Bob Green Posted July 2, 2003 Share Posted July 2, 2003 Probably a question for Andy here. My son is going to install an 80 gig hard drive at 7,500 speed in my PC as it is slow (relatively). My current HD is 20 gig and 5,000 speed. The idea is to have a faster start up speed and use the old hard drive to back up the new one. The question is will it be faster on start up? Junior works in IT and says this is the way to go. Incidentally he is going to fit something that increases the memory, which sounds quite impressive. As you can tell, I have more chance of ousting Schumacher from the Ferrari seat than understanding the ins and outs of a PC. Thanks in anticipation Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
smayo Posted July 2, 2003 Share Posted July 2, 2003 I don't think you'll notice hardly any difference in the boot time due to the faster hard drive. It may seem quicker initially, as it will be a nice clean install of all the software. It will be faster because of the increase in memory. As an added benefit, the increase in memory will make any applications (word, excel etc) load up faster. If you are looking for a Backup solution, and are not too worried about the boot speed, then a CD writer is the better (and cheaper) option, and you won't have the hassle of a complete re-install of Windows. You are looking at about £70 for the hard drive or £40 for the CD writer. Pay much more than these prices and they're ripping you off. Go to a computer fair, and you'll get even better prices. I got 2 x 120Gig drives a few weeks back for £144 for the pair. Hope some of this is useful. smayo Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bob Green Posted July 2, 2003 Author Share Posted July 2, 2003 Hi smayo The HD is £65 with the VAT. As I don't have many files on the PC, backing up is not a major problem but junior thinks it's a good idea to back up on the old HD. I do have a re-writer that is 48x12x48 (whatever that means) so I can back up onto CD (apparently). I do appreciate your comments. Thanks mate. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
smayo Posted July 2, 2003 Share Posted July 2, 2003 Is junior a major user of the PC? Probably got upgade-itus. I know, I've got it for the car and the PC. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bob Green Posted July 3, 2003 Author Share Posted July 3, 2003 No, he lives 70 miles away. To be honest I have been badgering him to fix the very slow start up and he has finally agreed to repair it for me. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
smayo Posted July 3, 2003 Share Posted July 3, 2003 Does it really take that long to start up? I have 2 PC's. The one I can switch on and go and make a cup of tea while I wait for it to boot. The other machine (my fast one) takes about a minute. I know DELL once got one of their standard machines to boot in 10 seconds, but for most people you are are probably lokking at 1-2 minutes at least to boot. Depends on how much stuff you've got loaded on it which starts at boot up. In the long term you will probably still find it slow. Has he / you tried defragging the drive first to see if that gives any improvement? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
westy Posted July 3, 2003 Share Posted July 3, 2003 Processor speed and hard drive speed (providing you have enough physical memory) makes all the difference on pc's in normal use. The speed of the internal components i.e how quick they can get data across to each other is normally based on the spec of processor. you can spend a £150 nowadays at www.ebuyer.com and get a new motherboard, processor and memory that will transform your system. Unless you going to become an mp3 file sharing god I doubt you would need 80gb but as disk space is cheap as chips (sorry) then you might as well go for it. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
westy Posted July 3, 2003 Share Posted July 3, 2003 btw we run 15,000 rpm drives at work Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JonnyBoy Posted July 3, 2003 Share Posted July 3, 2003 presumably 133 spec hdd's are quicker than 100 spec drives too....although your motherboard has to support the faster speed. my machine runs 133 hdd's and takes next to no time to boot. the only thing tht slows it down is the implementation of the RAID controller. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Toby Mack Posted July 3, 2003 Share Posted July 3, 2003 To answer the orignal question, I went from a 5000 IBM 16G disk to a 7200rpm 80G 8M(?) buffer disk and noticed no difference at all in boot up time! (win 2000) I have noticed a difference in loading apps etc and graphics and video stuff is now much faster. ie I can download video without frame loss now! I'd go for more memory first and a clean install of your OS (assuming windoze). I wouldn't use an online hard disk for backup, it is too easy to screw up the backup at the same time as the original. Use your CD-R for that assuming you don't have too much data. EDIT: I should add that the rest of my system is a 2G athlon plus 256M memory. Pretty average by todays standards I guess. From what I have read a fast 100 disk can be better than an average 133 disk. ie the interface is not really the bottleneck so don't get too hung up on the interface speed unless you really know what you are looking for. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Westfields Rock On Posted July 3, 2003 Share Posted July 3, 2003 get a pentium 2.6GHz and new motherboard. mohahahhahhaha fast! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bob Green Posted July 3, 2003 Author Share Posted July 3, 2003 Thanks for all your comments guys. I will let you know how it went when he has replaced the parts he says will stop me whinging. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Blatman Posted July 3, 2003 Share Posted July 3, 2003 If you want a faster hard drive, I reckon you should be looking at a SCSI drive (pronounced scuzzy, by the cognoscenti....) and a suitable adapter/card. You will definitely notice a difference in hard drive speed, and it *should* also boot up faster. Can't believe no-one suggested it yet........ If you're using Win 95/98/98SE, I think you can sometimes experience trouble with large single drives, so you may want to partition it into several virtual drives. If you have Win2000, or XP, you should be fine........ Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
hilux Posted July 3, 2003 Share Posted July 3, 2003 Ahem... Win XP Pro boots in about 30 secs Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
adhawkins Posted July 3, 2003 Share Posted July 3, 2003 These days, there's really no need to go for a SCSI drive unless it's in a server (IMO of course). IDE drives are blazingly quick these days, and in terms of price per meg you get a damn sight more for your money. Andy Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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