SATA Hard Drive

The14thGOD · Post by **The14thGOD** » Mon Apr 17, 2006 12:45 am

I was wondering something. I have a Maxtor 250gb hard drive that doesn't seem to read as fast as my IDE hard drive. Is it becuase I don't have it set up as raid? I heard that to take full benefit you need to have it set up as raid. I was thinking maybe it's just the drive or something. THe reason why I think it doesn't read as fast is becuase when I worked on a project with it in premiere when the video footage was on the SATA it was more choppy, but if i moved everything to my IDE it was a lot smoother.

I was also thinking about just picking up a whole new drive set for just video editing. If this is the case i was looking at a SAMSUNG 80GB hard drive. Is that plenty big enough? I've only started to use DVD footage. I also have limited DVD's cause i cant afford the 40+animes I have all on DVD. The hard drive I'm looking at is $50, and its IDE 133. Or my other option, $90, SAMSUNG 250gb.

I'm just basically looking for opinions atm of waht is my best shot.

Also if I get a new drive, should I install the program on that drive or keep it on my C drive?

Thanks

-The14thGOD-

Joe88 · Post by **Joe88** » Mon Apr 17, 2006 1:27 am

what is the rpm of both drives ?

DJ_Izumi · Post by **DJ_Izumi** » Mon Apr 17, 2006 3:40 am

Benchmark the drives and see what speeds you get.

Orwell · Post by **Orwell** » Mon Apr 17, 2006 4:02 am

If you do decide to get a new drive, I'd recommend a Western Digital one. At least for me they seem to be the ones that survives the test of time and usage, while others, especially the SAMSUNG ones, seem to be prone to failure. Though, WD does cost more. 80 GB's should be fine if you pick and choose what clips you want, but if you prefer to have everything laid out a bigger one would probably be a better buy.

Willen · Post by **Willen** » Mon Apr 17, 2006 5:00 am

SATA and IDE should not make a difference. In fact, unless something is wrong with the SATA, technically it should be faster. At least in terms of theoretical max throughput. Real-world, not much noticable difference yet. It could be that you have the SATA at a disadvantage depending on how it is interfaced to the motherboard.

> If you have it connected to the motherboard directly, then I suggest you try to update your MB BIOS and drivers.

> If you have it connected to a SATA PCI card into the motherboard, try to move the PCI card to a different slot. It could be sharing the slot with another device, slowing it down. Again, I'd try to update drivers.

> To take advantage of RAID, you usually need 2 or more drives. For example, RAID-0 (striping) is used for increased HDD throughput and for a larger logical drive. It requires 2 drives and both of them need to be identical. Capacity will be the size of the 2 drives added up (250GB + 250GB = 500GB). RAID-1 (mirroring) is for keeping an identical drive as a backup. Again, both drives need to be identical in size, but this time since the second drive is keeping an exact copy of the first drive, the capacity is only as big as the size of a single drive (250GB | 250GB = 250GB). Essentially, you are constantly keeping a backup of the drive on another drive automatically. In theory, if one of the drives were to die, the other would be able to take over seamlessly. You can also combine these types of RAID arrays to make a RAID-0+1 which gives you better performance and fault tolerance. This of course, requires 4 drives of the same capacity. The other types of RAID arrays generally require additional hardware beyond what is supported by most motherboards.

Finally, you may need to defragment the SATA drive.

DJ_Izumi · Post by **DJ_Izumi** » Mon Apr 17, 2006 5:02 am

http://nodesoft.com/DiskBench/Default.aspx

I use Diskbench to benchmark my hard drives write and read times as it would be under practical circumstances. Try it out and see if the drive is actually writing slower or if it's just you.

The14thGOD · Post by **The14thGOD** » Mon Apr 17, 2006 6:53 am

Whew one night and 5 responses hah.

The RPM on both drives is 7200.

I'll benchmark as soon as possible.

I thought samsung was one onf the better ones, i hear Maxtor is bad, then again I heard that cuase my hard drive actually failed and itwas a Maxtor. I'll look into the WD though. The 250gb hard drive is differently a bigger drive, I just dont know if I can afford it since I'm a college kid =D.

Ya I know that SATA is supposed to be faster. It's directly connected through the MoBo. I'll see if they have new SATA drivers but I'm pretty sure I'm up to date with that and the BIOS.

When I get the chance I'll do a benchmark.

Thanks for all the quick responses!

-The14thGOD-

The14thGOD · Post by **The14thGOD** » Mon Apr 17, 2006 7:10 am

Copy File Bench started...

Copy F:\[Shinsen-Subs]_Blood+_12_[39A3F6A2].avi to C:\Documents and Settings\The14thGOD\Desktop\[Shinsen-Subs]_Blood+_12_[39A3F6A2].avi
Size: 104857600
Time: 7672 ms
Transfer Rate: 13.034 MB/s

Copy File Bench ended

Copy File Bench started...

Copy F:\[Shinsen-Subs]_Blood+_12_[39A3F6A2].avi to C:\Documents and Settings\The14thGOD\Desktop\[Shinsen-Subs]_Blood+_12_[39A3F6A2].avi
Size: 104857600
Time: 2969 ms
Transfer Rate: 33.681 MB/s

Copy File Bench ended

Copy File Bench started...

Copy C:\Documents and Settings\The14thGOD\Desktop\[Shinsen-Subs]_Blood+_12_[39A3F6A2].avi to F:\[Shinsen-Subs]_Blood+_12_[39A3F6A2].avi
Size: 104857600
Time: 6406 ms
Transfer Rate: 15.610 MB/s

Copy File Bench ended

Copy File Bench started...

Copy C:\Documents and Settings\The14thGOD\Desktop\[Shinsen-Subs]_Blood+_12_[39A3F6A2].avi to F:\[Shinsen-Subs]_Blood+_12_[39A3F6A2].avi
Size: 104857600
Time: 6609 ms
Transfer Rate: 15.131 MB/s

Copy File Bench ended

Just used a quick .avi to do this.

The first two tests are the F:(SATA) to the C:(IDE)
The second two tests are: C:(IDE) to the F:(SATA)

Looks like the SATA is slower...

The14thGOD · Post by **The14thGOD** » Mon Apr 17, 2006 7:12 am

I should also say that I'm downloading, but to the C: drive So I'll be testing it agian later today when I'm done. But I don't think it'll make that huge of a difference.

Sorry for the tripple post.

-The14thGOD-

DJ_Izumi · Post by **DJ_Izumi** » Mon Apr 17, 2006 7:56 am

Well that was a stupid test.

If you're trying to see which drive is fastest you shouldn't be copying from one drive to another. You'll always be limited by the speed of the slowest drive. If transfering from the slower drive to the faster drive, the transfer speed will be no faster than the slowest drive can cough up the data. When transfering from the fastest drive to the slowest drive, the speed will be no faster than the slowest drive can WRITE the data.

Use the create file benchmark instead of the copy file benchmark if you want to see just how fast the drive can actually write and the read file test on some large file (Preferably the same file on either drive) to see which one reads fastest.

Also, there really is no serious difference between 13MB/s and 15MB/s. You have to considder that this is a test under PRACTICAL circumstances not ideal. So you shouldn't worry about small differences in results, LARGE differences are what matters.