Is 6Gb/s Important enough to update hard drives?

Kaeth · Oct 4, 2011

Currently I'm running 2x 1TB Samsung Spinpoint F1 in RAID1.

Unfortunately, I'm becoming a bit strapped for space, thanks to an obscenely large collection of CD's and DVD's littering my hard drive.

I'm wanting to upgrade, but I can't find any Samsung models that do 6.0 Gb/s, only WD and Seagate (Trying to stay away from Seagate, I've had quite a few die on me.)

Is 6.0 Gb/s a huge, noticeable change? (Particularly for gaming)

Recommendations?

Thinking about going either to 2x 2TB or 2 x 3TB in RAID1

Jonowxeno · Oct 4, 2011

6.0 GB/s (SATA3) on mechanical drives are pointless, they cannot saturate that amount of data. There is no difference

Only SSDs will show difference on 6 GB/s, 1 good SSD will outperform your RAID1

omega17 · Oct 4, 2011

If they're still conventional HDDs, which they must be at those sizes, then you won't come close to saturating a SATA II (3Gb/s) interface, so there will be absolutely no benefit from going with 6Gb/s.

edit .. ninja'ed

but yeah, that ^

Are you using FLAC for your CD rips?

lazi punk · Oct 4, 2011

3gb is fine unless you are going the ssd route. I say you get a nice ssd and have 2 non raid HDD

DuckieHo · Oct 4, 2011

7200RPM HDDs only hit something like 190MB/s so the 550MB/s bandwidth of SATA 6Gb/s is not needed.

Astonished · Oct 4, 2011

Quote:

Originally Posted by DuckieHo;15176457
7200RPM HDDs only hit something like 190MB/s so the 550MB/s bandwidth of SATA 6Gb/s is not needed.

If even that much...

Mygaffer · Oct 4, 2011

There is no difference in performance with any mechanical drives.

Astonished · Oct 4, 2011

Quote:

Originally Posted by Mygaffer;15176513
There is no difference in performance with any mechanical drives.

IDK about that....

Kaeth · Oct 4, 2011

Quote:

Originally Posted by omega17;15176407
If they're still conventional HDDs, which they must be at those sizes, then you won't come close to saturating a SATA II (3Gb/s) interface, so there will be absolutely no benefit from going with 6Gb/s.

edit .. ninja'ed

but yeah, that ^

Are you using FLAC for your CD rips?

Indeed - using FLAC (About 1k Albums between my parents, brothers, and myself, and about 200 DVD's between the 5 of us.)

Thanks for the input from all - good to know. I'm not ready to drop the money on a SSD (Mostly because I don't think I'll see a performance increase on my system with regards to Windows 7, and any SSD large enough to hold all of my high end games would cost a king's ransom.

neelwebs · Oct 4, 2011

6GB/s is useful only for SSDs which take advantage of higher bandwidth. Mechanical drives don't see a lot of difference. You can get a 6GB/s drive if it's a better deal but I'd put it on a 3GB/s controller because there is no difference between 3GBs and 6GBs.

DuckieHo · Oct 4, 2011

Quote:

Originally Posted by Astonished;15176568
IDK about that....

The fastest 15K RPM HDDs can only hit something like 220MB/s

_02 · Oct 4, 2011

Quote:

Originally Posted by joavery;15176594
Thanks for the input from all - good to know. I'm not ready to drop the money on a SSD (Mostly because I don't think I'll see a performance increase on my system with regards to Windows 7, and any SSD large enough to hold all of my high end games would cost a king's ransom.

SSD for storage isn't worth it in my opinion.

I keep my FLAC archive on WD Green TB drives.

5outh · Oct 4, 2011

Grab two more F1s and RAID 10 them if you're just looking for more space.

Phantom_Dave · Oct 4, 2011

Quote:

Originally Posted by joavery;15176594
I'm not ready to drop the money on a SSD (Mostly because I don't think I'll see a performance increase on my system with regards to Windows 7

Using a SSD for the boot drive is where you see the biggest performance increase! I guarantee you will notice a difference going from HDD to SSD. (Unless you get the crappiest SSD out there, which would still beat the best HDD).

