Has anyone tried out these "special Edition" drives. I have been thinking about getting one of those 8mb buffer drives. I have read some good reviews about them. I was just wondering about anyone's real world experiences with them.
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Has anyone tried out these "special Edition" drives. I have been thinking about getting one of those 8mb buffer drives. I have read some good reviews about them. I was just wondering about anyone's real world experiences with them.
hellishly faster -- that 8mb cache helps. Friend of mine's got one and trust me, its worth the extra $$ if you work with a lot of data
They mostly help when working with large files. The drive is pretty damn fast, beats the IBM 120GXP in most of the benchmarks.
Jungle Dude (Man/boy?) returns! At last someone to piss the mods off more than me... <img border="0" title="" alt="[Wink]" src="wink.gif" /> :D :D :D
But back to the subject, generally the only time any ata 66/100/133 disk actually delivers its maximum performance is when it's emptying its buffer(so actually they help with lots of small files!?), so yes big buffer gives better performance especially with all those 000's of windoze files...
I don't know why you are describing them as 'special edition' though? I pressume some manufacturers are producing identical units with 4/8mb buffers & then calling them special?
</font><blockquote><font size="1" face="Trebuchet MS, Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">quote:</font><hr /><font size="2" face="Trebuchet MS, Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">Originally posted by Sandman72:
<strong>Has anyone tried out these "special Edition" drives. I have been thinking about getting one of those 8mb buffer drives. I have read some good reviews about them. I was just wondering about anyone's real world experiences with them.</strong></font><hr /></blockquote><font size="2" face="Trebuchet MS, Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">I am reaaly sorry to say this - WD Sucks.
WD was my favorite HDD manufacturer back in the 6.4Gb days.
After it they had some models which drove me mad.
Their Stabilty and quality degraded over the last year.
Nevertheless I think that HDD was never the bottleneck in PC Systems.
Most of the time is Memory and Bus Speed (on third place is the video).
I recommend That you will buy Maxtor or Seagate drive - they are Highly reliable.
Good Luck (and sorry to disappoint you)
Gabriel
</font><blockquote><font size="1" face="Trebuchet MS, Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">quote:</font><hr /><font size="2" face="Trebuchet MS, Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">Originally posted by confus-ed:
<strong>Jungle Dude (Man/boy?) returns! At last someone to piss the mods off more than me... <img border="0" title="" alt="[Wink]" src="wink.gif" /> :D :D :D </strong></font><hr /></blockquote><font size="2" face="Trebuchet MS, Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">Ehh, I'm trying not to. Maybe the mods can put the past behind. I hope they can. :cool:
I also agree with Gabriel and I've had 3 Maxtor hard drives all of which have been great...Maxtor = good :)
</font><blockquote><font size="1" face="Trebuchet MS, Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">quote:</font><hr /><font size="2" face="Trebuchet MS, Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">Originally posted by confus-ed:
<strong>Jungle Dude (Man/boy?) returns! At last someone to piss the mods off more than me... <img border="0" title="" alt="[Wink]" src="wink.gif" /> :D :D :D
But back to the subject, generally the only time any ata 66/100/133 disk actually delivers its maximum performance is when it's emptying its buffer(so actually they help with lots of small files!?), so yes big buffer gives better performance especially with all those 000's of windoze files...
I don't know why you are describing them as 'special edition' though? I pressume some manufacturers are producing identical units with 4/8mb buffers & then calling them special?</strong></font><hr /></blockquote><font size="2" face="Trebuchet MS, Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">I desribed them as "special edition" drives because that is what WD called them. I appreciate yours and everyone elses opinions thus far. I have never had any problems with WD or Maxtor drives. So to me its 6 of one and half dozen of another unless the "special edition" part really makes that much of a difference.
</font><blockquote><font size="1" face="Trebuchet MS, Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">quote:</font><hr /><font size="2" face="Trebuchet MS, Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">Originally posted by confus-ed:
<strong>Jungle Dude (Man/boy?) returns! At last someone to piss the mods off more than me... <img border="0" title="" alt="[Wink]" src="wink.gif" /> :D :D :D
But back to the subject, generally the only time any ata 66/100/133 disk actually delivers its maximum performance is when it's emptying its buffer(so actually they help with lots of small files!?), so yes big buffer gives better performance especially with all those 000's of windoze files...
I don't know why you are describing them as 'special edition' though? I pressume some manufacturers are producing identical units with 4/8mb buffers & then calling them special?</strong></font><hr /></blockquote><font size="2" face="Trebuchet MS, Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">I havent' seen any other IDE drives with a buffer over 2MB.
</font><blockquote><font size="1" face="Trebuchet MS, Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">quote:</font><hr /><font size="2" face="Trebuchet MS, Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">Originally posted by JungleMan:
<strong>I havent' seen any other IDE drives with a buffer over 2MB.</strong></font><hr /></blockquote><font size="2" face="Trebuchet MS, Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">I can find SCSI, lots, but IDE? only as said...
<a href="http://www4.tomshardware.com/storage/01q4/011015/index.html" target="_blank">New Performers From Western Digital:</a>
Here's the summary "Western Digital was the first to release a 100GB hard drive running at 7200 rpm. Now, WD has come out with new version of this model, increasing the original 2 MB buffer to 8 MB. They've released a 120 GB hard drive as well."
