10,000 Rpms?

donrc · Joined: Feb 16, 2003 Posts: 876

Guys and Girls,

My wife wants to buy me a new hard drive for Christmas. I've been looking at the Seagate 10,000RPM 120GB drive.

First has anyone tried them? Any comments. Also will this drive work with a normal motherboard hard drive connector or does it require a controller card ? My motherboard is an Asus P4PE.

drc Razz

usasma · Joined: May 06, 2003 Posts: 5007

If the Seagate is an IDE drive it should work with the P4PE mobo.

If it's a SATA drive you'll have to inspect the motherboard. I bought a 10k W-D Raptor for my P4PE mobo based on what I read in the manual. When the drive showed up and I looked at the motherboard there weren't any SATA connectors. I think that the SATA is an optional component - I've got blank spaces on the P4PE where the connectors should be. The choice between a new controller and a new mobo was hard, but the new mobo won out in my case.

I've only had 2 minor problems with my SATA 10K. First was that Windows insisted on me having the SATA drivers available when installing XP. The real pain was when Windows wouldn't let me install them (by pressing F6 in the dialog). That fixed itself later on when Windows asked for the SATA driver floppy that I'd already made.

The other problem was that Windows refused to let me use it as my C:\ drive. Finally, I took my IDE drive out, installed the SATA drive, then booted up with the CD to install. All went well with that, and it didn't even hiccup when I reinstalled my IDE drive! BUT!!! Several weeks later I found that my system was booting off the IDE drive and then running Windows off the SATA drive (I still had my old copy of WinXP on the IDE drive - which couldn't boot because of the changes in hardware). I fixed in in my BIOS by disabling the IDE from the boot menu.

Rons · Joined: Dec 07, 2002 Posts: 5667

And the new 5 year warranty is a nice touch from Seagate.

http://www.seagate.com/cda/newsinfo/newsro...21,2499,00.html

Smile

ejward · Joined: Jan 06, 2003 Posts: 7054

I'v used 10K RPM Seagate SCSI drives for years in servers. The high speed doesn't cause them to self destruct if that is what you're worried about.

falliston · Posted: Wed Dec 01, 2004 10:12 pm Post subject:

The true advantage of faster drives is throughput; how much they can read and write per second on average. The SATA drives are gennerally faster than the IDE/ATA drives, but look around to see if the 10k's are really faster than the 7200s.

Why pay a premium price for something that may only be 8-10% faster?

donrc · Joined: Feb 16, 2003 Posts: 876

OK here's what I found out : my P4PE board does not have the connectors or the controller chip. That means a controller card. Not too expensive, $16 to $18. The drive on price watch is less than a 7200rpm of the same size at best buy.

usama was the increase in speed worth the hassle you had with installing, cloning etc?

drc :blink:

goretsky · Posted: Fri Dec 03, 2004 3:30 am Post subject:

Hello,

One thing to keep in mind is that the faster-spinning hard disk drive may generate more heat than older, slower models.

You may want to consider installing the hard disk drive in a fan bay to ensure it receives adequate cooling.

Regards,

Aryeh Goretsky

donrc · Joined: Feb 16, 2003 Posts: 876

Thanks goretsky, I've almost decided that since this MB and processor is over two years old, and since the new 10,000 RPM drives are pretty new I may wait til I upgrade the MB and just do the hard drive at the same time.

There is not as much information on them as I would like. For instance, can they be used together with older IDE drives. What adapters and cables would be required to do so, etc. So I may wait.

Thanks to you all for the input.

drc

usasma · Joined: May 06, 2003 Posts: 5007

While I've got no objective results - it seems that the SATA is a tad bit faster than the IDE w/8 mB of cache (especially when moving files around on that drive). The installation of the drive wasn't difficult at all, it was installing Windows on it that took all the time! The SATA is my primary and the IDE is my secondary. The biggest problem is that Windows (or maybe it's my BIOS) thinks that the IDE should be the primary drive - it was quite a fight today when I tried to install the Ubuntu Linux, darned thing kept trying to boot off the IDE (when the boot info is on the SATA).

I didn't bother to clone, since my old XP install was buggy from way too many tweaks. I didn't buy Acronis True Image until after I got the SATA set up. I've imaged the SATA drive at least 8 times, and have restored images 2 times since then withouit any hassle.

