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I need 2 New Sata hard Drives

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Any recommendations? Currently using 2 3-year-old 150Gig WD's, and I need more space to accommodate the many nice scenery add-ons for FSX. Any recommendations? I'm looking at >2 x 300 Gig (probably 2 500 Gigs) to be set up, as I have things right now, in RAID 0 format. Can the newer 7200 RPM drives compare to my older 150 GIG drives running at 10K? I cannot do top-shelf, but I'm willing to spend a little more for quality and dependability. Your recommendations are most appreciated.Cheers,http://www.my-buddy-icon.com/Icons/objects/red_3d_plane.gifAlex ChristoffN562ZBaltimore, MD


PowerSpec G426 PC running Windows 11 Pro 64-bit OS, Intel Core i7-6700K processor @3.5GHz, ASUS GeForce RTX 4070 12GB Dual Graphics Card, ASUS TUF Z590-Plus Gaming motherboard, Samsung 870 EVO 2TB SSD, Samsung 750 EVO 500GB SSD, Acer Predator X34 34" curved monitor (external view), RealSim Gear G-1000 avionics hardware, Slavix, Stay Level Custom Metal Panel, Honeycomb Alpha Yoke, Honeycomb Bravo Throttle, Redbird Alloy THI, Saitek Combat Rudder Pedals.

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I would look at Seagate's latest 32mb cache drives. 2x 500GB should be plenty.


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Guest D17S

The seagate -11s are the top dogs right now. http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx...N82E16822148298$120 for the best 7200RPM, 750GB (5 year warranty'd) around is hard to pass up. Their 500 runs ~ $100.http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx...N82E16822148288A little less? Here's their new single platter 320 @ $70http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx...N82E16822148316Any of these drives will certainly 'feel' quicker than the older raptors. It'll be hard to feel the difference between this one and even that new Velocity Raptor. These modern 7200s really are the way to go. If you get 2, don't Raid-0 'em. They are fast enough on their own. Use one as a dedicated backup. Acronis' last update was hacky and brought me to the edge of an abyss a couple of times. 'Nuf a dat. I've swapped to Norton Ghost 14 lately. They're making a comeback. It's a very good product.

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Guest jahman

>I cannot do top-shelf, but I'm willing to spend a little more for quality and dependability.What's top-shelf? A 15K rpm Ultra-Wide SCSI HDD? A 64 GBy SSD - Solid-State Flash HDD? :-)You should look into a WD 10K rpm 150 GBy Raptor: You might be surprised by the price! (Like only $170...)150 GBy Raptor: http://computers.pricegrabber.com/hard-dri...sort_type=priceGet one Raptor for Windows and another for FSX and scenery, especially if you load photo-realistic scenery!Note: 300 GBy Raptors seem to no longer be available as they are being replaced by the VelociRaptors (of Jurassic Park fame...), and the VelociRaptors are just about to hit the shelves. Are VelociRaptors more Veloci than the Raptors? Well, they certainly seem to run hotter if the new heat sinks sported by the VelociRaptor cases are any guide, and if hotter means faster, then the "The World's Fastest SATA Drive" legend on the WD page might actualy be true.See: http://www.westerndigital.com/en/products/...asp?DriveID=459Plus the VelociRaptors sport a whopping estimated MTBF - Mean-Time between failures of 1.4 million hours (that

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Thanks all - that really answered my question.Cheers,http://www.my-buddy-icon.com/Icons/objects/red_3d_plane.gifAlex ChristoffN562ZBaltimore, MD


PowerSpec G426 PC running Windows 11 Pro 64-bit OS, Intel Core i7-6700K processor @3.5GHz, ASUS GeForce RTX 4070 12GB Dual Graphics Card, ASUS TUF Z590-Plus Gaming motherboard, Samsung 870 EVO 2TB SSD, Samsung 750 EVO 500GB SSD, Acer Predator X34 34" curved monitor (external view), RealSim Gear G-1000 avionics hardware, Slavix, Stay Level Custom Metal Panel, Honeycomb Alpha Yoke, Honeycomb Bravo Throttle, Redbird Alloy THI, Saitek Combat Rudder Pedals.

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Jahman - Special thanks to you and Sam for the detailed replies, links, etc. The newer 7200's sound to be as fast and efficient as the older 10K SATA drives. And $100 for 500GB I can't afford not to upgrade.......I went with 2 Seagate Barracuda 32MB, 500 GB, 7200 RPM drives. Question for you all: Is it difficult to change over from a RAID 0 config to RAID 1, 2, etc? I will probably just have my local guy do the data exchange and conversion for me. They have the expertise, time and gear to pull it off, which will be a lot easier on my mental health, I'm sure!Thanks All,http://www.my-buddy-icon.com/Icons/objects/red_3d_plane.gifAlex ChristoffN562ZBaltimore, MD


PowerSpec G426 PC running Windows 11 Pro 64-bit OS, Intel Core i7-6700K processor @3.5GHz, ASUS GeForce RTX 4070 12GB Dual Graphics Card, ASUS TUF Z590-Plus Gaming motherboard, Samsung 870 EVO 2TB SSD, Samsung 750 EVO 500GB SSD, Acer Predator X34 34" curved monitor (external view), RealSim Gear G-1000 avionics hardware, Slavix, Stay Level Custom Metal Panel, Honeycomb Alpha Yoke, Honeycomb Bravo Throttle, Redbird Alloy THI, Saitek Combat Rudder Pedals.

