Ok, I just read the Jan 2007 article comparing a few models from the major brands.
In their "system drive" category the listed the WD1600AAJS - a single-platter, 7200rpm 160g drive - as one of the 'fastest'. They praised its data transfer rate for being almost as good as a raptor. They also liked it's low heat dissapation.
Then later on, in the benchmarks section, this drive was way down in the bottom half of the "Windows boot speed" benchmarks, measured - get this - in mb/s. So what use is a great STR if Windows (and by inference, games and apps) don't get a real-world decent loading speed? Is this more dependent on access time? There it was not nearly as good as other models.
So it got me thinking, why are they touting this as a good OS drive? Do games under Windows care more about access time, STR or some other indicator?
In their "system drive" category the listed the WD1600AAJS - a single-platter, 7200rpm 160g drive - as one of the 'fastest'. They praised its data transfer rate for being almost as good as a raptor. They also liked it's low heat dissapation.
Then later on, in the benchmarks section, this drive was way down in the bottom half of the "Windows boot speed" benchmarks, measured - get this - in mb/s. So what use is a great STR if Windows (and by inference, games and apps) don't get a real-world decent loading speed? Is this more dependent on access time? There it was not nearly as good as other models.
So it got me thinking, why are they touting this as a good OS drive? Do games under Windows care more about access time, STR or some other indicator?