OS drive with least amount of "lag"

squiffy

squiffy

squiffy

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What's the best method of using a OS drive with least amount of HD lag, usually my system pauses, I can tell it's the OS drive. Plenty of RAM, so that's not the issue.

What about the new solid state hard drives? Are they faster than Raptors?

I'm using a Western Digital 7200RPM PATA HD for OS.
 
solid state is way too expensive atm. go raptors. I've just gone to 2 74gb rappies in RAID 0 and vista flies
 
Raptor - pah! Scsi for the win - I'll take my 3ms seek times and 15k spindle speed everytime! :D

Seriously though - considering you can get 2x500Gb seagate 7200.10s for the same price, and the speed difference is negligible... I know what I'd get ;)

EDIT: 'Lag'? Is that pausing for no apparent reason while doing stuff on the desktop? Spin your mouse around the desktop several times, does it 'lag/jump' - if so it's not your hdd's - you need to reset the ESDM (sp?) in the bios - refreshes the irq etc and removes conflicts that often lead to lag - that system shouldn't suffer from it.
 
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EDIT: 'Lag'? Is that pausing for no apparent reason while doing stuff on the desktop? Spin your mouse around the desktop several times, does it 'lag/jump' - if so it's not your hdd's - you need to reset the ESDM (sp?) in the bios - refreshes the irq etc and removes conflicts that often lead to lag - that system shouldn't suffer from it.
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Don't think it's that, just when under heavy load (even though not really doing that much) Windows seems to slow down.

I've placed the swap file on another drive, games are on another so I'll see how that effects it.
 
Olly said:
and your astronomical £££ per gigabyte too
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Actually - if you know where to get them they're considerably cheaper than Raptors :D It's just the controller card that hurts ;) (Actually - since I've now got 10 Drives the cost of the card is easily absorbed in the purchase price of the drives so.... Cheaper and faster than Raptors!) - Raptors - Pah! :D
 
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cool, I had a brief fling with scsi once, paid 300 quid for a 147gb disk. never again. But I dont doubt that they are the best in term of speed, I just think the raptors offer a good price/performance balance.

I definately noticed an improvement over 7200 drives.
 
squiffy said:
Already have a Adaptec 2940U (50 pin Ultra SCSI) guess SATA is now faster/less overhead?
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Yeah - Ultra was only 20mb/s, so even laptop drives will out perform that at 5400. IRam is still an interesting choice, but a bit on the expensive side, and it looks like its successor has been binned so you can't even take advantage of the Cheap DDR-2 prices :(

I still want to go Vista 64 with 8Gb or Ram:
2Gb = Memory for the system
2Gb = RamDrive for Pagefile
4Gb = Games drive

:eek:
 
Yeah spotted IRAM, with 4GB max have to limit what's on there, initial install but any other progs will have to be insatlled on another drive. My Windows directory is 1.7GB

So how much will a Iram cost? I guess 2GB RAM should be ok, just cut down windows a bit with XP Lite. iram sounds a bit rude :p
I RAM!

hmm £100 for 8GB Samsung solid state..
 
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Seen them for about £72ish, ooo - just found you can get 2x1Gb for around £50 now - mmmmmm - tempting! - £172 for the full thing! :p

They aren't blisteringly quick at the Sustained Read/Write:
sustained.jpg


But for random access: :eek:
usage.jpg


Would make an awesome swap file!
 
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Noticed it has 12 hour battery backup, does that mean it must be switched on 24/7, or with it switched off (but connected to mains, mobo LED is on) it won't lose the data?
 
cavemanoc said:
Just connected to the mains - but if you have a power cut for more than 12 hrs... :(
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Right-o, the latter isn't a problem...UPS :p very very unlikely power outage for 12 hours, I guess could shut off everything so UPS should provide the "off but mobo power" for a few days.
 
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