Dell Hard Drive Options (1 Viewer)

[Aaron Cooke]

I am wondering what real world difference i would notice in the different hard drive options offered by dell. My first choice was their 80GB model because i don't need a ton of space and it is cheapest, but it only has a 2MB cache. My other options are a 240 GB Raid 0 (2x120GB) configuration that i assume would be a lot faster, as it is much more expensive. My question is, for general internet browsing and for gaming (star wars galaxies, Everquest 2, Doom 3) how much of a difference would i actually notice between the two.

I suppose a third option would be to get a 7200 RPM drive with an 8MB cache but i think the only one dell offers is a 200GB model which is nearly as much as the RAID 0 drives.

Thanks for any opinions on how much of a noticable difference the better drives would make.

 

[Ted Lee]

tough call.

i would say those games take quite a bit of processing power, so a faster hd would definitely help.

of coure, you'll have to weight cost vs. performance.

iirc, most of the reviews that i read stated the 8mb buffer really makes a difference. i have the wd80/8mb model and i love it.

but i really don't know how much of a difference the 2mb vs 8mb would make though.

hopefully someone more knowledgeable will chime in! :b

 

[John*Jones]

The following site would be a great place to ask this question: StorageReview Very knowledgable people in their forums.

From what I've read over there concerning Raid 0, for browsing and gaming, besides a slighty faster load time for games, you're not going to see a whole lot of a differece, especially considering the much larger price tag you've hinted at. Also, Raid 0 is not a true Raid configuration. There is no redundancy as your data is striped across two harddrives. Granted it is likely to improve performance, but if one drive fails, you're screwed, because the other one would be useless. Whether or not this is of concern obviously depends upon the individual. Anyway, I'm certainly not an expert in this arena, so I would suggest asking this question at StorageReview. I'd recommend searching first, as this type of question is very common over there.

Also, if you can find out the actual harddrive brand and model, StorageReview has a performance database that allows you to compare harddrives.

Cheers.

 

[Fredster]

I would take the cheaper option. Other than initial program load times, you shouldn't notice any difference. For games and browsing you just shouldn't be going to disk very often. Spend any extra money on RAM where too much is just enough.

 

[Wayne Bundrick]

The drive isn't going to make much difference for those games. But RAM and graphics will. Either buy it with 1GB, or upgrade it to 1GB after you buy it.