Computer Upgrades

[CART Rulz]

Well guys once again I am drawn to your computer expertise. I have been looking at computer upgrades, and I have a question. What would be better, a faster processor or a faster harddrive? I was thinking that I already have a 2.6Ghz processor, which isnt the fastest but it certainly isnt slow. However my hard drive is a 5400rpm and its 120GB, so its a bit sluggish. I was thinking of keeping my existing one for storage purposes and then getting like a 36GB 10,000 rpm drive and just install my games on it. Is this possible? I have heard of Raptor hard drives and RAID 0 and RAID 1, but I don't know what that means and that requires 2 drives correct? Still, I wouldnt mind getting 2, 10,000prm drives as that is about the same price as a new processor and motherboard. Also, I don't have a Windows XP disk but I have a system restore disk that I recently used to "quickrestore" the computer. Is that enough to install XP on the additional drives? Would I just select those drives and format them?

Thanks for you help, I don't know what I'd do without you .

CART

[CART Rulz]

I've also heard about ATA and SATA connections, what does that mean? Is that determined by the motherboard? I think I connect through IDE. If I remember correctly when I was assembling the computer in the new case I saw IDE 1 and 2 on the motherboard, and the cable connections are really wide. Does this mean that if I buy new drives I'll also need a new motherboard?

I just did some looking on newegg and found a SATA Western digital Raptor 36.7 10,000prm for $109, is that a good purchase?

Thanks again,

CART

[aawil]

I think SATA are the new faster style. Mine's IDE as well. My motherboard doesn't have SATA but I would assume the newer ones do. ATA I don't know anything about.

[Steve]

your motherboard has to support sata drives Cart, mine does, but i got such a great deal on my twin 80 gig Western digitals, i couldn't pass it up. A 7200 rpm drive would be better, but it wouldn't make your system seem like a ferrari compared to a pinto, lol You'll have to ask Carrera or Bilbo about raid, i'm not too familiar with it Sata drives are better in that they transfer data faster than ATA drives < which is what you and i have > the fastest ATA drive as far as i know has a transfer rate of 133 mb/sec, where a sata drive is at least 150 mb/sec if i remember correctly

[Ruben Miranda]

Hello Guys
Upgrading your hard drive.
Will it make my Comp/Gaming faster not nessarly Your comp will be smoother your games will load faster but.
It has been my experience that you will not even notice the difference once the app/game is running.
2.6 G is in noway allow and you should be able to run anything on this plant right now. The hard-drive in itself stores it but then the processor & Memory & the V/Card take over.
? How much Memory do you have
? What kind of V/Card do you have

Depending on your answer on the above ?
I would get a faster Hard drive just for Win/XP make this the Master
Make your existing Hard drive the Slave and put all your Apps and game on it.

My 2 cents worth
Hitman

[Bilbo]

I'm not much up to speed on current hardware because I'm still stuck with my "old" computer and can't change it before next summer at least. Please forgive me for not going into the details...

First, ATA, IDE and PATA are all different words for (pretty much) the same thing. SATA is the new game in town and there are adaptors that permit connecting one format to the other (foregoing any performance gain though).

The effect of RAID is very dependent on how you use your computer. RAID 0 (Striping) is what you want to go faster. You need two HD and your disk access performance will increase anything from -30% to 100% depending on a few variables. I have been running a couple of HD in RAID 0 (via onboard RAID controller) and it is indeed roughly twice as fast when doing disk-intensive things like uncompressing CD images (all legally obtained, of course ). It does not, cosmically speaking, make a real "feelable" difference in everyday gaming though. Sure, loading levels in HL2 in 10 seconds instead of 20 is cool, but 10 seconds is still at least 9.5 too much and while being faster, that does not really change the experience (your game is still stopped for many long seconds).

RAID 1 or 5 are pretty much for safety purposes and RAID 10 (or 01 or 0+1 or 1+0) is usually not worth it (needs 4 HDs).

I personnally find the Raptors to be quite expensive for what they are. You could buy 2 new 7200 RPM 80GB HD and set them up in RAID 0 (if your motherboard has it or through a RAID PCI card) for pretty much the same price (no, I haven't done the math) and you would end up with comparable performance and much more disk space. Of course, if you're rich, you can always run the Raptors in RAID 0...

There are many articles on the web about the virtues of both RAID and/or the Raptor drives and opinions are very different from one to the other, so you should judge for yourself what they say about the advantages and shortcomings against how you plan to use your system...

