Show Us Your WEI

[Johanster]

Why do you need enormous storage? For me, I don't have many programs installed, and little to no games. An 80GB HDD is fine! Once you add music, and videos and stuff, that is where the data starts to fill up, but that's what external/more HDD's are for!

 

[DJG]

Why do you need enormous storage? For me, I don't have many programs installed, and little to no games. An 80GB HDD is fine! Once you add music, and videos and stuff, that is where the data starts to fill up, but that's what external/more HDD's are for!

Internally controlled drive configurations are faster and in the long run the storage system is more reliable and manageable. However hardware-wise they are more of a pain to assemble.

 

[ikilledkenny]

Internally controlled drive configurations are faster and in the long run the storage system is more reliable and manageable. However hardware-wise they are more of a pain to assemble.

Not only that, it's sometimes easier to have it all in one place.

 

[ciphernemo]

Personally, I think that the WD 1TB Caviar Black is better than most of the SSD's out there. Sure it's slower than them, but the storage is enormous.

It's a LOT slower, lol. I use a RAID 0 of OCZ Vertex 30GB SSDs to get 60GB (plenty for a C: partition). I do so because of performance. But the WD Black 1TB drives are amazing values for their performance level when compared with other mechanical drives. I actually run one as my D: and E: partitions to store my documents, media files, etc. They are solid for massive amounts of storage.

Why do you need enormous storage? For me, I don't have many programs installed, and little to no games. An 80GB HDD is fine! Once you add music, and videos and stuff, that is where the data starts to fill up, but that's what external/more HDD's are for!

You're just not expanding your mind enough to consider all of the possibilities.

I'm only using 134GB on my 1TB drive right now, but I can easily use more. Some examples:

• On my gaming rig I sometimes use FRAPS to record video of a game I'm playing. In raw format at 50% size of my 3840x1024 resolution (3x 1280x1024 monitors), which is 1920x512, it eats up 1GB every minute. So an hour long recording is 60GB.
• On my Ubuntu Linux system running a program called "MythTV", I have it scheduling and recording TV programs (it's acting as an HTPC). It takes 7GB per hour of recording in a very high quality format. It only has a 250GB hard drive, and split into two partitions, with one for the OS and the other for the sotrage (197GB for recordings), I'm limited to recording and saving 28 hours of TV at one time. I'll be switching this older system out for my previous gaming rig, so I'll upgrade to a WD Black 1TB drive at that point.
• My relatively small MP3 collection is 20GB. I can easily ramp this up to 100GB or so now with tons of space. I put off collecting too much in MP3 format in the past because of drive limitations. Now I don't have to hold back.
• All of my real documents are 89GB. This includes images I work on in Photoshop, Office documents, resumes, my programming projects, and other small projects, etc.

And I wouldn't dare run all of these things on an external drive. That's just silly since I have plenty of room in my case and my case has better cooling than an external enclosure for a drive. The performance is better (unless you run eSATA for your external drives), there are less cables to deal with on your desk, and your drive is better protected in a PC case than external.

So depending upon what you're doing, it is easy to make use of 1TB of space.

Now compare that to my little netbook with a 4GB SSD and a 16GB SD card. I cut all of the fat for that thing, but it serves a very different purpose.

 

[Phenom]

SSD is the future then

Thanks btw guys.

 

[Cindy]

This is mine

 

[Johanster]

It's a LOT slower, lol. I use a RAID 0 of OCZ Vertex 30GB SSDs to get 60GB (plenty for a C: partition). I do so because of performance. But the WD Black 1TB drives are amazing values for their performance level when compared with other mechanical drives. I actually run one as my D: and E: partitions to store my documents, media files, etc. They are solid for massive amounts of storage.



You're just not expanding your mind enough to consider all of the possibilities.