Kaeth · Oct 4, 2011

In other news, I'm curious why the "features" section of this Samsung 2 TB drive (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822152245 ) says that it has 667 GB Formatted space... shouldn't it have somewhere in the range of 1.95 TB formattable space?

mad0314 · Oct 4, 2011

Quote:

Originally Posted by joavery;15176594
Thanks for the input from all - good to know. I'm not ready to drop the money on a SSD (Mostly because I don't think I'll see a performance increase on my system with regards to Windows 7, and any SSD large enough to hold all of my high end games would cost a king's ransom.

SSDs are like sex. You don't know what you're missing until you try it, and it's hard to explain the experience to someone that has not experienced it.

Alex132 · Oct 4, 2011

Quote:

Originally Posted by joavery;15178127
In other news, I'm curious why the "features" section of this Samsung 2 TB drive (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822152245 ) says that it has 667 GB Formatted space... shouldn't it have somewhere in the range of 1.95 TB formattable space?

Odd, it should have 1.81Tb.

Kaeth · Oct 4, 2011

Quote:

Originally Posted by Alex132;15178317
Odd, it should have 1.81Tb.

Whoops. Hosed my math. You are correct, which still confuses me why they advertise 1/3rd of that.

Kaeth · Oct 4, 2011

And, for those of you that stand by SSD's so much - how do you get by with just 60 Gigs?

My Windows Partition is 60 GB, and as it stands I only have 15 free on a good day, which doesn't leave much wiggle room for future ventures.

omega17 · Oct 4, 2011

I've got 1 60Gb SSD for the OS, and frequently used apps (20Gb free), another older 60Gb SSD with a couple of Steam games and other less used apps (10Gb free), then 2x1Tb Samsung F3's in RAID0 (=2Tb space) for CD rips, videos, photos, files, other random nonsense, and one final 1Tb F3 as a backup for the OS SSD and other important files off the RAID0

Lots of drives = win.

mad0314 · Oct 4, 2011

667GB/disk X 3 = 2TB (per disk, not the entire drive, with 3 disks is my guess)
Quote:

And, for those of you that stand by SSD's so much - how do you get by with just 60 Gigs?

My Windows Partition is 60 GB, and as it stands I only have 15 free on a good day, which doesn't leave much wiggle room for future ventures.

Priorities. Just because you have an SSD does not mean that you must put EVERYTHING on it and that you can't use HDDs anymore. The main thing is the OS, as you will see a massive improvement there. After that any of your most used programs or games. Everything else can still be put on HDDs.

Darkslayer7 · Oct 4, 2011

Even SSD's are not limited (yet) of SATA2 , not even mentioning SATA3 .

omega17 · Oct 4, 2011

Quote:

Originally Posted by mad0314;15179315
667GB/disk X 3 = 2TB (per disk, not the entire drive, with 3 disks is my guess)

The F4's indeed have 3 platters of 667Gb each

parityboy · Oct 6, 2011

@thread

6Gb/s interfaces on hard drives are not for end users. They are for servers where SAS expanders are being used to build huge disk arrays. If you stick even one 3Gb/s device on a SAS expander, it will restrict the aggregate bandwidth to (for example) 3Gb/sec/port x 36 ports.

By using 6Gb/s interfaces, the array will realise a much higher aggregate bandwidth.

DuckieHo · Oct 6, 2011

Quote:

Originally Posted by Darkslayer7

Even SSD's are not limited (yet) of SATA2 , not even mentioning SATA3 .

.....SSDs have been limited by SATA 3Gb/s for almost 2 years now.

_02 · Oct 6, 2011

Quote:

Originally Posted by DuckieHo

.....SSDs have been limited by SATA 3Gb/s for almost 2 years now.

Typical consumer SSDs?

Is 6Gb/s Important enough to update hard drives?

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