Windows 7: Best Hard drive for performance upgrade

Hi All,

My PC's Windows Experience index rating is currently at 5.9 due to my HDD. It's a Seagate Barracuda 7200.10 500GB. Which HDD should I look at to get more performance out of the rig? All the other fields are in the 7.0 to 7.6 range.



Thanks!

To break the 5.9 barrier you either have to go with a raid array stripped for speed or you need to go SSD.

5.9 is basically the topped out number for a single spinning drive.

But as such, there are a lot of drives that have a 5.9 value that range a lot of performance... So yes you could get a 10,000 RPM drive and better your performance but the number will still not go over 5.9. But also you won;t "feel" the difference between a 7200 and 10k drive anyway in reality...

But going from a spinner to an SSD will make unbelievably noticable improvements in everything you do on your computer. Every mouseclick will INSTANTLY command reaction. No more waiting 25 seconds to photoshop to load, hows 2.5 seconds for you?

So... if you want to both break through the 5.9 barrier AND do something with real, tangeable, howdidIgetalong before gains... buy a 120 or 160 gig SSD for your root drive...

Ditto to everything fseal said, good info!

A SSD on your system will score 7.2-7.9 depending on the quality of the one you buy.

I believe running Windows on any hard drive, whether it be in RAID or stand alone will only score a max of 5.9 in WEI. To break that barrier and get an actual rating, Solid State Drives are the way to go. They're pretty expensive, but very worth it!

Also, if you want a higher performing hard drive....

Newegg.com - Seagate Barracuda XT ST32000641AS 2TB 7200 RPM 64MB Cache SATA 6.0Gb/s 3.5" Internal Hard Drive -Bare Drive

This will be your best bet. A rule of thumb for hard drive performance is how dense the platters are for data, meaning the hard drive can pack say 200 gigs in the first three or so centimeters on the outer edge of the hard disk, which is the fastest part, compared to 100.

Or if you really want massive storage...

Newegg.com - HITACHI Deskstar 0S03230 3TB 5400 RPM 32MB Cache SATA 6.0Gb/s 3.5" Internal Hard Drive -Bare Drive

That might also be better since the drive's disk platters are pretty dense.

Thanks for the speedy replies. The reason I ask is that the PC works very hard as I VPN to work to manage a network as well as using it as a gaming box.

I'll look at SSD drives as soon as possible.

Many thanks!

If I may suggest so for a SSD for SATAII....

Newegg.com - OCZ Vertex 2 OCZSSD3-2VTX120G 3.5" 120GB SATA II MLC Internal Solid State Drive (SSD)