Which one should I use?

[AkG]

As BWM said earlier, relying on Sequential Transfer Rate is NOT a good way to make a hdd choice when it comes to your OS drive.

Same goes for Min transfer speeds, as it only matters if you plan on totally filling a HDD up (they matter in SSD's but not HDDs).

Burst speed numbers are next to useless for getting a feel for real world speed. Its a E-Peen only thang. Hell, basing it off single vs dual platter is even a worse way to decide. Great example is the WD 320GB HDD. Single platter is "faster" on paper compared to the older dual platter version. But the newer's 16ms (IIRC) compared to 13ms makes the new one a dog for an OS drive.

2ms difference is HUGE. I take back my earlier statement, you WILL notice a dif. The black will eat the Seagate's lunch.

Like I said earlier, goto WD's website and download their FREE image transfer program. Its Acronis.....or if you need more than it can provide (bare bones cloning only program in WD/Seagate free mode) buy Acronis Home 2010. Good cheap investment.

[DenisS]

So it's decided then. Thank you for you help/thoughts everybody. Sorry, I didnt notice your answer before AkG.

[AkG]

Yeah I figured it got lost in amongst everything else :)~

[DenisS]

One last thing. Everyone prepare to laugh. This is what I have now for my boot drive:

[bwm]

Originally Posted by ayah

I still get the feeling that the single platter 7200.12 would be a better drive to have programs and OS on. Minimum transfer rate confirms my guess. The much better burst too.

The BURST rate means very little in terms of real world feet on the ground performance. Get to understanding the level of sophistication of todays HD caches and you'll learn very quickly there is far far more to it than size alone, or burst speed alone. Today's caches are dynamic, multi-segmented, dynamically sized, parallel, FIFO in overall nature. No benchmark on earth measures what is most important when all of those factors are present. Even the engineers who design them don't, that is a very propriatary, forbidden topic with them, AND is one of the two factors responsible for growingly frequent firmware updates on drives. They're not going to talk about it engineer to engineer unless they work in the same room. Anyone who says so and so told me this blah blah did NOT get it from an official source. IOW, it is bull shit, period.

[enaberif]

This is my Seagate 250 which is a 7200.10 drive with an OS that was installed on March 01/09

I love single platter drives for a OS

[ArmenianLegend]

always use your fastest drive as your os! as it is used the most

[DenisS]

i have two partitions on my drive, is there a way to clone only one to another drive? I did not find that option in the acronis.

Edit. Nevermind, Ill just clone the whole drive and delete not needed partitions. Just ne question, on the boot drive how many partitions should there be with one OS installed, I have some extra ones labeled as Dell recovery (the drive came from a Dell pc)?

[upcoast604]

Originally Posted by enaberif

This is my Seagate 250 which is a 7200.10 drive with an OS that was installed on March 01/09

I love single platter drives for a OS

And when it's empty numbers go up but I'll try out WD 640MB or 1TB black for OS in the near future, just waiting for ncix shipment and can't decide which drive to use for OS.

---------------------------------------------------------------
CrystalDiskMark 3.0 x64 Beta2 (C) 2007-2009 hiyohiyo
Crystal Dew World : Crystal Dew World
---------------------------------------------------------------
Sequential Read : 99.880 MB/s
Sequential Write : 101.035 MB/s
Random Read 512KB : 42.883 MB/s
Random Write 512KB : 41.011 MB/s
Random Read 4KB (QD=1) : 0.632 MB/s [ 154.3 IOPS]
Random Write 4KB (QD=1) : 1.376 MB/s [ 335.9 IOPS]
Random Read 4KB (QD=32) : 0.833 MB/s [ 203.4 IOPS]
Random Write 4KB (QD=32) : 1.404 MB/s [ 342.8 IOPS]
Test : 100 MB [D: Used 0.2% (0.1/40.6 GB)]
Date : 2010/01/02 17:52:02
OS : Windows 7 Ultimate Edition [6.1 Build 7100] (x64)