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Sam,I'm contemplating a new and faster hard drive to speed up FS9 and I was curious what you wrote about the Velociraptor. I have only just starting browsing around for candidates, but at least according to this test http://www.hothardware.com/Articles/Wester...r_300GB/?page=6 the velociraptor seems to be the way to go, albeit pricey at this point. So what do you base your statement "It'll be hard to feel the difference between this one and even that new Velocity Raptor" on?


Krister Lindén
EFMA, Finland
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Guest jahman

>Jahman - >>Special thanks to you and Sam for the detailed replies,Most wellcome!>Question for you all: Is it difficult to change over from a>RAID 0 config to RAID 1, 2, etc?Not at all:1. Copy the RAID 0 drive contents to another drive,2. Re-Configure the RAID 0 drives to RAID 1 with your RAID set-up and configuration utility,3. Format your new RAID 1 drives,4. Copy the data saved in step 1 to your new RAID 1 drive.For RAID configurations beyond 1 you will need more than 2 drives!Cheers,jahman.

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Guest D17S

Two things really. 1) First the performance advantage in FS will be limited to only the Initial FS load, then new (initial) flight load times. In-game performance is not inhibited in any way by modern 7200 RPM drives. After a fresh boot. The 1st load of the game or a new flight comes entirely from the HD. After the 1st load, the whole game and subsequent flight re-loads will occur in ~ 10 seconds, regardless of HD. There's some magic going on behind the Vista-scenes, but a full data transfer from the HD is only necessary once per boot. The new Raptor is finally matching the 110MB/s transfer rate I've had on my seagate -11 for 6 months now, but decreased it's access time. Therefore, it's possible that the Raptor might be able to load an Initial FS screen, then a First flight faster than the -11 seagate. My initial load times for game/first flight is ~40-50 seconds. This is where the raptor could make a difference. So we have the raptor's speed advantage (possibly) cutting my initial game/flight load times from 40-50 seconds . . . to what . . . and at what cost? After that, I can have them back in 10 seconds with my -11. I wouldn't spend a penny to cut that time to 7.29086 seconds. My argument there is: "Fast enough is fast enough." 2) But lets say I really want shave that initial load time to 35 seconds (that's all you're gonna get, if that). How much is this (irrelevant) difference going to cost, including ALL costs. First a 300GB Vraptor is what, $300? I can get two -11 seagate 750s for that. My cost is this: I am giving up 750GBs of fully backup'd capacity (750x2) for 300GB of non-backup'd storage. So what did I gain for this 100% increase in data loss risk and 125% loss of date storage space capability. I shaved off 3.28375 seconds of my initial game/flight times. Here, my argument is simply this: "That's just goofy!"

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Guest jahman

In-game performance is not inhibited in any way by>modern 7200 RPM drives. >Including loading photorealistic scenery while flying at low altitude at 250 KIAS?Looking for this answer meeself...Cheers,-jahman.

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Guest D17S

That's a processing bottleneck called the "fuzzies." It's not a harddrive issue.

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Guest D17S

The Fuzzy Phenomena is not about autogen. It's about - processing - textures, Photoreal or otherwise. ExTteme memory subsystem optimizations seem to help.Load times can be addressed too, with defragging strategies. However the Raptor really May be able to help . . . but at what benefit . . . and at what cost? That thing's still a really tough sell.

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Thanks for sharing your insight Sam!I just used Sisoft Sandra to benchmark my harddisk (a Seagate ST3250824NS 250 GB SATA3Gb with 8 MB cache) and got this to compare with the Velociraptor:Edit: I also checked my Samsung Spinpoint F1 750 GB Sata 3 32 MB CacheDrive Index (MB/s) my: 49 MB/sSamsung F1: 72,4 MB/s (tested on Vista)velociraptor: 92,90 MB/sAccess time (ms)my: 17 msSamsung F1: 15 ms (tested on Vista)velociraptor: 7 msSo I guess there is room for improvement! :) Of course this I knew from the beginning, but the question for me of course is which disk would suit my needs the best (running Windows XP 32 Bit and only MSFS2k2 related software).


Krister Lindén
EFMA, Finland
------------------
 

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Guest D17S

That spinpoint is one of the great 7200s too. It should xfer at or above 100MB/s. Make sure the jumper is removed from the back of the drive and writeback cache is enabled. That 250's a slug. How old is it? My seagate -11 is getting 110MB/s. Raptor v 7200 data xfer rates should be about the same. It's down to access times. Faster will help. We know how much more it will cost, but how much will it help? I'm betting not much. Can you get it "on loan" someway?

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