HD replacement

[vovan]

I have 64bit XP Pro with 2 HD - 80GB, 7200 RPM. RAM - 16GB.
I'd like to replace my drives.
If I replace the first one with 150GB, 10000 RPM, and the second one with
1TB, 7200 RPM, will I get a better speed?
I've heared from somebody that the system works with the speed of the
slowest HD. Is it true?
If so, I need to replace the second HD with 10000 RPM too, but all of them I
saw have sizes not big enough for me.

Thank you
vovan

 

[S.SubZero]

Re: HD replacement

The faster hard drive will perform faster. It may be better to have
it on it's own channel.

 

[Tont Sperling]

Re: HD replacement

I agree, if you use an IDE Flatcable you probably will not notice any
significant difference. As you are almost certainly aiming for SATA, you
should have a potential performance benefit. Potential, because thinking in
terms of 'speed', may not be helpful - think of
'point-to-point-traveling-time' instead.

If you are having congestion on your current setup, a [faster] drive will
perform better - if you don't have any congestion, you will not see any
difference!


Tony. . .


"S.SubZero" <ssubzero@gmail.com> wrote in message
news:0a5e0d0f-6acb-495c-a1d1-78c36be61c75@d27g2000prf.googlegroups.com...
> The faster hard drive will perform faster. It may be better to have
> it on it's own channel.

 

[Carlos]

Re: HD replacement

Tony (or "Tont"?),
That would also depend on the mobo's hardware.
Are his ports SATA I or SATA II?
If they are SATA I then the benefits of going to 10,000 rpm HD's would
hardly make a difference.
Carlos

"Tont Sperling" wrote:

> I agree, if you use an IDE Flatcable you probably will not notice any
> significant difference. As you are almost certainly aiming for SATA, you
> should have a potential performance benefit. Potential, because thinking in
> terms of 'speed', may not be helpful - think of
> 'point-to-point-traveling-time' instead.
>
> If you are having congestion on your current setup, a [faster] drive will
> perform better - if you don't have any congestion, you will not see any
> difference!
>
>
> Tony. . .
>
>
> "S.SubZero" <ssubzero@gmail.com> wrote in message
> news:0a5e0d0f-6acb-495c-a1d1-78c36be61c75@d27g2000prf.googlegroups.com...
> > The faster hard drive will perform faster. It may be better to have
> > it on it's own channel.
>
>
>

 

[vovan]

Re: HD replacement

How about this part of my question:
I've heared from somebody that the system works with the speed of the
slowest HD. Is it true?

vovan


"vovan" <v@v.com> wrote in message
news:uqy1KxfPIHA.4196@TK2MSFTNGP04.phx.gbl...
>I have 64bit XP Pro with 2 HD - 80GB, 7200 RPM. RAM - 16GB.
> I'd like to replace my drives.
> If I replace the first one with 150GB, 10000 RPM, and the second one with
> 1TB, 7200 RPM, will I get a better speed?
> I've heared from somebody that the system works with the speed of the
> slowest HD. Is it true?
> If so, I need to replace the second HD with 10000 RPM too, but all of them
> I saw have sizes not big enough for me.
>
> Thank you
> vovan
>

 

[R. C. White]

Re: HD replacement

Hi, Vovan.

There are two speed factors to consider. The first is the speed of the
drive itself. You've already tackled that; your 10,000 RPM disk should
serve up reads and perform writes much faster than the 7200 RPM. Of course,
there are other specs to consider, but usually bigger and newer drives are
faster, too.

The other factor is getting the data to/from the drive - and that's where
the cabling matters.

For years, the standard PC configuration had 2 IDE (also known as ATA or
PATA - for parallel) channels, each with two connectors (dubbed Master and
Slave). If one channel had a fast drive and a slow drive on its connectors,
the speed of that channel might be limited to the slowest device on it.
This was most noticeable when a relatively slow optical (CD or DVD) drive
was added to the same channel as a fast hard drive. I'm not sure if that
restriction still applies.

