Need a super fast 500Gb sata drive

[semi-pro waster]

If you've already ordered then it is a bit late but the Samsung F1 320gb (uses a single platter) is very quick if you can find one.

The WD 640gb drives (two platters) are also extremely quick.

If you absolutely have to have speed regardless of cost then a couple of 10k Raptors in Raid0 will probably be about as fast as you'll get at consumer level before you start looking at 15k SAS drives and expensive controller cards.

[Feek]

500Gb was the minimum requirement and I had to order today so I grabbed the Seagate based on previous experience.

[Toby]

Originally Posted by Admiral Huddy

The samsung F1 750 is slightly quicker than the 1TB drive. I assume because it has less platers.

Sorry but it just ain't - tests have shown it to be markedly slower as it doesn't use the new 334GB platters.

The 320, 640 and 1000MB drives all use the new 334GB platters whereas the 500 and 750 both use the older, smaller platters and thus can't sustain quite the same speeds.

[LeperousDust]

TBH though, without looking at RAID, whats actually in it? Better looking at cheapest/quietest in most cases i suspect. If you actually are seriously looking at speed you be silly not to look at RAID and/or 10k drives...

[divine]

I was under the impression the new Samsung drives were quicker than the 10k drives along with being nowhere near as noisy

[LeperousDust]

Well thats the thing the 10k drives weren't ever that much quicker than the "standard" drives anyways! They were running about 50% faster, but not showing the same perfomance gains! Drive technology has lagged a lot like Daz said, if you want speed RAID is the only sensible option everything else is pretty much the same (from what ive read, but i won't lie i generally ignore drive specs now days).

[Toby]

10k drives like the Raptor and SCSI units are all about access speed, which is what matters in general usage. Raw transfer speed only really helps when shifting large, contiguous quantities of data and doesn't help that much with lots of relatively small file access, which is what general usage is all about.

This is why RAID0 only really helps with large file transfers and why a single 10k drive will murder a 7.2k RAID0 array for general Windows use.

[Daz]

If we're talking pure seek time, to be fair that depends on the RAID controller. A soft RAID one might not be up to scratch, but a proper controller? I'd disagree with that.

[A Place of Light]

Originally Posted by semi-pro waster

If you've already ordered then it is a bit late but the Samsung F1 320gb (uses a single platter) is very quick if you can find one.

Isn't the 320 gig F1 vapourware?

[SidewinderINC]

Originally Posted by A Place of Light

Isn't the 320 gig F1 vapourware?

I had to look that term up