I recently upgraded my computer to a 3.0 GHz Pentium on an MSI
motherboard with the Canterwood chipset.

I used dual WD Raptor SATA drives in a RAID configuration off  the
southbridge.

These have seek times of about 7ms, an 8MB buffer, and spin at 10,000 RPM.
My old drive was a 40GB WD Caviar.  Incidentally, it was much noisier than
the new drives, but I think that is the luck of the draw.

It was very easy to install on a clean installation of XP.  (Tom's Hardware
Guide has an article that gives an idea of how it works.)

I primarily use my computer for playing Morrowind.  I have found that the
initial loading of the game is significantly faster and the pauses during
gameplay
have practically disappeared.  That is the only "benchmark" that I can
offer.

HTH

Dean Kukral   [log in to unmask]


----- Original Message -----
From: "Ian" <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Sunday, June 15, 2003 11:44 PM
Subject: [PCBUILD] Serial ATA drives


SATA hard drives seem to be the current flavour of the month - does any have
any experience with the product?  Are they significantly (ie, noticeably)
faster?  Or is it just marketing hype?

Ian Porter
Computer Guys Inc.
Arrowtown
New Zealand
[log in to unmask]

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