Nowadays, most motherboards have multiple SATA (S for Serial) connectors,
and each connector serves only a single drive. So one SATA channel is not
affected by the speed of other channels. The first SATA channels could
handle 150 MB per second but nearly all SATA today is SATA II, which handles
300 MB/s. Your drives are probably both SATA II. But, even if it is SATA
I, it won't slow down your big, fast drive on the other SATA channel.

(My system now has 4 SATA II drives, each on its own dedicated cable, plus 2
DVD burners, each as master on one of the two IDE channels.)

Don't know whether you have IDE/PATA drives or SATA drives? Look at the
cables and connectors, especially the data cables. IDE uses the wide (well
over 1") flat ribbon cables with 40 or 88 wires. SATA has a narrow (about
1/2") data cable with only 7 wires. And most SATA drives also have a new
power cable connector, different from the familiar 4-wire connector still
used by most optical drives.

RC
--
R. C. White, CPA
San Marcos, TX
rc@grandecom.net
Microsoft Windows MVP
(Running Windows Live Mail 2008 in Vista Ultimate x64)

"vovan" <v@v.com> wrote in message
news:OYut9klPIHA.5524@TK2MSFTNGP05.phx.gbl...
> How about this part of my question:
> I've heared from somebody that the system works with the speed of the
> slowest HD. Is it true?
>
> vovan
>
>
> "vovan" <v@v.com> wrote in message
> news:uqy1KxfPIHA.4196@TK2MSFTNGP04.phx.gbl...
>>I have 64bit XP Pro with 2 HD - 80GB, 7200 RPM. RAM - 16GB.
>> I'd like to replace my drives.
>> If I replace the first one with 150GB, 10000 RPM, and the second one with
>> 1TB, 7200 RPM, will I get a better speed?
>> I've heared from somebody that the system works with the speed of the
>> slowest HD. Is it true?
>> If so, I need to replace the second HD with 10000 RPM too, but all of
>> them I saw have sizes not big enough for me.
>>
>> Thank you
>> vovan

 

[Juergen Kluth]

Re: HD replacement

Hi,
the talk about "slowest HD" means the interface / controller / (U)DMA mode.
Both the drives you suggest will offer UDMA 4 /5 /6 so the the lowest will
be set by your BIOS if both HDs are connected to one channel.
You are not bad consulted if you can connect each of the drives to a
seperate channel ( you then have two channels working)
You should avoid connecting the drive with your os on together with a cd dvd
drive (these often do only support UDMA 3 , so it will be "slowed"
jk

 

[vovan]

Re: HD replacement

Thanks a lot for such a detailed response.
My system is refurbished DELL Percision 490. Looks like a new PC.
Botyh existing HDs are Seagate Barracuda 7200.9, 80 GB. They are SATA, but I
do not know SATA I or SATA II.
In Device Manager I see 7 ATA Channels marked as ATA Channel 0, ATA Channel
0, ATA Channel 1, ATA Channel 1, ATA Channel 2, ATA Channel 3, ATA Channel 4
There are also Standard AHCI 1.0 Serial ATA Controller and Standard Dual
Channel PCI IDE Controller.

So, what can I expect from the replacement with for instance Western Digital
Raptor SATA 10000, 150 GB ?
And as I understood from your answer I can replace the second drive with
some 7200 RPM but with bigger size without affecting the speed of the first
drive. Right?

