The best hard drive.

[alexvorn2]

I want to buy a new hard drive but I need one that work very fast.
What kind of hdd you know that work quickly almost as a Ram.

 

[disports]

Western Digital 640 GB (WD6400AAKS )

 

[AmberClad]

Originally posted by: alexvorn2
What kind of hdd you know that work quickly almost as a Ram.

Only SSDs or ram-drives, I would imagine. Normal HDDs pale in comparison.

 

[Blackfirevatsal]

Originally posted by: smithrwon
Western Digital 640 GB (WD6400AAKS )

+1

 

[LOUISSSSS]

no, she wants the BEST. get a SSD they're fast.

theres nothing special about the WD640, maybe good performance/gb/$

 

[cyberfish]

As fast as RAM?... that would be like several GB/s .

The best you can do is probably get something like 16 fast drives, and run them in RAID-0.

 

[scruffypup]

Depends on how much you want to spend too,... 2 WD 300 or 150 velociraptors in raid 0 array would probably be the best bet or maybe the intel x25-m SSD drives once they can be found.

2 wd 300 velociraptors in raid will give you 300GB for about $560
2 wd 150 velociraptors in raid will give you 150GB for about $360
1 intel SSD drive will probably be at 80 GB for $550 or so

Otherwise for a good price/performance the Western Digital 640 GB (WD6400AAKS )
is a fairly decent choice 640GB for $85 (which can be in a raid as well to boost performance some for a decent price point of $170)

There are also a few others comparable to the WD 640 mentioned,... but don't expect these to be as fast as ram by anymeans,... that will only happen once SSD drives become more common and some minor bugs worked out and improved upon. A ways to go on that still.

 

[Tattare]

Iv heard that the WD6400AAKS is just as fast as all the raptors except that 74g one is faster.
Fasts would be a SSD.

 

[scruffypup]

Absolutely not.

Transfer rates and burst rates are marketed a lot by the harddrive companies and many people see that one drive has a higher burst rate and then assumes it is the fastest drive.

Burst and transfer rates have little to do with the real world feel of quickness and response of a harddrive/system and what the OP is really looking for - something with "quickness" of ram.

High Transfer rates are great for large files - say doing a lot of video editing and such. (speed of moving large amounts of data - top end speed is a way to look at it)

Random Access, Seek times and latency are great for a quick response to what you want it to do - say general use, multitasking, gaming (quickness - acceleration is a way to look at it)

So for something that will give you a feel of "RAM" - you want to look at the seek, access, read/write times, etc.

SSD is best at that, however other than certain SSD disks you do not want to go that route,... read this article to understand why
http://www.anandtech.com/cpuch...el/showdoc.aspx?i=3403

Next best is the velociraptors which have a very low random access off the top of my head in the 8ms range with seek times in the 4ms range, the wd6400 drive has something like a 12ms range in random access and 8 ms in seek,... (I might be a bit off since I don't want to go research the exact numbers.)

If you raid these drives, then the random access and seek times go down even further,... I want to say that the velociraptor in raid will give you mid 2ms range for seek,...

A millisecond may not seem like much, but when you want a "ram like" response,... those are the numbers you really want to look at.

Edited for spelling since I cannot type today

 

[Idontcare]

Originally posted by: scruffypup
If you raid these drives, then the random access and seek times go down even further,... I want to say that the velociraptor in raid will give you mid 2ms range for seek,...

I was under the impression that raid does not improve access and seek times, it only improves bandwidth and transfer rates. In fact the access times are supposed to increase slightly due to the raid overhead necessary for piecing the file back together, as well as parsing it on a write.

Is this no longer true?

 

[myocardia]

Originally posted by: Idontcare

Originally posted by: scruffypup
If you raid these drives, then the random access and seek times go down even further,... I want to say that the velociraptor in raid will give you mid 2ms range for seek,...

I was under the impression that raid does not improve access and seek times, it only improves bandwidth and transfer rates. In fact the access times are supposed to increase slightly due to the raid overhead necessary for piecing the file back together, as well as parsing it on a write.

Is this no longer true?

Yeah, that's still true. A two disk RAID 0 doubles your throughput (read/write speeds), but has slightly slower access times, and identical seek times. Everything else he said was spot-on, though.

alex, your problem is that you can't have both fast and quick at the same time, when it comes to storage. The SSD's are pretty much instantaneous, like ~.2 ms access/seek times, but they aren't any faster than an $85 hard drive, when it comes to their read speed, and are slower than that $85 hard drive, when it comes to how fast they can write. In other words, they "feel" extremely fast, but when it comes to moving data around, they're actually a bit slower.

Now, Intel has a new SSD that's supposed to be both better and faster than any current SSD, but it isn't available yet, and we don't know for sure when it will become available. Also, SSD's are still extremely expensive, for the amount of storage you get. So, the best option these days is still one or more 300GB Western Digital Velociraptors, at least for desktop systems.

 

[Idontcare]

Originally posted by: myocardia
Yeah, that's still true. A two disk RAID 0 doubles your throughput (read/write speeds), but has slightly slower access times, and identical seek times. Everything else he said was spot-on, though.

hclarkjr posted this link in another thread, but the graph at the bottom of the page shows the data and proof quite nicely:

original review link

graph of interest showing latency in raid vs. non-raid

 

[nyker96]

I vote for the new Seagate ST3640323AS 640GB 7200 RPM SATA 3.0Gb/s, ST3640323AS, just bought one. nice and quiet. newegg even delivered to me the very next day (in just 23hrs)!! sorry it's about the HD but newegg sometimes amazes me.

 

[DarkNessBear]

Western Digital Caviar SE16 WD5000AAKS 500GB 7200 RPM 16MB Cache SATA 3.0Gb/s Hard Drive - OEM

http://www.newegg.com/Product/...x?Item=N82E16822136073

There's a deal right now. Just as good as the WD6400AAKS, little bit cheaper.

 

[taltamir]

If your harddrive works as fast as ram... then why do you even need ram? the whole POINT of ram is to buffer data from the HDD for fast operation, it is LITERALLY millions of times faster in access speed than a hard drive.

the WD640 drive is... decently fast.
The raptors / velociraptors (300$ for the velociraptor) are very fast (the larger, the faster, also look for latest model of same sized ones)
Then you have intel's SSD (600$) which is even faster then the velociraptors.

None of these compare to ram in speed though, which is why you have ramdrives. But those are not practical for any use other the kind done by an IT group of a corporation who would know better then to ask what you are asking. So it is obviously not for you...

there are also special commercial SSDs in the range of 200,000 to millions of dollars, where each "drive" is a superfast box the size of a printer.