Oh, I almost forgot to tell this important detail: RAID 0 is not to be used for sensitive data because if one of your RAID0-ed disks breaks, you CANNOT recover ANY data AT ALL from the surviving disk, i.e. once "bonded" together through RAID0, they can't "live" indepently from each other, meaning you will have lost ALL your data on the RAID 0 array.

[CART Rulz]

Yeah Bilbo if possible I would set up my existing 120GB 5400rpm drive as a standalone drive for storing important school files and such, and then use the Raptors in RAID 0 for the gaming aspect. Is that possible? Could I have one drive simply for storage and 2 RAID 0 drives for gaming?

And Hitman, I've got 1GB of PC3200 Dual Channel RAM and a Sapphire Radeon 9800 XT vid card.

Oh and Bilbo, I wish I was rich . I'm just a kid with some money to spend. Since I'm going to college next year my parents are letting me tap into all those savings bonds I have sitting in the bank that I've gotten over the years as birthday and Christmas presents. I'm also going to be taking this computer with me, and my only source of money will most likely be my parents, so now is the time to do some upgrades .So I'm looking to spend some money, and what better place than my computer .

CART

[Bilbo]

There is no problem mixing RAID and non-RAID as they usually are on different controllers. On my motherboard, I have the usual IDE1-2 connectors but I also have RAID1-2 connectors (which are just normal IDE connectors but managed by the RAID controller). There usually is an extra "screen" for the RAID setup/settings between the BIOS and the actual OS loading, just like some network cards have their own setup screen in the "boot sequence".

At one point, I had 3 "normal" IDE disks and my combo drive (CDRW/DVD-ROM) on the IDE controller and 2 other IDE HDs as a RAID 0 array. That's 5 HDs + 1 CD!

One thing, if you're going to setup a RAID array, make sure you split the HDs on different cables/connectors, i.e. make your 2 disks as Masters on different channels. The fact that they're on different cables helps make things faster.

[carrera]

Actually the only type of RAID I like is the "panty RAID"and i don't like that to be sped up to much as it is enjoyable as all hell.Especially when the girls are totally unaware that it is happening and you have a flash and a good camera like we had in camp that one summer..LOL...hehehe...
But back to the tech talk.RAID basically runs like dual channel ram.It can double the loading speed of your games but as hitman said.The vid card and your processor do the work.Using dual channel as in the radeon 9800 pros for example...brings the memory speed up to 680 mhz i believe.and using raid 0 wil load your games faster.But as Bilbo said.When one hard drive gives up you lose everything on both drives.It is a bit risky.You also have to use indentical drives and hope if one calves...you can get another one just like it.I'm not to worried about loading speed as long as the gameplay is fast.Also don't get to bent out of shape on the new pci express...4x agp and 8x agp really didn't make that much of a jump in performance like they hoped.I run 2 9800 pros .one on a 4x agp board and one all in wonder on this 8x agp board.The actual difference is maybe..10% max...and thats it...so don't be in to much of a hurry to spend money on major upgrades to only gain 10%...its better to just wait till the price goes down unless you are a real diehard and can't wait.
All this hype about 4x agp 8x agp ,pci express(16xagp) is not all its cracked up to be.there is always a bottleneck somewhere to hold it back .
carrera

[Ruben Miranda]

Hello
Your Comp as it stands
2.6 Processer
1 gig of ram
9800XT Vid-card
Hard drive 120 G 5200 rpm
This is already a very nice setup and as it has already been stated a faster hard drive will not make it faster well not to the extent that you will even notice. If speed is the reason for the upgrade then you will be disapointed but if you need the room (More space) then it makes more sence.

I don't know if you already do this but.
If your Comp is running like a Slug at times. You might need to do some home maintenence.
Check to see if there is unwanted app's running in the back ground. Since you just installed off a restore disk sometimes this installs apps that run use up services and do not do anything of any good.

Do a disk check for any lost or damaged files and repair.

Defrag your hard drive fully If you don't do this reguarly the first time will take a few hours.

Keeping an eye on things a this nature will help your comp run smoother.

You also asked (And I did not see the anwser) if you could install XP on a new hard drive off a restore disk. And I do not think you can. What is on a restore disk are only sertain priority files that your comp needs to run.
A mirror image. That is why you had to reinstall any games or apps that were installed after you got the comp.

Hitman

Ohh