Thanks again

vovan


"R. C. White" <rc@grandecom.net> wrote in message
news:0CE288A3-6955-4C42-9B33-50C6AB8A043A@microsoft.com...
> Hi, Vovan.
>
> There are two speed factors to consider. The first is the speed of the
> drive itself. You've already tackled that; your 10,000 RPM disk should
> serve up reads and perform writes much faster than the 7200 RPM. Of
> course, there are other specs to consider, but usually bigger and newer
> drives are faster, too.
>
> The other factor is getting the data to/from the drive - and that's where
> the cabling matters.
>
> For years, the standard PC configuration had 2 IDE (also known as ATA or
> PATA - for parallel) channels, each with two connectors (dubbed Master and
> Slave). If one channel had a fast drive and a slow drive on its
> connectors, the speed of that channel might be limited to the slowest
> device on it. This was most noticeable when a relatively slow optical (CD
> or DVD) drive was added to the same channel as a fast hard drive. I'm not
> sure if that restriction still applies.
>
> Nowadays, most motherboards have multiple SATA (S for Serial) connectors,
> and each connector serves only a single drive. So one SATA channel is not
> affected by the speed of other channels. The first SATA channels could
> handle 150 MB per second but nearly all SATA today is SATA II, which
> handles 300 MB/s. Your drives are probably both SATA II. But, even if it
> is SATA I, it won't slow down your big, fast drive on the other SATA
> channel.
>
> (My system now has 4 SATA II drives, each on its own dedicated cable, plus
> 2 DVD burners, each as master on one of the two IDE channels.)
>
> Don't know whether you have IDE/PATA drives or SATA drives? Look at the
> cables and connectors, especially the data cables. IDE uses the wide
> (well over 1") flat ribbon cables with 40 or 88 wires. SATA has a narrow
> (about 1/2") data cable with only 7 wires. And most SATA drives also have
> a new power cable connector, different from the familiar 4-wire connector
> still used by most optical drives.
>
> RC
> --
> R. C. White, CPA
> San Marcos, TX
> rc@grandecom.net
> Microsoft Windows MVP
> (Running Windows Live Mail 2008 in Vista Ultimate x64)
>
> "vovan" <v@v.com> wrote in message
> news:OYut9klPIHA.5524@TK2MSFTNGP05.phx.gbl...
>> How about this part of my question:
>> I've heared from somebody that the system works with the speed of the
>> slowest HD. Is it true?
>>
>> vovan
>>
>>
>> "vovan" <v@v.com> wrote in message
>> news:uqy1KxfPIHA.4196@TK2MSFTNGP04.phx.gbl...
>>>I have 64bit XP Pro with 2 HD - 80GB, 7200 RPM. RAM - 16GB.
>>> I'd like to replace my drives.
>>> If I replace the first one with 150GB, 10000 RPM, and the second one
>>> with 1TB, 7200 RPM, will I get a better speed?
>>> I've heared from somebody that the system works with the speed of the
>>> slowest HD. Is it true?
>>> If so, I need to replace the second HD with 10000 RPM too, but all of
>>> them I saw have sizes not big enough for me.
>>>
>>> Thank you
>>> vovan
>

 

[Carlos]

Re: HD replacement

vovan,
Best place to check for the HD's is the manufacturer's site.
www.seagate.com
www.westerndigital.com
From what I read quickly (please do it by yourself) the Seagate unit is SATA
II and the Western Digital is SATA I
The Dell PC
(http://www.dell.com/content/products/productdetails.aspx/precn_490?c=us&cs=555&l=en&s=biz) supports SATA II and also RAID, for ultimate speed experience.

Carlos

"vovan" wrote:

