Just had to share this with everyone - got myself a 10000RPM SATA drive recently and it really makes a huge difference. Windows starts so quickly it feels like I’m running OSX or something. Oh and Battlefield 2 maps finally load in under 5 minutes too. If you got 100-200 bucks to blow definitely look into it.
You should try more RAM.
A Western Digital Raptor 74 Gb, I’m guessing? I got one too. It’s nice.
Do the hard drives come preloaded into any new computers on the market, or do you have to install them separately?
Thats the next thing on the list(once the tax rebate gets here) - gonna get me 2 gigs of DDR400.
Indeed, seems like its the AK47 of SATA hardrives at the moment(cost/performance wise).
Alienware has it as an option, but they are waaaay overpriced. Its very easy to install, the only non-trivial thing is that you have to have a floppydrive in order to be able to install your motherboards SATA drivers for some of the MBs out there.
One important detail that skipped my mind - to use SATA harddrives your motherboard needs to have an ATA jack, if it doesn’t you gotta get a PCI card that does the same thing.
I chuckled at this. No need for me to upgrade, I suppose (not that you can get a 10KRPM drive for a laptop anyway).
You can get 7200 RPM drives for laptops now, which is a lot faster than the commonly used 5400 RPM drives. I’ve been contemplating this upgrade myself.
Spoil yourself and get a 15k RPM SCSI or SAS drive… Then you’ll know what fast is! I get to play with these guys at work all day.
I think you mean SATA jack. I wager they already have an ATA 133 jack or two. 
Any 2" PowerBook-compatible versions at that speed yet?
:::drool::
What do those bad boys even plug into? Do you need a SCSI jack or something?
I was actually pondering getting a second Raptor and setting up a RAID(my motherboard makes it really easy), but I don’t know if that’ll actually double the drive bandwidth or just make sure that my system can survive a single drive failure.
Well, if you set up Raid 0 (striping), you will get an increase in speed, but definitely not double. Maybe 25% more. And no redundancy.
If you want redundancy, you need Raid 1 (mirroring), and you won’t get an increase in speed.