Speeding up my computer with a 7200 rpm drive

[Daniel Prince]

I currently have my Windows XP Home SP3 on a Western Digital 2tb
green SATA hard drive. Sometimes my computer seems to bog down but
StatBar usually says that the CPU is staying well below 100 percent.

Would replacing this drive with a Hitachi 2TB 7200RPM SATA hard
drive speed my system significantly? Thank you in advance for all
replies.

 

[Rod Speed]

Daniel Prince wrote

I currently have my Windows XP Home SP3 on a Western Digital 2tb
green SATA hard drive. Sometimes my computer seems to bog down
but StatBar usually says that the CPU is staying well below 100 percent.

Would replacing this drive with a Hitachi 2TB 7200RPM
SATA hard drive speed my system significantly?

Basically depends on what you are doing with that system.

If you dont have enough physical ram and the swap file is used a lot,
and the hard drive led is on quite a bit of the time, yes, it may well
be faster. But it would be better with most systems to increase the
amount of physical ram instead. That isnt always possible tho,
particularly if you already have the max that 32 bit XP can use etc.

If the system isnt actually IO bound, it may well be that the
reason it bogs down has nothing to do with the drive IO and
it may not make any real difference at all, particularly if you
dont do stuff like primitive non indexed database stuff or
keep furiously closing and opening new apps etc.

Thank you in advance for all replies.

Even ones that tell you to shove your head up a dead bear's arse ? Funky.

 

[Arno]

I currently have my Windows XP Home SP3 on a Western Digital 2tb
green SATA hard drive. Sometimes my computer seems to bog down but
StatBar usually says that the CPU is staying well below 100 percent.

Would replacing this drive with a Hitachi 2TB 7200RPM SATA hard
drive speed my system significantly? Thank you in advance for all
replies.

I doubt it. Spend the money on more RAM instead. Even under
the best circumstances going from 5400rpm to 7200rpm
gives you less than a 30% speedup, as data-densities on 5400rpm
drives are typically higher.

Arno

 

[Daniel Prince]

I doubt it. Spend the money on more RAM instead. Even under
the best circumstances going from 5400rpm to 7200rpm
gives you less than a 30% speedup, as data-densities on 5400rpm
drives are typically higher.

It would not be much money. I plan to buy a DVR that would need a
hard drive. I thought I would buy a 7200 rpm drive, put it into the
computer and then use the old drive in the DVR. The real cost is
the difference between the price of a 2tb 5400 rpm drive and a 7200
rpm drive.

There are two things that my computer does slowly:

1. Search for and delete duplicate picture files with CloneSpy
version 2.6. I have over 320,000 picture files that it has to
compare.

2. Do a global search with Agent version 5.0. Agent 5.0 uses one
data file and one index file for each newsgroup. It compresses the
data files. Some of the data files are about eight gigabytes.

 

[Rod Speed]

Daniel Prince wrote

It would not be much money. I plan to buy a DVR that would need
a hard drive. I thought I would buy a 7200 rpm drive, put it into the
computer and then use the old drive in the DVR. The real cost is
the difference between the price of a 2tb 5400 rpm drive and a 7200
rpm drive.
True.

There are two things that my computer does slowly:

1. Search for and delete duplicate picture files with CloneSpy version 2.6.
I have over 320,000 picture files that it has to compare.

Its unlikely that that will change much with the faster drive.

And surely the time that takes is irrelevant anyway given that it should
be scheduled to happen when the system isnt otherwise being used ?

2. Do a global search with Agent version 5.0. Agent 5.0 uses one
data file and one index file for each newsgroup. It compresses the
data files. Some of the data files are about eight gigabytes.

That may well be noticeably faster, particularly when the search is
being done on the content of the posts, not just the headers, because
the content isnt likely to be indexed.

 

[GMAN]

It would not be much money. I plan to buy a DVR that would need a
hard drive. I thought I would buy a 7200 rpm drive, put it into the
computer and then use the old drive in the DVR. The real cost is
the difference between the price of a 2tb 5400 rpm drive and a 7200
rpm drive.

There are two things that my computer does slowly:

1. Search for and delete duplicate picture files with CloneSpy
version 2.6. I have over 320,000 picture files that it has to
compare.

Yeah, its a pain going thru all that porn by hand!!!

 

[Franc Zabkar]

All 2TB should be 4x500GB by now. For 3TB its
5400RPM 4x750 vs 7200RPM 5x600.

Seagate Breaks Areal Density Barrier: Unveils The World’s First Hard
Drive Featuring 1 Terabyte Per Platter (May 3, 2011):
http://www.seagate.com/ww/v/index.j...toid=6fbdb5ebf32bf210VgnVCM1000001a48090aRCRD

====================================================================
Seagate Barracuda XT 3TB Hard Drive

Seagate’s GoFlex® Desk products are the first to feature the new hard
drive, delivering storage capacities of up to 3TB and an areal density
of 625 Gigabits per square inch, the industry’s highest. Seagate is on
track to ship its flagship 3.5-inch Barracuda desktop hard drive with
3TBs of storage on 3 disk platters ... to the distribution channel in
mid-2011. The drive will also be available in capacities of 2TB, 1.5TB
and 1TB.
====================================================================

- Franc Zabkar

 

[Arno]

It would not be much money. I plan to buy a DVR that would need a
hard drive. I thought I would buy a 7200 rpm drive, put it into the
computer and then use the old drive in the DVR. The real cost is
the difference between the price of a 2tb 5400 rpm drive and a 7200
rpm drive.

Ah, then go for it. Just don't expect much speed gain.

There are two things that my computer does slowly:

1. Search for and delete duplicate picture files with CloneSpy
version 2.6. I have over 320,000 picture files that it has to
compare.

2. Do a global search with Agent version 5.0. Agent 5.0 uses one
data file and one index file for each newsgroup. It compresses the
data files. Some of the data files are about eight gigabytes.

Well, in that case you may see the 30%. But better look at the
transfer rates of the new disk, 7200rpm drives can be as slow
as 5400rpm ones for these applications, but they can also
be faster. For Hitachi, you will probably get faster ;-)

Arno

 

[Sprechen Sie C++]

I suggest moving to Windows 7 x64 as it can manage more memory easily. Then
using 16 GB of RAM will make any hard disk look good.