> Thanks a lot for such a detailed response.
> My system is refurbished DELL Percision 490. Looks like a new PC.
> Botyh existing HDs are Seagate Barracuda 7200.9, 80 GB. They are SATA, but I
> do not know SATA I or SATA II.
> In Device Manager I see 7 ATA Channels marked as ATA Channel 0, ATA Channel
> 0, ATA Channel 1, ATA Channel 1, ATA Channel 2, ATA Channel 3, ATA Channel 4
> There are also Standard AHCI 1.0 Serial ATA Controller and Standard Dual
> Channel PCI IDE Controller.
>
> So, what can I expect from the replacement with for instance Western Digital
> Raptor SATA 10000, 150 GB ?
> And as I understood from your answer I can replace the second drive with
> some 7200 RPM but with bigger size without affecting the speed of the first
> drive. Right?
>
> Thanks again
>
> vovan
>
>
> "R. C. White" <rc@grandecom.net> wrote in message
> news:0CE288A3-6955-4C42-9B33-50C6AB8A043A@microsoft.com...
> > Hi, Vovan.
> >
> > There are two speed factors to consider. The first is the speed of the
> > drive itself. You've already tackled that; your 10,000 RPM disk should
> > serve up reads and perform writes much faster than the 7200 RPM. Of
> > course, there are other specs to consider, but usually bigger and newer
> > drives are faster, too.
> >
> > The other factor is getting the data to/from the drive - and that's where
> > the cabling matters.
> >
> > For years, the standard PC configuration had 2 IDE (also known as ATA or
> > PATA - for parallel) channels, each with two connectors (dubbed Master and
> > Slave). If one channel had a fast drive and a slow drive on its
> > connectors, the speed of that channel might be limited to the slowest
> > device on it. This was most noticeable when a relatively slow optical (CD
> > or DVD) drive was added to the same channel as a fast hard drive. I'm not
> > sure if that restriction still applies.
> >
> > Nowadays, most motherboards have multiple SATA (S for Serial) connectors,
> > and each connector serves only a single drive. So one SATA channel is not
> > affected by the speed of other channels. The first SATA channels could
> > handle 150 MB per second but nearly all SATA today is SATA II, which
> > handles 300 MB/s. Your drives are probably both SATA II. But, even if it
> > is SATA I, it won't slow down your big, fast drive on the other SATA
> > channel.
> >
> > (My system now has 4 SATA II drives, each on its own dedicated cable, plus
> > 2 DVD burners, each as master on one of the two IDE channels.)
> >
> > Don't know whether you have IDE/PATA drives or SATA drives? Look at the
> > cables and connectors, especially the data cables. IDE uses the wide
> > (well over 1") flat ribbon cables with 40 or 88 wires. SATA has a narrow
> > (about 1/2") data cable with only 7 wires. And most SATA drives also have
> > a new power cable connector, different from the familiar 4-wire connector
> > still used by most optical drives.
> >
> > RC
> > --
> > R. C. White, CPA
> > San Marcos, TX
> > rc@grandecom.net
> > Microsoft Windows MVP
> > (Running Windows Live Mail 2008 in Vista Ultimate x64)
> >
> > "vovan" <v@v.com> wrote in message
> > news:OYut9klPIHA.5524@TK2MSFTNGP05.phx.gbl...
> >> How about this part of my question:
> >> I've heared from somebody that the system works with the speed of the
> >> slowest HD. Is it true?
> >>
> >> vovan
> >>
> >>
> >> "vovan" <v@v.com> wrote in message
> >> news:uqy1KxfPIHA.4196@TK2MSFTNGP04.phx.gbl...
> >>>I have 64bit XP Pro with 2 HD - 80GB, 7200 RPM. RAM - 16GB.
> >>> I'd like to replace my drives.
> >>> If I replace the first one with 150GB, 10000 RPM, and the second one
> >>> with 1TB, 7200 RPM, will I get a better speed?
> >>> I've heared from somebody that the system works with the speed of the
> >>> slowest HD. Is it true?
> >>> If so, I need to replace the second HD with 10000 RPM too, but all of
> >>> them I saw have sizes not big enough for me.
> >>>
> >>> Thank you
> >>> vovan
> >
>
>
>

 

[R. C. White]

Re: HD replacement

Hi, Vovan.

I'm an accountant (and retired), not a techie of any kind. My comments are
based just on my own experience and a lot of reading, especially here in
these newsgroups. I've never had a Dell, so I'm not familiar with the 490's
specs.

My Device Manager shows 6 items under IDE ATA/ATAPI controllers. Also,
under Storage controllers it lists the Microsoft iSCSI Initiator (whatever
that is), an NVIDIA nForce RAID Controller and 3 nForce Serial ATA
Controllers (the 3rd one supports my 2-drive RAID).

It seems that ALL your hard disk drives are SATA, so each would be on a
separate cable and none of them should slow down the others at all. Carlos
thinks (both he and I urge you to read the specs for yourself) that the new
WD is SATA I, so it would be only half the potential speed of your SATA II
drives - but it would not slow down the SATA II drives because they are each
on their own connectors.

My understanding is that no hard drive today can read/write fast enough to
"overflow" even a SATA I connection, so the extra advertised speed is, for
now, "future-proofing" rather than a current advantage.

I would just be sure that all SATA II drives are on SATA II channels; no
need to risk a bottleneck if you don't have to. And that each optical drive
is on a separate IDE/ATA channel if available; again, no need to create a
bottleneck in transferring data from one to the other.

