and meant mainly for servers.

Likewise you can find all the 10,000 RPM drives on newegg
Click to expand...
Yes, 10K RPM drives kick ass but are a bit costly. You should have another drive set up to use as your main data drive if you use one.
 
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You should have gotten a 32MB cache with the hard drive. You should not use raid, as that will not make any noticable difference on one computer. the higher RPM hard drives also are much noisier than a 7200 RPM hard drive and can get quite annoying.
 
I would suggest to stay away from SSD until Windows 7. There are SSD that will
read/write slower than a 7200 RPM HDD. You should really do your research before
wasting a fortune on one.

What OS are you using? Slow icons - sounds like Vista... Your system might be
creating a system restore point every time it starts. Change it from once a day
to once a month.
 
anand_chauhan said:
In my opinion You must perform some basic techniques provided in Xp itself.
Click to expand...
Huh?


Marcin said:
I would suggest to stay away from SSD until Windows 7. There are SSD that will
read/write slower than a 7200 RPM HDD. You should really do your research before
wasting a fortune on one.

What OS are you using? Slow icons - sounds like Vista... Your system might be
creating a system restore point every time it starts. Change it from once a day
to once a month.
Click to expand...
Really? Thanks for letting me know. And yea, I'm using Vista. Creating a system restore everytime it boots up? How do I change that?

Well, I was giving some thought to it, and I think I might postpone buying a heatsink for my GTS 250 and just OC it as it is (I have to check if EVGA cards still have warranty after OCing first) and buy a faster hard drive. So, do I have to uninstall Vista on the Caviar and install Vista onto the new HD? What would happen if the newer HD gets filled? I'll see a decrease in speed?
 
Trio said:
I did some research, and I do have to uninstall Vista. But I won't know what'll happen to my files then. I guess I have to partition the Caviar and store the files there?
Click to expand...

You won't have to reinstall Vista on the new drive. You can get a HDD imaging program and just image your current drive to the new one. Can someone suggest a good program for the OP to use. This isn't something I've done before but know that it can be done.
 
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Well before we start making other purchases, how about we try to see if there isn't anything wrong with the drive itself.

In Vista:
go to Start Menu
Right click Computer
click Properties
on the left click Advanced System Settings
go to the Hardware tab
click Device Manager
open up "Disk Drive" right click your hard drive and click properties
Under the "Policies" tab, make sure the two things there are checked.
0,1425,i=170976,00.jpg


now hit OK to go back to the Device Manager window.
open up "IDE ATA/ATAPI Controllers"
There are going to be multiple things in this:
double click each one and go to the "Advanced Settings" tab
make sure whatever is in the box is set to "Ultra DMA mode"
if there is something that does not say Ultra DMA mode then post it here and I will tell you how to fix it. If it is not in UDMA, it will say PIO mode, which is bad.
 
Just wondering, but where did you learn this stuff? Lol.

Well, I clicked the Enable advance performance tab under the HDD. There are two ATA channels (what are they?), 0 and another 0, 1 and another 1. The second 0 has Ultra DMA Mode 5, and a checked tab that says enable DMA, and the second 1 has Ultra DMA Mode 6, and a checked tab that says enable DMA.
 
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Well as long as they are in UDMA, it is fine. After checking the advanced performance boxes, make sure to restart your computer.
 
I wanted to add something that hasn't had me concerned until just a second ago when I booted my computer. My hd's making noises on boot up. Not sure if this is normal or not.
 
What kind of noise?
If it is humming, it is normal, there is a spinning disk inside of it making the noise.
If it is "grinding", this usually happens to most drives when reading a lot of data, some are more quiet than others. If the grinding is loud, there may be a problem.
If it is clicking.....that's bad.
 
gamerman4 said:
What kind of noise?
If it is humming, it is normal, there is a spinning disk inside of it making the noise.
If it is "grinding", this usually happens to most drives when reading a lot of data, some are more quiet than others. If the grinding is loud, there may be a problem.
If it is clicking.....that's bad.
Click to expand...
Yea, it's humming. Alright, thanks a lot gamerman. I was wondering if anyone knows the seek/latency times for the WD Raptor I posted? Will I notice a big change between the Raptor and my Caviar? My Caviar has a latency time of 5.6ms and seek time of 8.9ms

**Did a google search and I found another Raptor on newegg. It isn't the same model, but this one tells the speed, and it seems pretty good. Average write time 5.2ms, average read time 4.6ms and average latency 2.99ms, but the bandwidth is 1.5gb/s. Which should I get?

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16822136364

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822136033
 
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Bob692006 said:
You won't have to reinstall Vista on the new drive. You can get a HDD imaging program and just image your current drive to the new one. Can someone suggest a good program for the OP to use. This isn't something I've done before but know that it can be done.
Click to expand...
Can I use command prompt for that? I can use the move command and move every file into the new hard drive? like move *\D: ?
 
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