Looking to replace my old drive that gave up the ghost.

Has anyone used one of these? Are these faster drives worth the cost for the speed difference? I don't require a ton of space. I was doing fine on my old 80 gig drive, so I could manage with one of the 70 gig WD Raptor drives. I'm just trying to figure out whether the cost difference is worth it. I'd certainly like a speed boost if there's one to be had.

Any links to reviews, etc..would be appreciated as well.

EDIT: Am currently reading this review on Tom's Hardware.

Yeah, I just want a drop in replacement though. Don't want to have to bother with a SCSI card and all. Thanks.

About 6 months ago I removed my scsi card and 15K Seagate drive for a SATA WD Raptor drive and haven't even thought about going back to the scsi drive. Work just bought me a new Dell dual core machine and I'm thinking about buying the new 150GB WD Raptor for home and put the current raptor in the Dell since the 7200 RPM drive is SLOW.

About 2 weeks ago I put the WD 74GB 10k drive in my machine as a replacement Windows system and application drive. It's great. Quiet, and doesn't get all that hot. Reinstalling everything is a major PITA.

You will need to create a slipstream install CD because the windows XP installer does not know how to work the SATA controller. I recommend using nlite to do this, rather than doing it manually. With nlite you just click the options you want and it makes the image file for you. Put SP2 on the slipstream while you're at it.

Its considerably faster than my other drives. I'm pleased with it. I didn't want to screw around with SCSI either, even though I know it is vastly superior.

I put my poker hand database (postgresql) on that drive too and it improved the performance dramatically.

FWIW,

Jim

Ok. Good enough. I just orderd the same drive. My SATA controller is onboard. WinXP came preinstalled from Dell. Do you think that I'll still need a slipstream install?

Thanks Peter on the cooler recommendation. I ordered one of those too. Got both from NewEgg for a pretty good deal. $130 for the drive after rebate and $22 for the cooler plus $10 shipping for the two. Hopefully this one will last longer than the Maxtor drive it came with (2 years or so?)

Yeah, unless your existing C: drive is a SATA drive on that same controller and you plan on just doing a copy of your existing system drive.

On the other hand, the system restore CD that came with your Dell may have the drivers already slipstreamed onto it and it might "just work". If your existing drive is an IDE drive, though, I doubt it will work.

An alternative to making a slipstream CD is to put the SATA drivers on a floppy disk and load them during the OS install. I didn't mention that before because I don't own a floppy drive any more so it wasn't an option for me.

Others here will probably have better advice about your particular situation, but I'll help in any way I can.

Best,

Jim

Quote:

An alternative to making a slipstream CD is to put the SATA drivers on a floppy disk and load them during the OS install. I didn't mention that before because I don't own a floppy drive any more so it wasn't an option for me.

That's how I did it on my shuttle it was totally painless.