SATA HDD info

D.Roberts

D.Roberts

D.Roberts

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Hi all.

I am still trying to get ARMA 2 to run smooth and I really have narrowed it down to my HDD loading.

Its a known fact that ARMA streams a lot of info so needs a good drive.
Unfortunately I have no money and cant get a SSD.

So I have just fitted a diff SATA drive and ran a few test here are the results

Transfer rate

minimum = 14MB/s
Maximum = 55MB/s
Average = 43MB/s

Access time = 14.6ms
Burst rate = 53MB/s

is this crap even for today's SATA drives?.

Thanks
 
It's a 5+ year old drive, it's never going to be fast. The numbers sound fine for the era.

A modern SATA drive would be over twice. If the rest of your PC is the same age as the drive then it's the least of your problems...
 
Ok thanks all I see now that the drive tbh is crap.

I want to get an SSD but at the mo there lots oh moneys.

I will see if I have some more SATA drives around and see if I can rig them up in a raid 0 array to last me till I get a better drive.

EDIT

MagicBoy

Holy crap really its that old.

That would explain a lot oh well I would hope for a good speed boost (well at least a smoother gaming session in arma when I get a better drive).

p.S

Any one play arma2 and use to use a normal HDD then went to SSD? if so what was the difference like :)
 
MagicBoy said:
If the rest of your PC the same vintage as the HDD then an SSD is an epic waste of money...
Click to expand...

Hey mate nah the rest of my PC is ok well was :P

Asus striker extreme one
Q6700 @ clock speeds (will OC but temps at mo is a little high under load hitting 50c :O thats with a Titan fenrar)
ATI 4890 1gb @ clock speeds
4GB ram (in 1 gb sticks though this will hinder me OC probably)
 
Oh dear thought I would test this while I was at it.

I have a very very old pc (socket A) with an IDE HD.

Well I tested this and get about the same speeds as I do with me current so called gaming rig :( the IDE is on par with my SATA.

So the drive I am using in me gaming rig really must be a pile of crap.

That or me game pc has a problem I will check out the BIOS and see if some thing is a miss.

Any recommendations on what to check?.
 
Last edited:
It's not a pile of crap, it's just old.

SATA drives are not magically faster than IDE, it's just a different way of transmitting the same data. A lot of early SATA drives were existing IDE designs with a convertor chip to SATA installed. If the drive mechanism can't shift more than 55MB/sec then it doesn't matter what interface type you plug it into.

Modern drives are quicker - the couple of year old 500GB in my PC will do 120MB/sec+, but that's mainly due to increased platter density.
 
I got my Samsung F3 1TB drive brand new off the bay for £30, it's twice as fast as the 320GB drive I was using before and it made a massive difference to general use as well as gaming. :)
 
Hey mate.
Me bro did a test on his HD this was part of a pre built system from OCUK a year or so ago.

Well he gets ave 119mb/s so yeah his HD kicks my HD`s butt :P.

I am saving up :)
 
Yea I just recently purchased the 500Gb Samsung F3. Replaced an old 160Gb Seagate that was getting 70mb/s average on HDTune. The F3 is hitting around 135-140mb/s average.

At first it didn't feel like much of an improvement, but after Windows completes the initial indexing and after a couple of reboots, it feels pretty snappy!
 
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