Compatability isn't any problem - you'll still hook your IDE drives to the IDE channels with the standard IDE connectors and the SATA to the SATA channels (with the skinny SATA cables). They work fine together, and other than the controller card there's nothing else needed!

donrc · Joined: Feb 16, 2003 Posts: 876

Thanks usasma. That answers a couple of my questions. It would be a shame to junk a 40GB harddrive just because the two were not compatible.

drc

donrc · Joined: Feb 16, 2003 Posts: 876

usasma,
I just happened to think: is your ide drive set as a master or a slave? I know the SATA doesn't have such a setting but it might still make a difference with the ide drive.

drc :rolleyes:

usasma · Joined: May 06, 2003 Posts: 5007

I'll have to pop the case open again, but I think it's set as Master (because I never thought to switch it until now. It's almost midnight here, so I'll crack the case tomorrow and will reply back.

User: inactive Posts:

A little history:
The old 3600 rpm drives always ran pretty cool. No one ever put a drive cooler on one of those drives, or bothered to spin them down when not in use.

Then came the 5400 rpm drives. Higher rpm's and higher operating temps,,,,but I never lost one to heat stroke.

The year I started using the 'new' 7200 rpm drives, I lost three drives of different mfgr's ,,,, all to heat fatigue. After one Deskstar drive crashed on me, I burned my hand taking it out of the case. From that day on, I've never installed a 7200 rpm drive without a drive cooler.

The best coolers I've found so far are the ones that bolt on to the bottom of the drive and have two fans in them. The secret is to stand the cooler off of the drive with the brass standoffs that are used to support motherboards. This leaves enough space between the fans and the bottom of the drive to allow for proper air flow. Otherwise, an air-dam is created between the drive and the fans and the drive will still overheat.

Also, in the power management aplet in the control panel you can set the drive to spin down after so many minutes of idle time. I use 15 minutes. This allows more time for the drive to cool between heavy use periods. If your HD is hotter than your wife, you're in big trouble. Laughing

I can just imagin that unless drive mechanics have changed drastically with the new 10k rpm drives, they will run very hot. Ample cooling will be very critical for anything like long life.

I hope this will help someone and save a drive or two.

Happy Holidays,
The Shadow :ph34r:

Rons · Joined: Dec 07, 2002 Posts: 5667

clhenry · Posted: Tue Dec 07, 2004 2:45 pm Post subject:

ok question... 4 bay case ....cd, cd burner, 2 harddrives.the 4 are packed together no other room. there's only between 1/8 and 1/4" in between each. How are you going to cool them???? I have used metal strapps and added a fan to hit the ends of drives, and try to get air between them, but this is not the best, and this is a pretty common setup nowadays. How do you do it? Very Happy

goretsky · Posted: Wed Dec 08, 2004 2:15 am Post subject:

Hello,

Generally speaking, new hardware is typically faster than the hardware it replaces. In the case of hard disk drives, this could be something as simple as increasing the number of revolutions the platters make under the read-write heads (which allow them to perform more operations in a given amount of time) but can also be due to improvements in materials (denser storage on the platters, voice coils which can move the armature for the read-write heads faster and so forth) but also due to things such as improved caching algorhithms in the firmware or just throwing more cache memory on a hard disk drive's logic board.

Most recent motherboards have PATA (Parallel ATA, the "old" ATA ribbon cable) and SATA connectors on them, so it should not be a problem to connecto both types of hard disk drives to the same system. In the case of an older motherboard, PCI expansion cards with SATA interfaces are readily available. Such cards typically operate slightly slower than a "native" SATA interface since they have to share the PCI bus with the other cards installed in the PC, still, the difference in performance should be minimal.

Regards,

Aryeh Goretsky

User: inactive Posts:

CL.
....sounds like your case is too old for the technology inside it. Time to repack!

You need one of the new (deep,,,from front to back) cases that have multiple drive bays under the floppy drive bay. Mine (and the ones I'm buying for new builds these days) has six drive bays for HD's. All located under the floppy drive bay. They extend clear down to the bottom of the case. Plenty of room for multiple drives with coolers attached and still room for good air flow.

Above the floppy there are four 5.25" drive bays for CD's , etc.

I typically pay only $28 to $49 each for these cases, some with 400 watt power.
The last one I bought for a new system also had a case fan in the left side panel.

Jus holler if you need some help.

Happy Holidays,
The Shadow :ph34r:

clhenry · Posted: Fri Dec 10, 2004 12:20 am Post subject:

Thanks Shadow, i keep thinking mine is still new. Laughing

actually its 3 years old. Don't take long to get out dated.
Error: image could not be loaded. Image is not available from server

Image URL: http://users.pandora.be/eforum/emoticons4u/happy/962.gif