Upgrade or not?

arc@css · 13 Dec 2008 at 11:21

Hi, I've recently spent a load of wedge upgrading my system and there is little left to do. I have, as my sig reads, a five year old Seagate Barracuda 120gb sata drive. I was thinking of getting one or possibly two Western Digital Velociraptors in raid 0 config but then I thought, is it really worth it? I don't mind waiting a few extra minutes for things to install etc. The only real worthwhile reason to upgrade that I can think of is that my current drive it five years old, how long do they tend to last? I have little backed up apart from some word documents which are only on a memory stick. Opinions please

hp7909 · 13 Dec 2008 at 11:43

Newer hard disks are very much faster. Just have a look here

500GB, recommend the Samsung F1

arc@css · 13 Dec 2008 at 11:56

I would have thought that what makes the Samsung F1's faster is the 32mb cache, apart from that I'd say very similar in spec to mine. Cheers for reply though.

hp7909 · 13 Dec 2008 at 13:14

Yes more cache, but talking several other major advances the biggest being, Perpendicular recording technology.

arc@css · 13 Dec 2008 at 13:17

Ok cheers.

reflux · 13 Dec 2008 at 13:21

Hard disks haven't really evolved hugely in the past few years...indeed, apparently in the past fifty years, the average computer has increased in speed tens of thousands of times, but the hard disk is only about five times faster :eek:

It's still probably worth buying a new disk though as they're cheap as chips these days. Not to mention, it should be a little faster than what you've got, but whether you'll notice it or not I'm not sure. I went from a 500GB Samsung to a 300GB VelociRaptor and to be honest I don't think it was worth it.

arc@css · 13 Dec 2008 at 15:30

Cheers Reflux, the only thing, really, atm is whether or not what I've currently have will conk out anytime soon. Touchwood...so far its been fine. I'll think I'll get my monitor and call it a day. I guess I'll read a few more replies and have a think about it.

Yamahahahahaha · 13 Dec 2008 at 15:37

I just installed a new Samsung Spinpoint F1.

It's ridiculous.
It's more than 50% faster than my Seagate 7200.10 whilst being astronomically quieter.
Can't recommend it enough.

arc@css · 13 Dec 2008 at 15:50

Nice 1. I've been looking at the Seagate drives. I like the look of the 15000rpm 146gb, 3.4 ms seek time.

I'll go and have a good look at the Samsung ones now too.