No doubt they'll all get around to it..... <img border="0" title="" alt="[Wink]" src="wink.gif" />
My IBM is still faster whatever the cache sizes, better controller? :confused:
anyone in UK ,,,for a laff ,goto <a href="http://www.maplin.co.uk" target="_blank">www.maplin.co.uk</a> and price those drives !!!!
i,m selling full machines for less!!!
FTF
Wstern Digital used to suck honestly, but a lot of reviews and new technology made me reconsider my choice. Wanting a big fat hard drive, it was the only one i considered because at the shop all Maxtors over 40 GB have massive failures after 2 months about 90 % return so i didnt even want to chance loosing my data. And IBM HDD i've never seen them in action except when customers brought them to the store for replacement.. I bought a nice 120 GB HDD 8MB buffer and woah ! Nice performance, not to costly and pretty silent too. Almost the same effect from going up to 2MB of buffer some time ago. The only shame is i had to downgrade to ATA100 since my Maxtor was ATA133...
You always say that until they dont die in your face, but this hard drive from WD is very very nice!! Hope your not in FAT16 lol
I wantedto try it but i've heard that some older motherboards won't support some bigger harddrives, I think it was over 35 GB or something. Well do you guys think that it will work on my soyo <a href="http://www.soyousa.com/products/proddesc.php?id=71" target="_blank">SY-6BB</a> ? :confused:
Also what would be the most RAM I can stuff in this motherboard?
It is capable of maximum 768MB SDRAM Prince,
<a href="http://www.soyousa.com/downloads/filedesc.php?id=1214" target="_blank">A bios update is available here</a>
<a href="http://www.soyousa.com/dl/manuals/686/m6bb11.pdf" target="_blank">The manual is available here and will specify your ram type and configuration</a>
Ok, so just by updating the BIOS that can let me use these drives? :p
In most cases yes, unfortunately there was no description of what the bios fixes, so I couldn't say for definite.
</font><blockquote><font size="1" face="Trebuchet MS, Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">quote:</font><hr /><font size="2" face="Trebuchet MS, Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">Originally posted by Prince Abaddon:
<strong>Ok, so just by updating the BIOS that can let me use these drives? :p </strong></font><hr /></blockquote><font size="2" face="Trebuchet MS, Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">Maybe maybe not from the mannual - '2x 40 pin Bus mastering E-IDE/ATAPI Ports". My experience says that most 40 pin controllers can't do it, but there are exceptions....
You are gonna have to ask, but since I looked there is a faq with the answer for you <img border="0" title="" alt="[Wink]" src="wink.gif" />
<a href="http://www.soyousa.com/products/proddesc.php?id=71" target="_blank">Maximum supported hard disk size for Socket 370 Motherboard - Soyo FAQs</a>
Maximum supported hard disk size for Slot 1 Motherboards:
<a href="http://www.soyousa.com/kb/kbdesc.php?id=28" target="_blank">http://www.soyousa.com/kb/kbdesc.php?id=28</a>
Sadly, 32GB, apparrently that went with the Award BIOS. As NooNoo's link reveals, the most up-to date BIOS revision is 1998, you could try it but they probably weren't thinking ahead to >32G drives then.
You could try overlay software, but IMHO that's a last resort, it makes things messy if anything goes wrong. A better solution if you really want to go with this for your current system would be to use a PCI drive controller e.g. Promise, which will have a suitable BIOS and UDMA to match the new drive.
Also you don't mention your O.S. Win95 (all) can't use over 32G either.
ok then, I went window shopping and found out that 30GB HD are discontinued. But I don't want to get a 20GB HD either. So can I just get a 40GB HD and partition it?
I'm currently using Windows XP but planning to switch back to Windows 98.(I want to use Opengl for my games, not software rendering)
A 40G drive should have a jumper setting to "clip" the size to 32G for the present. If you try to just put a 32G partition on the full drive, the results can be unpredictable depending on how the BIOS is written. In the future if you upgrade to a m/board which can recognise the full size, you will be able to re-partition the drive to full size and re-load it.Quote:
Originally posted by Prince Abaddon
So can I just get a 40GB HD and partition it?
so can I reuse the other 8GB? or is it just like throwing 8 GBs away.:(Quote:
Originally posted by PIatypus
A 40G drive should have a jumper setting to "clip" the size to 32G for the present. If you try to just put a 32G partition on the full drive, the results can be unpredictable depending on how the BIOS is written. In the future if you upgrade to a m/board which can recognise the full size, you will be able to re-partition the drive to full size and re-load it.
What 40GB HD out there support "Clip"ing?
Yes, you will be able to reclaim the unused 8GB in the future when the drive is transferred to a system that understands >32G drives.Quote:
Originally posted by Prince Abaddon
so can I reuse the other 8GB? or is it just like throwing 8 GBs away.:(
What 40GB HD out there support "Clip"ing?
Someone else may know more brand detail than me, but to my knowledge, any decent brand should have a facility to limit capacity to 32G. I mostly lean toward Western Digital, but the 40G Seagate Barracuda and Samsung SpinPoint I have on the desk at the moment both have jumper settings for this.