reply to post by Rocketman7
Most or even all hard disks, like the one you linked, are far too slow to saturate a SATA II or a fast SAS bus. The 'IO Data transfer rate' is how
fast the SAS bus is, but the hard disk won't even reach that.
Most motherboards do not come with SAS or SCSI either. Go with SATA. SATA is what the majority of hard disk and motherboards use. SATA II has a max
transfer rate of 3 gigabits or about 375 megabytes per second and SATA III has a max transfer rate of double that. The Crucial M4 will be bottlenecked
if operated on a SATA II motherboard because its maximum read speed exceeds SATA II bandwidth.
The SSD you linked has several times the read speed of a typical hard disk (like the one you linked) and a similar write speed. However, remember the
SSD has no moving parts, so latencies are massively reduced. In some benchmarks where the HDD head has to move across the disk, a SSD will be a
hundred times faster.
I just went from a Samsung Spinpoint F3 1TB 7200 rpm to a 160GB Intel X18M G2 (same as Intel X25M G2). The X18M G2 is somewhat slower than a Crucial
M4 64GB provided the M4 is operated with SATA III bandwidth, and the Spinpoint F3 is faster than a 500GB 7200rpm drive. The difference in speed
between the HDD and SSD though, is large. Everything on the SSD occurs almost instantaneously, whereas the hard disk, even when defragmented with a
payware defragmentation program, takes significantly longer to load programs.. Anandtech said one of the biggest upgrades to a PC is changing to a
SSD. I can see why.
My only concern is the 64 GB SSD might be too small. I would aim for a minimum of a 120 GB. If you cannot afford that, either get a cheaper SSD, wait
until they are cheaper, or get a HDD. Go with a 1TB drive as the $/GB is usually much lower and the larger a hard disk or SSD is the faster. Also
often external hard drives are bottlenecked by the interface they are using, so if you get an external make sure it and your machine have eSATA or USB
3.0.
Samsung Spinpoint F3 is a great drive. I highly recommend it. Remember there is a HDD shortage at the moment because of flooding in SE Asia. I got
mine for $59 AUD, the price should return to around that level towards the end of the year.
My Intel X18M G2 came out in 2009. I got it second hand for $150 AUD. Don't get this drive unless it's second hand, because it's outdated. I recommend
any new Intel SSD and the Crucial M4. OCZ have some cheaper SSDs but I am unsure how good or reliable they are.
Also check out a store called newegg.
Also laptops typically only fit 2.5 inch drives, not 3.5 inch drives.
edit on 16/2/12 by C0bzz because: (no reason given)