Need advice - 2.5" SATA vs 3.5" IDE HD

I'm building a replacement for a friends slow and dying PC. It'll be based on an Intel E5300 dual-core 2.6Ghz CPU (compared to his current 2.6Ghz single core celeron) with 2GB of RAM.

I've got a choice of either recycling his current 3.5 inch IDE hard drive (80gb), or using a 2.5 inch SATA drive (120gb). Which do you think would give better performance? I'm leaning towards the laptop drive.

Ide will have better seek times because it'll spin faster (probably). Look up the specs.

Toshiba MK1246GSX 120GB (2.5inch SATA)
5400 RPM
8MB Cache
Seek times: Track to track: 2ms, Average read/write: 12ms, Maximum: 22ms
Interface: SATA-1

Seagate ST380012A 80GB (3.5inch Ultra-ATA)
5400 RPM
1MB Cache
Seek times: Track to track: <1.2ms, Average read/write: 8.5ms/9.5ms, Maximum: Data not available.
Interface: Ultra-ATA 100


So it looks like the 2.5" SATA has a larger cache and will have greater transfer speeds, but the 3.5" has better seek times.

Unless anyone has any last minute comments on which would give the better overall performance, I'm going to try with the SATA drive and see how it goes.

In reply to a post by 12eason:

Ide will have better seek times because it'll spin faster (probably). Look up the specs.

What makes you think IDE drives have better seek times and spin faster than SATA drives?

Most older IDE drives (wthout spending stupid money) are 5400rpm with seek times around 11ms.
Most newer 3.5" drives (IDE and SATA) tend to be 7200rpm with seek times around 9ms.

IDE (assuming ultra DMA / ATA 133) is 16 bit with a maximum bandwidth of 133MB/s (so 16 bits of data running in parallel at 133MB/s).

SATA1 is 1.5GB/s serial roughly equivalent to a 16 bit parallel transmission speed of 94MB/s - if you just do the straight maths and ignore the small conversion to 16 bit (comes straight off the disk surface in serial format, so needs to be converted to 16 bit parallel somewhere - either in the IDE drive itself, or in the SATA interface).

SATAII is 3.0GB/s (so roughly equivalent to 188MB/s @ 16 bit parallel).

Given many drives (2.5", 3.5", IDE, SATA) can be bought in either 5400rpm or 7200rpm format, and with similar seek times, it's fairly safe to assume IDE (133) is a little faster than SATA1 and a little slower than SATAII.

Nothing to do with sata/ide. Most 3.5" disks are at least 7k rpm, most 2.5" ones are 5k rpm. Obviously not the case here. But the whole thing about bandwidth is redundent too. Most drives can't get close to the bandwidth limitations on a standard ide channel.

Edited by deleted (Tue 30-Mar-10 20:02:23)

cant it have both?
os + progs on one, data on the other.

else go for the 120gb one.

If anyone is reading this old thread, realise hard drives vary in speed, quality and specs.
From experience I can tell you to ignore ALL the maths,spin speeds etc and run the windows experience index. I thought 'why not use this spare 500gig drive from a broken laptop in my desktop build'?
Indeed it worked but the index said it was worse than my old 3.5 inch 160gig ide drive.
It really felt like it too. A cheap laptop has a [censored] drive.. Keep which ever drive scores higher for o/s drive, and use the other drive as a storage slave for small beer files. Dont waste hrs in forums just test the things. A slugish maindrive will spoil your party when you use your newbuild like you wont believe. Leaving you scratching your head wondering why it seems no better than the old one.booting up, starting apps etc., your new power will always be waiting for something- And fyi a score of 4.8 vs a score of 5.2 for hdd's is a difference of about 30%. Massive, if your system can utilise it.
Enjoy. Abbot please landlord!