The Official PC building thread - 4th Edition

I suppose I forgot to mention that the transfer from my WD1001FALS is on a PCI SATA I card. But I doubt that would have an effect on the transfer speeds I'm gonna connect the new WD20EARS to that port and run some tests. Stay tuned

Here's a comparison of my first drive to brand new drive. I don't buy into these results so much. Transfer speeds on the Sata I card show to be good. I transferred an avi and it showed an average of 100+ MB/s. 700Mb file finished in under 7 seconds

All seems to be well. Both drives are NOT connected to Sata III ports, so I can fetch SMART stats, and accurate temperatures.

 

I edited sam. Perhaps the new drive simply needs some break in time

 

Actually it can do. Not by much, but it will affect your speeds.

 

But that doesn't make any sense. The drive doesn't even saturate 1.5Gb speed. Perhaps I don't fully understand then :S Oh well. If it is indeed a performance hit, by being on a lesser revision, it isn't much like you say. I can live with those speeds for now. I however will kick myself for not buying a better card. Live and learn

 

PCI isn't 1.5Gbps speed, it's 1.06Gbps speed. That, divided by however many drives you have on it!

 

I only have a 2Tb drive and BD-Rom on that card But I see your point.

Basically, PCI bandwidth falls just short of Sata I protocols...

 

Came across a weird-ity relating to Win 7 using dual boot. It seems the software that M$ recommends to add the Win 7 partition, gives you a real problem if you remove Win 7. For months now I've had all these niggly little problems, like BSODs for no reason I can find, or Video freeze-ups that correct themselves and odd file problems.

After I took out Win 7 the last time, I ran Killdisk on the partition and I usually don't run it all the way through, just enough to wipe the MBR. It finally hung on me at the post screen this morning, and would not continue, so I wiped the first partition, and when it got to 99%, there was an error to do with the drive geometry. It said that it was physical damage? I retried it several times and it still wouldn't get past 99%, so I said WTH and ran Killdisk on the whole drive. No errors at all! I ran SMART on it, and it looked real good. In the last few days I've had issues with FireFox crashing, and a few other problems like .avi files crashing Explorer if you so much as clicked on them. All the little problems are gone, and the Computer is running much faster now. Before, boot-up seemed like an eternity, and it wouldn't let me load my new AVG 2011 from the CD. Today, it works just fine!

I've noticed a number of people who have had problems after removing Win 7, so I'm recommending that if you remove it, wipe the entire drive, and then do a full format instead of a Quick Format on all partitions! Runs beautiful now!

Best Regards,
Russ

 

Windows 7 has always been troublesome when it comes to a reformat and reinstall. I almost always run Killdisk unless I'm just doing a repair install. For the record the GRUB boot loader for Linux is also very stubborn and takes a full Killdisk to remove.

As far as formatting goes I always do a full format on a brand new hard drive. But after that, even if I do a Killdisk, a quick format works fine. It has never caused me issues in performance or function, and believe me if it were going to happen it would have years ago.

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Currently thinking of retiring my main OS drive for something better. Would leave both of my 500s for game/software installs and the like vs one being both OS and games together.

What's the recommendation on decent performance 1TB drives in a reasonable price range? Currently debating between an entry level SSD and a fast 1TB. Strongly considering just getting a WD EALS Blue and waiting to buy an OCZ Vertex 2 which seems to be the only SSD truly worth buying ATM.

 

Hey creaky, check it out!
Durable PP Storage Case for 3.5" Hard Disk Drive(HDD), Protect Your Hard Disk Drive(HDD), Smoke Color
Ships from china, but for that price, I ain't complaining! I bought 3! LOL!

 

Estuansis,

I would lean more towards a Samsung 1TB drive!
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822152185

The failure rate on the WD Blue is 19%, out of 342 reviews, while the Samsung I linked above is only 11% out of 1,084 reviews. It's reported to be fast, quiet, and runs cool! For the same price and warranty as the Blue, it would be my choice!

Best Regards,
Russ

 

Samsungs BD player left a bad taste in my mouth LOL! Bad reviews all over the web too. That's what I get for shopping on Christmas eve without a wifi laptop I bought it 12/24/2009. It works, but it requires lots of air flow!

Never tried one of their hard drives though. I really shouldn't criticize them too bad. We all make mistakes. Dell made a whopper of a mistake knowingly shipping defective parts.

I don't know why Western digital reviews on newegg have been so poor. *tap on wood* I haven't had a drive of theirs go belly up that wasn't old. My 9 yr old drive seen a lot of use. 9rs is goes wayy beyond the warranty. If the green drives of mine last half that, I'll be happy. I'm sure in 1yr or two, I'll have drives 2 times that size, that I can backup that data to

 

Oman7,

I remember reading an article, back in the day when Samsung introduced their very first IDE hard drive. Statistically it wasn't impressive, but it wound up in second place in the 15 drive review because of it's overall performance. I bought one and couldn't have been happier with it!

The Samsung I linked you is the second best selling 1TB drive, by a very wide margin, and the highest selling Seagate Barracuda 7200.12 ST31000528AS 1TB 7200 RPM 32MB Cache SATA 3.0Gb/s 3.5", has an even higher failure rate than the WD Blue (23%). I think the sales numbers are because of some of the "Fire Sales" Seagate has had since that Model's inception! Most people would jump at the $45-50 price in some of those sales! LOL!! The Samsung is the better drive by far!

Russ

 

Yah...I'll probably buy one or two, so I can put this bad taste to rest. I'm sure they're fine. I just want storage drives. The speed could be half has fast, I wouldn't care. Longevity is what I'm after

Though 1Tb size is becoming smaller quicker LOL!

 

LOL! It was more a thank you for showing me that the things exist. That is a good deal though. Clearly you have your stuff figured out though

 

Difference is, WDs you risk DOA, Samsungs you risk failure at 6 months once all your data's on them. I know what I'd rather choose.

 

No joke. I'd rather get a lemon right off the bat, then have a drive quit prematurely. And quite frankly, if I haven't had problems with WD, why should I switch? If it ain't broke, don't fix it I mean no offense to your Samsung suggestion russ. Western digital definitely specializes in HDD's. Samsung dabbles in everything. Much like $ony. Western digital has it's focuses directed on the question at hand. Surely people are doing things wrong. I'm not very lucky, and I haven't had trouble with WD. Other than a used Raptor drive, and PROBABLY a bad cable with the last Velociraptor. I never will know

 

I just optimized a Vista Laptop for somebody. I'm giving them a few recommendations. And one of the recommendations just got me thinking. Will it have a problem detecting and using a Solid State Disk? I've only handled laptops a couple times. I realize in essence, a laptop is just a miniature computer. They operate identically to towers and desktops. I guess the real question lies in the bios, as to whether it can handle one.
HP Pavilion dv6226us.
Any thoughts and recommendations on this matter, are of course greatly appreciated

 

Yah well, I need their permission, and 100+ Dollars for windows 7 It's running a great deal better now. Norton appeared to be hogging resources, as well as some HP utilities. I removed multiple things from the startup, deleted some unused files in the recycle bin, and prefetch. It only has 1Gb of ram. I told them this is why Vista runs so slow. I highly recommend the laptops max(2Gb) and an installation of windows 7. Heck just with that, they may not need the SSD