I'm only using 134GB on my 1TB drive right now, but I can easily use more. Some examples:

• On my gaming rig I sometimes use FRAPS to record video of a game I'm playing. In raw format at 50% size of my 3840x1024 resolution (3x 1280x1024 monitors), which is 1920x512, it eats up 1GB every minute. So an hour long recording is 60GB.
• On my Ubuntu Linux system running a program called "MythTV", I have it scheduling and recording TV programs (it's acting as an HTPC). It takes 7GB per hour of recording in a very high quality format. It only has a 250GB hard drive, and split into two partitions, with one for the OS and the other for the sotrage (197GB for recordings), I'm limited to recording and saving 28 hours of TV at one time. I'll be switching this older system out for my previous gaming rig, so I'll upgrade to a WD Black 1TB drive at that point.
• My relatively small MP3 collection is 20GB. I can easily ramp this up to 100GB or so now with tons of space. I put off collecting too much in MP3 format in the past because of drive limitations. Now I don't have to hold back.
• All of my real documents are 89GB. This includes images I work on in Photoshop, Office documents, resumes, my programming projects, and other small projects, etc.

And I wouldn't dare run all of these things on an external drive. That's just silly since I have plenty of room in my case and my case has better cooling than an external enclosure for a drive. The performance is better (unless you run eSATA for your external drives), there are less cables to deal with on your desk, and your drive is better protected in a PC case than external.

So depending upon what you're doing, it is easy to make use of 1TB of space.

Now compare that to my little netbook with a 4GB SSD and a 16GB SD card. I cut all of the fat for that thing, but it serves a very different purpose.

I understand your point, but I was arguing that you don't need 1TB of space on your C: drive. You can easily get away with maybe a 120GB C: drive. I was arguing that when you need space, you can put in some 1TB internal Hard Drives, rather than put it all on a single hard drive.

 

[Firestrider]

You can have a 64-80GB SSD for your applications and OS (you can probably fit 2-3 games, CS4, office enterprise, visual studio, and an AV with room to spare), then just map all your libraries to a better GB/$ HDD for storage.

The problem is that some applications like to store media in their own directories.

 

[Muad Dib]

Well having been through the thread from start to here it would appear that single mechanical drives, of good to very good performance ratings, top out at about a WEI of 5.7-5.9. Cross-referencing this thread with the Show Us Your Hard Drive thread:

http://www.sevenforums.com/performance-maintenance/4269-show-us-your-hard-drive-performance.html

that is about 80-100MB/s HD Tune results.

Hmmm.... wonder if SSDs will drop in price dramatically for the Black Friday sales?

 

[ikilledkenny]

Well having been through the thread from start to here it would appear that single mechanical drives, of good to very good performance ratings, top out at about a WEI of 5.7-5.9. Cross-referencing this thread with the Show Us Your Hard Drive thread:

http://www.sevenforums.com/performance-maintenance/4269-show-us-your-hard-drive-performance.html

that is about 80-100MB/s HD Tune results.

Hmmm.... wonder if SSDs will drop in price dramatically for the Black Friday sales?

Or laptops will be thrown around at Wal-Mart like during christmas.

 

[Muad Dib]

You can have a 64-80GB SSD for your applications and OS (you can probably fit 2-3 games, CS4, office enterprise, visual studio, and an AV with room to spare), then just map all your libraries to a better GB/$ HDD for storage.

The problem is that some applications like to store media in their own directories.

Yes. Some will use PROGRAM DATA as well as PROGRAM FILES\COMMON FILES folders on the OS Drive extensively regardless where the actual user specified "Install Folder" is located.

Also, the RC to 7xxxx Win7 upgrades have thus far required about 20Gb of FREE space to do the upgrade install.

And WINSXS does not seem to be getting smaller.

My guestimate is a 64GB SSD configuration (since 32 and 64GB sizes are "common") would be the minimum for future expansion/upgrade capability.

 

[ikilledkenny]

I've searched Google up and down about this build and just thought that I would mention that I was unable to find anything about an x86 build.

Hopefully, that will change.

 

[ciphernemo]

You can have a 64-80GB SSD for your applications and OS (you can probably fit 2-3 games, CS4, office enterprise, visual studio, and an AV with room to spare), then just map all your libraries to a better GB/$ HDD for storage.

The problem is that some applications like to store media in their own directories.