RC
--
R. C. White, CPA
San Marcos, TX
rc@grandecom.net
Microsoft Windows MVP
(Running Windows Live Mail 2008 in Vista Ultimate x64)

"vovan" <v@v.com> wrote in message
news:uMY9UInPIHA.4684@TK2MSFTNGP02.phx.gbl...
> Thanks a lot for such a detailed response.
> My system is refurbished DELL Percision 490. Looks like a new PC.
> Botyh existing HDs are Seagate Barracuda 7200.9, 80 GB. They are SATA, but
> I do not know SATA I or SATA II.
> In Device Manager I see 7 ATA Channels marked as ATA Channel 0, ATA
> Channel 0, ATA Channel 1, ATA Channel 1, ATA Channel 2, ATA Channel 3, ATA
> Channel 4
> There are also Standard AHCI 1.0 Serial ATA Controller and Standard Dual
> Channel PCI IDE Controller.
>
> So, what can I expect from the replacement with for instance Western
> Digital Raptor SATA 10000, 150 GB ?
> And as I understood from your answer I can replace the second drive with
> some 7200 RPM but with bigger size without affecting the speed of the
> first drive. Right?
>
> Thanks again
>
> vovan
>
>
> "R. C. White" <rc@grandecom.net> wrote in message
> news:0CE288A3-6955-4C42-9B33-50C6AB8A043A@microsoft.com...
>> Hi, Vovan.
>>
>> There are two speed factors to consider. The first is the speed of the
>> drive itself. You've already tackled that; your 10,000 RPM disk should
>> serve up reads and perform writes much faster than the 7200 RPM. Of
>> course, there are other specs to consider, but usually bigger and newer
>> drives are faster, too.
>>
>> The other factor is getting the data to/from the drive - and that's where
>> the cabling matters.
>>
>> For years, the standard PC configuration had 2 IDE (also known as ATA or
>> PATA - for parallel) channels, each with two connectors (dubbed Master
>> and Slave). If one channel had a fast drive and a slow drive on its
>> connectors, the speed of that channel might be limited to the slowest
>> device on it. This was most noticeable when a relatively slow optical (CD
>> or DVD) drive was added to the same channel as a fast hard drive. I'm
>> not sure if that restriction still applies.
>>
>> Nowadays, most motherboards have multiple SATA (S for Serial) connectors,
>> and each connector serves only a single drive. So one SATA channel is
>> not affected by the speed of other channels. The first SATA channels
>> could handle 150 MB per second but nearly all SATA today is SATA II,
>> which handles 300 MB/s. Your drives are probably both SATA II. But,
>> even if it is SATA I, it won't slow down your big, fast drive on the
>> other SATA channel.
>>
>> (My system now has 4 SATA II drives, each on its own dedicated cable,
>> plus 2 DVD burners, each as master on one of the two IDE channels.)
>>
>> Don't know whether you have IDE/PATA drives or SATA drives? Look at the
>> cables and connectors, especially the data cables. IDE uses the wide
>> (well over 1") flat ribbon cables with 40 or 88 wires. SATA has a narrow
>> (about 1/2") data cable with only 7 wires. And most SATA drives also
>> have a new power cable connector, different from the familiar 4-wire
>> connector still used by most optical drives.
>>
>> RC
>>
>> "vovan" <v@v.com> wrote in message
>> news:OYut9klPIHA.5524@TK2MSFTNGP05.phx.gbl...
>>> How about this part of my question:
>>> I've heared from somebody that the system works with the speed of the
>>> slowest HD. Is it true?
>>>
>>> vovan
>>>
>>>
>>> "vovan" <v@v.com> wrote in message
>>> news:uqy1KxfPIHA.4196@TK2MSFTNGP04.phx.gbl...
>>>>I have 64bit XP Pro with 2 HD - 80GB, 7200 RPM. RAM - 16GB.
>>>> I'd like to replace my drives.
>>>> If I replace the first one with 150GB, 10000 RPM, and the second one
>>>> with 1TB, 7200 RPM, will I get a better speed?
>>>> I've heared from somebody that the system works with the speed of the
>>>> slowest HD. Is it true?
>>>> If so, I need to replace the second HD with 10000 RPM too, but all of
>>>> them I saw have sizes not big enough for me.
>>>>
>>>> Thank you
>>>> vovan