Hard Drive Speeds?

[JAWS]

My current Hard Drive is rated at 7200rpm. If I add a smaller 10gig HD rated at 5400rpm. Will they both work at their normal speeds, or will they equalize and run at 5400rpm? I'm asking because my system seems a lot slower now! Thanks.

[SteveI]

The RPMs will not change. However, if they are on the same cable, sometimes performance may degrade a little... but not to the extent that a 7200RPM drive behaves like a 5400.

What are the DMA settings at, and what are each drive's capabilities? Also, what os are you on?

DMA5 = ATA100.
Not sure about the rest.

Have you tried a disk benchmark?

[JAWS]

Originally posted by SteveI
The RPMs will not change. However, if they are on the same cable, sometimes performance may degrade a little... but not to the extent that a 7200RPM drive behaves like a 5400.

What are the DMA settings at, and what are each drive's capabilities? Also, what os are you on?

DMA5 = ATA100.
Not sure about the rest.

Have you tried a disk benchmark?

First, I do have them on the same cable! I just started running XP Pro about 2 months ago. I formatted both drives from FAT32 to NTFS. As for DMA, I can't find it under the properties box.

Hard Drives:
Primary-30gig 7200
P. Slave 10gig 5400

[SteveI]

Goto device manager, doubleclick on primary IDE Channel, and go to the advanced tab. You should see both the master and slave and their settings. Your primary is most likely ATA100, which translates to DMA5 for Current Transfer Mode. Your slave, is probably slower.

If you are seeing PIO mode, that's at least part of your problem.
Have you tried benchmarking your drives?

Also, when you installed the slave, did you change your settings in the bios? If it is not set to "top speed" there, that cascades down to the OS. Last, when you installed it, did you use "Cable Select" or master/slave config?

Also, when I switched from FAT32 to NTFS, I noticed some speed loss. The benchmarks showed it too. However, it was a good trade off.

[Aedan]

Originally posted by SteveI
Also, when I switched from FAT32 to NTFS, I noticed some speed loss. The benchmarks showed it too. However, it was a good trade off.

There's no doubt about this.. FAT32 is faster than NTFS for single user applications. NTFS is better for multiuser applications.

Not sure why NTFS should be such a good trade off though. I don't see much in the way of benifits for a single user.

AidanII

[Cyberey66]

Well, the only things i can think of for NTFS are security, a little space gain, and built in compression ability. There is something about disk errors and fault tolerance but I'm sure about that stuff. IDK, if that isworth the trade-off for home use. I use NTFS though because I came from NT4, and accually am going back to a dual boot with it.

[Dr_Romulus]

I'm still not sure if NTFS is really worth it for a home machine...

Doesn't really matter since my sons machine is Win98 (FAT32) and I need to be able to communitcate back and forth between his machine and mine...

[SteveI]

Originally posted by Dr_Romulus
I'm still not sure if NTFS is really worth it for a home machine...

Doesn't really matter since my sons machine is Win98 (FAT32) and I need to be able to communitcate back and forth between his machine and mine...

If you are talking about 2 separate machines, the FAT type doesn't matter. If you have file sharing turned on, each machine acts like a file server for the other... In other words, if you have winXP w/ NTFS, and you son has Win98, he can still read your HDD from his machine because your machine OS is reading the OS and sending the info.

To be quite honest, I'm not an expert at NTFS. But I've heard there are additional measures built in to reduce lost clusters and such. Actually, of the 5 machines in my house, 3 use FAT32, 1 NTFS5, and 1 NTFS4.

[mrpcman]

Originally posted by AidanII


There's no doubt about this.. FAT32 is faster than NTFS for single user applications. NTFS is better for multiuser applications.

Not sure why NTFS should be such a good trade off though. I don't see much in the way of benifits for a single user.

AidanII

not having to defrag all the time is one advantage...

[Cyberey66]

If you happen to play around with your computer and get blue screens and have to "improperly" shutdown a lot, then NTFS is probably worth it to have. It takes quite a lot of "improper" shutdowns to corrupt a NTFS partition. My .02, if you have a version of NT, I really see no purpose to have FAT32, except if you dual boot and want to share files.

[Dr_Romulus]

Me being the dumbass, I forgot to mention that my machine is also dual boot with 98SE/2000. Gotta be able to use the drive...

Originally posted by SteveI


If you are talking about 2 separate machines, the FAT type doesn't matter. If you have file sharing turned on, each machine acts like a file server for the other... In other words, if you have winXP w/ NTFS, and you son has Win98, he can still read your HDD from his machine because your machine OS is reading the OS and sending the info.

To be quite honest, I'm not an expert at NTFS. But I've heard there are additional measures built in to reduce lost clusters and such. Actually, of the 5 machines in my house, 3 use FAT32, 1 NTFS5, and 1 NTFS4.

[mrpcman]

Originally posted by Dr_Romulus
Me being the dumbass, I forgot to mention that my machine is also dual boot with 98SE/2000. Gotta be able to use the drive...

then you definatly want fat32 all the way around.

[Aedan]

Originally posted by mrpcman
not having to defrag all the time is one advantage...

That'd be nice, but still isn't NTFS! ARGH! Worse still, the defragmenter provided can't handle defragmenting NTFS's MFT, so you can't fully defragment the drive anyhow.

I notice a fair amount of fragmentation on my NTFS partitions, even after a couple of months worth of use.

AidanII

[Aedan]

Originally posted by satan
If you happen to play around with your computer and get blue screens and have to "improperly" shutdown a lot, then NTFS is probably worth it to have. It takes quite a lot of "improper" shutdowns to corrupt a NTFS partition.

NTFS is a little more robust in this manner, but when NTFS gets corrupt, you'll know about it. I've seen instances where the clean up for NTFS has removed files that were open at the time of the crash. Not just truncated, but deleted.

A certain member on this forum recently suffered that problem too...

AidanII

[robbie]

Originally posted by JAWS
My current Hard Drive is rated at 7200rpm. If I add a smaller 10gig HD rated at 5400rpm. Will they both work at their normal speeds, or will they equalize and run at 5400rpm? I'm asking because my system seems a lot slower now! Thanks.

This seems to fall into the catagory of "what's the weakest link??"
I believe that the 5400 is holding you back.

Rob