On Wed, 25 Jul 2001, David Freeman wrote:
I feel the need for some new hardware. I am thinking my el cheapo 8.4GB HDD could do with replacing, so I am thinking of a new Seagate HDD. Now, how much performance benifit will I get from a 7200rpm drive over a 5400RPM drive? Will I need to cool it more?
What speed ide bus does your M/B do? I would reccomend getting a 7200rpm ata100 if you can afford it, and also if you have that little bit extra get an IBM disk. The IBM disks are very fast and they are not that much extra than other brands. Also the warranty swapout seems far better than most other brands.
In all reality you may or may not see a real speed increase depending on what you are doing and how much RAM you have and how often you write things out to swap etc. About cooling you shouldn't need to cool any modern hard-disk, that is if your case isn't filled with tons of other kit like a couple gigs memory, a fast gfx card, all the pci slots filled with hot cards etc. and fully loading the ide bus with another 3 hdds. If you do have all that kit I would suggest buying an 8cm case fan and sticking it in your machine.
Adam