Does the size of your hard-drive affect performance???

[orbital517]

I was curious if the size of the hard-drive that you have your operating system and most applications affect computer performance? I have a 120GB 7200RPM Western Digital and also a 40GB 7200RPM Western Digital, but I have noticed my computer running a little slower when I just recently re-formatted my system and put my operating system on the 120GB drive. Does it take the computer longer to process the larger hard-drive due to more space on it? Does that make a difference at all? Any suggestions or help will be great.

[g_shocker182]

Usually the RPM speed and cache size make a difference. They even have ~10,000 RPM hard-drives available nowadays.

[thayne]

Does the size of your hard-drive affect performance???

That's what the ladies say! LOL

(JK)

[ledled]

They've had 10K drives for ages, as well as 15K. However, they're SCSI, not IDE.

Yes, HD size does make some difference (the larger the drive, the denser the layers are, so the more data is read) but cache size and RPM comes in to play, too.

[orbital517]

All joking aside, i'm asking a question here. No one knows the answer?

[orbital517]

They've had 10K drives for ages, as well as 15K. However, they're SCSI, not IDE.

Yes, HD size does make some difference (the larger the drive, the denser the layers are, so the more data is read) but cache size and RPM comes in to play, too.

So are you saying that I should put my operating system on my 40GB hard-drive instead of my 120GB hard drive for better system performance? Both drives have 2MB cache and are 7200RPMs

[ledled]

No, just the opposite. You should use the larger drive, all other things being equal.

However, the difference between a 2mb and 8mb cache is INSANE. if you can afford it, go buy an 8mb cache hd.

[Solarjetman]

All joking aside, i'm asking a question here. No one knows the answer?

Well, its been answered but maybe you are looking for a more in depth answer.

For all practical purposes, it would not.

However, on a technical level, it does slow down. But, only on the range of milliseconds.

That being said, there is much more to consider than drive size for speed. There are three factors that effect drive speed. They are seek time, read time, and buss speed.

Think of a hard drive like the board of the game Battleship (i.e. a grid). The computer says "I need the data from sectors B2 through B8". Now, say that the head of the drive that reads the data is currently at F4.

The seek time is the amount of time that the head would need to go from F4 to B2.

The read time is the amount of time it would take the head to read from B2 through B8.

And the Bus speed is the time it takes to transfer the data read to the computer.

A larger drive may have a longer seek time than a smaller drive (since a larger drive would have a larger grid, thus the head would have to travel farther to get to the destination). But, as I said, this is on the range of milliseconds. Thus, for all practical purposes, they are the same.

[gmatov]

orbit,

Most drives today have a seek or access time of 9.5 1to 10 milliseconds.
If you just installed your OS, you have more problems than a new drive for speed drop. Such as your IDE drivers, etc.

You would be hard pressed to see a few milliseconds as a "lag".
DL the newest drivers for your board, they'll probably show you the most improvement.

Better yet is to do a benchmark; of course you may not have the old rates to compare against, but if your numbers are good, I don't think it is slow drive access times.

BTW, all the reviews I have read showed not that much increase in 2 vs 8 meg cache, on the order of 2 to 5 %.

[sterno]

A larger drive may have a longer seek time than a smaller drive (since a larger drive would have a larger grid, thus the head would have to travel farther to get to the destination).

Your analogy fails you here. A larger hard drive isn't really a larger grid, it's just a grid of the same size with a larger number of smaller spaces. Imagine graph paper, you can get a notebook where each square on the paper is 1/4in, or you can get one where each square is 1/8in. Both are still 8.5x11in even though one has more squares. This is part of why some new high-capacity 5400rpm drives are actually faster than older, smaller 7200rpm drives - the rotational speed of the drive is lower, but the speed at which it moves sectors past the read/write head is still higher because the data is packed more densely.

[gmatov]

Sterno,
Excellent analogy. Drives used to be 4 disks or more for 540 meg, 8 read/write heads, and that was a bragging point.

With the areal density today, 1 disk, 2 heads, holds hundreds, maybe thousands of times the data.

A 64th of an inch of disk rotation, we're into a new allocation unit.

Tracks are closer together, like 78 vs 33 RPM vinyl, except much closer, micrometers apart, hell, maybe nanometers.

The only thing I might suggest is 64ths rather than eighths, instead of quarters. They really have gotten that much denser.

Course, a lot of people won't be able to fathom that.

[Solarjetman]

Your analogy fails you here.

You are correct. But I did not want to get too far in depth. My reasoning is that with the larger density of the drive, a more precise location needs to be found. It is true that the physical distance does not change, but if the head needs to "correct" itself after moving, the seek time will rise.

Because this is dependant upon how the drive manufacturer build the drive, I bolded the word "may" so that it leaves open other cases.

In fact your point about the data density is another reason why I put "may" there. The speed advantage from the reading time may outdo any gain in the seek time. Thus your drive is faster.

Plus, there are some drive that have larger platters than others. I have seen one that even required a 5 1/2' bay instead of the standard Hardrive mounts.

[gmatov]

Solar,
Surely, you are going back in time to the "Bigfoot", which was a 5 1/4 inch drive.

I don't think these have been made for a few years. I think they were trying to get rid of some old components, and put on an advertising campaign to fish a few into buying the old stuff. Reduce otherwise unuseable components from their inventory without having to write them off as scrap. I don't think it sold all that well, even with an all out blitz.

[Solarjetman]

I don't think these have been made for a few years.

They haven't. I haven't seen a bigfoot in years.

However, there are other 5 1/4 drives as well. The largest I remember seeing was a Seagate with a little over 40 Gig. So it is not out of the realm of possiblity that there are some still out there. That may be low space compared to new drives, but its not low enough to get rid of if you had it. In fact, I have two 40 GB drive in my computer.

[turk690]

Put the OS on the smaller HDD. The capture HDD should ideally NOT have any programs and OS files on it, and should logically be as large as possible. 1hr of DV AVI is like 13GB. Lastly, if you are using a recent Intel chipset (845PE, 850, etc.) motherboard and Windows OS (98SE, XP, XP Pro) then installation of Intel Acceleration Application IS a must. This makes operation of the ATA bus "more efficient" (more info at their website).

[Jukka]

1st: Check the DMA settings for the drive (Control Panel > System > Hardware > Device Manager > IDE Channel > Properties > Advanced Settings. Ensure 'DMA if available' is selected under 'Transfer Mode')

2nd: What are the UDMA specs for the two drives? You may find that the 120Gb has a lower UDMA (e.g. 66 vs 100 for the 40Gb) and therefore will be slower. When I changed my UDMA33 drive for a UDMA133 drive I couldn't believe how much quicker my machine was.

Hope this helps, if it is not this then I'm stuck, perhaps what other people have said before is correct.