Difference between EIDE and SATA HDD for Intensive Use

Hi, All.

I've got a Dell Latitude D820 on it's way to me. It has the following config:

Intel Core 2 Duo T7600 (2.33GHz) 4M L2 Cache, 667Mhz Dual Core
Certified Refurbished
6 Cell Primary Battery
90W AC Adapter
Resource CD
256MB NVIDIA Quadro NVS 110M TurboCache
15.4 in WXGA Notebook Screen
Support Software
40 GB EIDE Hard Drive (5400 RPM)
No Floppy Drive
Operating System CD
24X CD RW/DVD Combo Drive
Genuine Windows XP Home
McAfee Security Center with VirusScan, Firewall, Spyware Removal, 15-months
1390 Wireless Card
2 GB DDR2 SDRAM 677MHz (2 DIMMs)
Service Software
Power DVD Software
Adobe Acrobate 6.0 Elements

The max use I plan to use it for is this:

Using a webcam, I'll record video and sound of a presenter for abt an hour at a time.

At the same time, I'll be watching a DVD in a small window, and
running a virus scan software, and
Ripping CD / DVD into a different format.

My question is this: is an EIDE HDD adequate speed-wise? I plan to get a 7200 rpm 100 gb Seagate to replace the one in the laptop, BUT reading the threads on this site, I wonder if the EIDE will be able to keep up with all of the stuff I'll be throwing at it.

Should I plan to return this laptop get one with a SATA HDD?

Thanks for any help!

 

Notebooks never really can reach the maximum speed quoted by either EIDE or SATA. Infact, there should be little difference between the two. So in your case, it shouldn't make much of a difference in speed. Hope this helps.

 

Thanks for the quick response.

Now you've raised a question in my mind: Do I even need to upgrade from the 5400 rpm to a 7200 rpm?

I'll use an external USB drive to store all of the data.

 

Yes, an upgrade from 5400 RPM to 7200 RPM should heko you if you are using the hard drive intensively for programs. The increase in data transfer rates from upgrading should help you in the programs you use.

However, before going out an buying a brand new shiny 7200 RPM drive, see how your 5400 RPM drive is. Is you find its speed satisfactory, and you can live with it, continue using that. 7200 RPM drives are normally expensive, and most people can live with a 5400 RPM one. Hope this helps.

 

Keep in mind, if you're using an IDE drive in your laptop righ tnow, you cannot upgrade to a SATA drive.
There is a good bit of difference between 5400 and 7200 rpm drives, but only if you use intensive applications. Office apps won't benefit.
For external drives, there is some debate as to what may be overkill in the drive itself. The FW and USB2 interfaces don't come close to being able to fulfill the max transfer rate of the physical hard drive.
As far as the external drives, you won't see a difference between SATA and IDE. Even then, you won't find many external enclosueres that use SATA.
But really, for 3.5" drives, theres no reason not to get a 7200 rpm drive. The cost really is about the same. unfortunantly the price difference for laptop drives is pretty major.

 

Increasing to a faster RPM drive will also make boot up time faster. Also, if your drive has a 2 MB cache, make sure to get one with an 8 or 16 MB cache. I have only seen 5400 RPM (laptop) drives with a 16 MB cache, but that doesn't mean a 7200 RPM one doesn't exist. For external USB drives, the max transfer rate will be 480 Mb/s or 60 MB/s, which is slower than the IDE laptop drives, which have a max burst rate of 100 MB/s. I would note that most drives can't even reach sustained transfer rates of 100 MB/s, so if you have a laptop with an EIDE drive, the performance of a SATA drive with the same cache size and RPM will be minimal if not negligable.

 

I believe the true transfer speed acutlaly comes out to roughly 200-300 mb/s through usb 2. Lots of overhead data. I've never actually had a transfer rate of anything close to that myself. Not sure about anyone else.
Yup, performance between same specced HDD with either SATA or EIDE should be the same, or close to it at least.
The major points of improvement are higher performance drives in SATA (ie WD's Raptor drives) and NCQ. NCQ will mainly effect server type applications and will not be applicable to external hard drive controllers. I'm also not sure if any HDD for laptops have NCQ or if the controllers themselves support NCQ.