Sata150 vs. Sata300

In the search for my new system I set many "standards" that I wanted in the system. SATA 3Gb/s was one of them. However, my favorite type of Hard Drive I like to use still hasn't released any native 3Gb/s sata drives.

To its own defense it releases a roadmap which hails the 3Gb/s host controllers but says that any SATA150 drive will perform as fast as any SATA300 would. Mainly because any ATA style 7200rpm hard drive maxes out at 60MB/s. Having 4 SATA150 drives on a 4-port SATA300 host in raid 0 would show speeds of 240MB/s.

Then of course you have the NCQ, where it says a single NCQ at 7200rpm will surpass any 10,000rpm disk without NCQ. But that still does me no good. There are no NCQ'd 10k rpm drives, and no SATA300 10k RPM drives. So are they just blowing hot air, or are they just really slow to produce?

The WD740 'Raptor' is a SATA150 HD that is 10,000 Rpm and has NCQ. Try looking into that.

VoodooPC says that the Seagate 7200.8 surpasses the 10k rpm WD. However WD says that their drive can do 72MB/s to the buffer. That and 74GB is rather small in size. I can get 3x the storage for $40 less. Is 12MB/s buffer speed really worth the extra money?

Depends what your priorities are. Want to get into a game fast? get a raptor, want to store loads of vids, get a big HD. Personally i would get a single raptor and then another large hard disk. The maxtor dimond max 10 hard disks are rather good, and also come with a generous 16mb of cache

the ONLY 7200 drive that i have ever seen come close to the WD 10K 74GB's is the Maxtor DiamondMax 10..

i have 4 of the WD 10K Raptors and they are a dream...

I vote Raptor....74GB is still a lot of space and if you ever need more you can always get another one down the road because a computer just aint a computer with out a 10k in it....lol...

now i want a 10k... i have dual 120gb SATA's... when i install my watercooling i will finally put them to use properly.

before the Raptors i used the Maxtor DiamondMax 10 (aka a 7200) and they did great but once you get a 10K you will wonder how you lived with out a 10k before....sounds corny but it is true...

It is good to have some big drives also because you don't want to "bog" down your 10k's with a bunch of non important files...

Pfft. 15k rpm SAS 'nuff said for performance but sounds like your on a flight deck.

sorry,what?

Serial Attached Scsi.

15,000 rpm drives

performance above and beyond

but LOUDER than hell. And if you've ever been on the flight deck of an air craft carrier when those jets are taking off - sounds exactly like those drives.

I think the fastest consumer drives now are the 500GB Hitachi Deskstars. I recently read an article in MaximumPC that said the Hitachi was faster than the DiamondMax 10 which is faster than the Raptor.

I just read the same article. 5 platters - real gutsy of them. sticking to a max of 100GB a platter.

Yup, add a 16MB cache and NCQ and you've got a real nice drive.

stick that in your ipod and smoke it@!

literally, i mean it...you will burn your ipod with that drive running in it, so long as you fit it in...

i want to make an mp3 player. that would be hot.