Hmmm very interesting news bite BUT it would have been useful to see which makes/model have good firmware/overall performance because as it states, they all look the same on paper.
Very interesting article, I didn't think that NCQ would actually be detrimental to my performance (when I get a system worth shouting about I hope I remember that)
On point of entirely flash based drives their relative speed/price/capacity will also have to out-do RAID setups, How long before Dell XPS (for example) has RAID as standard and you have to opt for a single disk
So it seems as ever RAID and defragmentation are the best way to have speedy HDD access and throughput.
I have a esata drive and quite frankly mobo manufacturers are crap at supporting it tbh. It really should just replace usb where it can, it's so nice to use in the OS
An interesting article, but I don't really feel any wiser should I need to select a new drive, or set of drives. I'll probably go for the lowest £ per Gb, maybe with a leaning towards Samsung because I like quiet, and hope for the best :)
I think a follow-on comparative review of a load of drives would be ideal.
I was actually just thinking about this. At the end of the article you say enthusiasts store information such as the O/S installation and other important things on a faster 10k RPM drive and other "stuff" on a slower drive.
I was thinking of a setup like this for my upgrade I'm planning since I have everything on a 40GB drive which obviously...is not enough seeing as game sizes are increasing. GTA itself was what 4GB? Company of Heoroes 4 or is it 5GB, that's a quarter of my harddrive that has disappeared.
Anyway to my original question. How exactly do I setup my harddrive storage. What do I store on the faster drive and what on the slower.
Faster: OS
Slower: MP3's for when I'm listening while gaming it doesn't affect game harddrive access performance?
Movies *cough* pr0n.
Ah apologies, I didn't realise the cable lengths were referring to eSATA and xSATA - it reads like it's saying external SATA supports a cable length of up to 2m and internal SATA supports up to 8 meters.
Great article, I agree though a 2nd part looking at drive performance based on these technologies would be very useful, in particular drive speed and platter size.
This article is misnamed. It has a good overview of advanced hard drive technologies that can be hard to decipher if you are a novice, but is by no means an Introduction to Hard Drive Technology. It's also not up to par in the editing department (when compared to other Bit-Tech articles). I suggest another revision for the editing, and renaming the article.
For an introduction to hard drive technologies, I would expect terms such as IDE, PATA, SATA, ATA, ATA133, ATA100, SCSI, buffer, cache, RPM, response time, RAID (and 0, 1, 2, etc.), and Raptor to be quickly defined with user friendly descriptions. This would be a great article for Bit-Tech.net, as many users have no clue when it comes to hard drives and how their performance can affect every day tasks.
I usually don't comment on the articles, as they are 99% excellent, but my nerd-heart skipped a beat when I saw the hard drive article, and I expected to read up and be familiar with all the techie terms for hard drives afterwards - and it didn't deliver. Keep up the good work, though - this article just needs to be renamed and re-edited.
IDE's heading off into the world; with more and more "enthusiast" setups throwing it to the dogs, you'd have to have a sod's brain to bother buying drives on it new.
Originally Posted by Tulatin IDE's heading off into the world; with more and more "enthusiast" setups throwing it to the dogs, you'd have to have a sod's brain to bother buying drives on it new.
I just built a couple of HD video recorders, to deal with uncompressed 1080p25 video recording. The required rates are around the 200Mbyte/sec mark, which sounds scary.
Then you put six Seagate 750Gb 7200.10 disks on a single SATA RAID controller, stripe them all together in RAID-0, and you suddenly have a two and a half terabyte disk that goes at 430 megs a second.
Modern hard drive technology is, and I believe this is the correct expression, "for the win."
I'm looking forward to your RAID article as well, as this opening salvo on storage technology is somewhat of a tease--there, I said it...it offers up lots of possible directions for future reading, and brings some of the people not-in-the-know closer to understanding what's in hand.
Suffice to say, I agree there are so many factors which define a drive's performance, but equally important is what that drive is connected to. One could have the most powerful engine in the world, but it does little good if it's plugged into a Mini with the skinniest tires and the most horrible suspension.
There was an article by another site, which gave me a direction to pursue higher storage performance, but it seems dated, as there isn't a reference to the SAS drives nor any controllers that allow SAS and SATA to be in the same box.
Your site and articles are of a higher caliber and quality than so many other stops on the 'net. Keep up the good work, and again, I look forward to your future articles.
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Also, can NCQ actually be turned off?
On point of entirely flash based drives their relative speed/price/capacity will also have to out-do RAID setups, How long before Dell XPS (for example) has RAID as standard and you have to opt for a single disk
So it seems as ever RAID and defragmentation are the best way to have speedy HDD access and throughput.
Aren't those cable lengths the wrong way round?
I think a follow-on comparative review of a load of drives would be ideal.
I was thinking of a setup like this for my upgrade I'm planning since I have everything on a 40GB drive which obviously...is not enough seeing as game sizes are increasing. GTA itself was what 4GB? Company of Heoroes 4 or is it 5GB, that's a quarter of my harddrive that has disappeared.
Anyway to my original question. How exactly do I setup my harddrive storage. What do I store on the faster drive and what on the slower.
Faster: OS
Slower: MP3's for when I'm listening while gaming it doesn't affect game harddrive access performance?
Movies *cough* pr0n.
Any suggestions? thanks
Not really. It says "an introduction to hard drive technology". Not "hard drive performance round up". ;)
I think you lot are getting too used to reviews with lots of numbers rather than just informative discussions :P
Ah apologies, I didn't realise the cable lengths were referring to eSATA and xSATA - it reads like it's saying external SATA supports a cable length of up to 2m and internal SATA supports up to 8 meters.
I'd love to see a feature on Raid as well.
For an introduction to hard drive technologies, I would expect terms such as IDE, PATA, SATA, ATA, ATA133, ATA100, SCSI, buffer, cache, RPM, response time, RAID (and 0, 1, 2, etc.), and Raptor to be quickly defined with user friendly descriptions. This would be a great article for Bit-Tech.net, as many users have no clue when it comes to hard drives and how their performance can affect every day tasks.
I usually don't comment on the articles, as they are 99% excellent, but my nerd-heart skipped a beat when I saw the hard drive article, and I expected to read up and be familiar with all the techie terms for hard drives afterwards - and it didn't deliver. Keep up the good work, though - this article just needs to be renamed and re-edited.
Or an XBOX/older hardware as a NAS.
Good work!
Then you put six Seagate 750Gb 7200.10 disks on a single SATA RAID controller, stripe them all together in RAID-0, and you suddenly have a two and a half terabyte disk that goes at 430 megs a second.
Modern hard drive technology is, and I believe this is the correct expression, "for the win."
Phil
I'm looking forward to your RAID article as well, as this opening salvo on storage technology is somewhat of a tease--there, I said it...it offers up lots of possible directions for future reading, and brings some of the people not-in-the-know closer to understanding what's in hand.
Suffice to say, I agree there are so many factors which define a drive's performance, but equally important is what that drive is connected to. One could have the most powerful engine in the world, but it does little good if it's plugged into a Mini with the skinniest tires and the most horrible suspension.
There was an article by another site, which gave me a direction to pursue higher storage performance, but it seems dated, as there isn't a reference to the SAS drives nor any controllers that allow SAS and SATA to be in the same box.
Your site and articles are of a higher caliber and quality than so many other stops on the 'net. Keep up the good work, and again, I look forward to your future articles.
Without being pushy, any date to look out for?
Cheers.
Just I'm building three new high-end systems soon and don't know whether to Raid 0 some Raptors...