Will HDD Upgrade Yield Improvement?

alexgv1 · 24 Jun 2011 at 19:32

Hello all.

I currently have a 1TB Western Digital Caviar Green HDD running through SATA-2. It is the performance limiting factor in my current system by quite a mile, according to the Windows Performance Index.

I was thinking of upgrading to a 1TB WD Caviar Black (64MB cache) SATA-3 6Gb/s and using the old one to back up everything.

Does anybody think this will give a noticeable improvement in performance, such as decrease in loading times? My main uses are CAD, CFD, gaming, flight simulation.

Another friend advised me to wait for SSDs to become more affordable. Intel reckons SSDs will cost $1 per GB by 2012, but that is still a long way away from having a 1TB drive affordable to me. So is it worth spending £50 in the meantime for this upgrade to SATA-3?

Thanks in advance for your replies.

andy_mk3 · 24 Jun 2011 at 19:39

Firstly, don't jusdge anything by the windows performance index, its no use at all. 5.9 is the highest it will rate a mechanical drive too.

Personally I think it would be a waste of time upgrading your drive, the black isn't a huge amount faster than what you already have, you certainly wont see much of a difference, it's expensive for what it is too.

Another thing, SATA-3 doesn't make a blind bit of difference to mechanical drives as they don't even use up the bandwidth SATA-2 has to offer, it's just used as a marketing ploy more than anything.

SSD is the best option for speed. An 80-120GB drive can be had reasonably cheap now, which should be big enough to put your operating system and programs on to, leaving your 1TB drive for storage. Of course you can wait, SSD's are only going to get cheaper and bigger and faster. It jsut depends on how soon you want one, if like me, you can wait another year for much bigger drives to be on the market then it's certainly worth waiting for.

alexgv1 · 24 Jun 2011 at 20:13

Thanks for your response Andy, I think I will hold out for the larger SSD drives to come down in price in the next year or two. I assume it will be worth getting a SATA-3 SSD as opposed to SATA-2 when the time comes to purchase one?

Surveyor · 24 Jun 2011 at 21:45

alexgv1 said:
Thanks for your response Andy, I think I will hold out for the larger SSD drives to come down in price in the next year or two. I assume it will be worth getting a SATA-3 SSD as opposed to SATA-2 when the time comes to purchase one?

Yes, but you'll only see the benefit if your motherboard has a SATA3 port.

Admetos · 24 Jun 2011 at 22:24

I would not go to trouble of fitting a faster HDD.

What I would do is purchase one of the faster USB memory sticks and enable Readyboost (I'm presuming your running Windows 7 btw).

The readyboost will cache frequent HDD request access. It won't help boot times, but will help once windows / applications have loaded at least once.

This is my post about running readyboost on an SSD
http://forums.overclockers.co.uk/showthread.php?t=18262214&highlight=readyboost

At work I run readyboost on a Patriot 25mb/s USB stick and it works also, proven to myself timing Visual Studio compile times and just general increase in Windows/Application speed, again only once the system has got going.

alexgv1 · 24 Jun 2011 at 22:40

Thanks once again for the helpful responses.

Surveyor, good point. The thing that brought on this question is that I might be buying a new motherboard which has SATA-3 ports and I wanted to know how to make best use of them.

Jason, on my resource intensive applications, it is indeed the cache files which I need to improve the speed of so your idea of using an SSD for ReadyBoost (until they become cheap enough to use as boot drive) is very intriguing.

I think this thread has given me some answers and has helped me make my mind not to bother investing in a new HDD and wait for SSD. However, any more opinions/inputs are welcome.

If I could urge you guys to read my other thread in the motherboard section I would be most appreciative.

MSi X58 Pro-E Replacement

AbsenceJam · 25 Jun 2011 at 02:57

Moving to a 7200rpm will make things seem a little quicker, though I'd suggest the much cheaper Samsung F3 myself.

Actually, I would recommend an SSD first off. You don't need a 1TB one, you just need enough space for your OS and applications because those are what benefit. It's a huge upgrade to your user experience.