That won't really help gamers. Games these days can be a few GB to 15+GB. They need to load those data files quickly, and hence why people want them installed on fast drives.

Also, as Muad Dib pointed out, it isn't practical for the average user to do this. Everything application is installed in %PROGRAMFILES% or %PROGRAMFILES(x86)%

 

[Antman]

WAIK (7)
WAIK (7) Reference
Both are English language.

Create a custom installation - place %USERPROFILES%, %PROGRAMFILES% where you want to.

Install your drivers of choice, install preferred apps as part of OS install.

Apply all reg tweaks as part of OS install.

And so on.

 

[Muad Dib]

That won't really help gamers. Games these days can be a few GB to 15+GB. They need to load those data files quickly, and hence why people want them installed on fast drives.

Also, as Muad Dib pointed out, it isn't practical for the average user to do this. Everything application is installed in %PROGRAMFILES% or %PROGRAMFILES(x86)%

WAIK (7)
WAIK (7) Reference
Both are English language.

Create a custom installation - place %USERPROFILES%, %PROGRAMFILES% where you want to.

Install your drivers of choice, install preferred apps as part of OS install.

Apply all reg tweaks as part of OS install.

And so on.

Antman, your solution is correct, known and appreciated to the world of the tech savvy but I believe Ciphernemo understood my point best.

When W7 RTM is out I WILL be looking at keeping MY OS and critical apps/data able to fit nicely on a 64GB SSD (1x64 or 2x32 RAID0) for speed just as a curiosity. But would not even mention it to any of my clients.

SSDs are still far away from a reasonable $$$/GB AVERAGE consumer price point.

 

[nate42nd]

I guess I need a good video card and I will have a "real" computer. The rest look pretty good to me. I currently have a 9500GT. Thinking of a GTX260 or GTX 275.


What will making the "desktop performance" do for me as opposed to the "gaming graphics"?

Seems like a big difference between the two.

 

[Muad Dib]

I guess I need a good video card and I will have a "real" computer. The rest look pretty good to me. I currently have a 9500GT. Thinking of a GTX260 or GTX 275.
View attachment 17884

What will making the "desktop performance" do for me as opposed to the "gaming graphics"?

Seems like a big difference between the two.

Your on the right track - I have an OCed Sapphire HD4830 and get 7.3 WEI across the board except for HDD (I envy your SSDs man!).

Anyway in case you have not seen it before check out Tom's Video Heirarchy: Graphics Card Hierarchy Chart - Review Tom's Hardware : Best Graphics Cards For The Money: Jan. '09

P.S. You need to go UP the heirarchy 4-5 steps to make the upgrade gains worth the cost according to many.


P.S.S. I looked at your HD Tune results. I have a WD5000AAKS as well. What firmware and driver version are you running to get your HD Tune results? Reason I ask is my results are less and I don't know why.....

P.S.S.S. Gaming graphics tests the 3D processors/accleration on the cards which are not used in normal operations (less power, less heat, less fan noise). Desktop graphics will test a cards 2D capabilities for niceties such as multiple windows on multiple virtual desktops on multiple monitors, dragging windows contents, windows open/close animation eye candy, etc, etc, etc.

 

[Phenom]

And while looking for GFX cards please check out if your MB supports Nforce or Crossfire.
It would make a difference if you'd go for ATI or Nvidia.

Nforce makes 2 or more Nvidia cards possible
Crossfire makes 2 or more ATI cards possible.

Only ofc. if your interested in using 2 vid cards.

Correct me if i'm wrong people.

- Phenom

 

[bobtran]

Mine under Windows 7 RC

 

[ciphernemo]

SSDs are still far away from a reasonable $$$/GB AVERAGE consumer price point.

Yup, they have some ways to go before they replace HDDs. They need to get closer to the 1GB/$1 range for the performance drives. Those like the OCZ Vertex and Summit series are closer to 1GB/$5 range for smaller sizes and 1GB/$2.50-$3 for larger sizes. And the top-dog Intel drives are 1GB/$5+ all the way through their sizes.

But for us gamers and enthusiasts, they're at the "justifiable" price range, hehehe.