Wonder what’s up at the 2-5% region :S

And that drive temperature is just awesome!!!

So it had to happen! I wasn’t really running out of space…I mean, I could have managed. I just needed a second drive, because for some reason, Windows Vista’s I/O priority crap was driving me crazy! There is NO such “intelligent” prioritizing that I could see! When copying a large file, the system will stall, even with 4GB RAM installed and no pagefile being used! wtf!

Anyway, ideally I wanted a very fast drive for Windows and Programs (Games included), and the Western Digital Raptor series is the number one choice. But…you don’t get them in Sri Lanka. Period! So, I had to look for another drive, that would at least come closer.

I could have bought a small 160GB drive to go along with the 320GB I was already having. But…160GB drive would be the slower drive and it would not be ideal for my situation. I could have gone with a RAID-0 setup, but then a friend showed me it is not worth it…so I was now in a spot of bother. There is no smaller & faster drive that I can buy as the system drive. *sigh*

Then I thought, “what the hell, I’m gonna buy a 500GB drive and make the 320GB one the system drive!” And that’s what exactly happened in the end.

Only three HDD brands were easily available in the SL market. Samsung Spinpoint-T series, Hitachi Deskstar and Maxtor DiamondMax11. All of them are OK, but the Samsung drive stood out…in terms of price, performance and reliability. Besides, the resellers for the Samsung drives were better than the others.

So this is what I bought: Samsung Spinpoint T-166 HD501LJ.

With the introduction of the Perpendicular Recording technology, the hard drive capacities are moving to the terabyte level. But is that all this new recording technology can offer? On the paper, no. But in reality, we didn’t see any “tangible” performance gains in the new 1TB drives from Seagate, Western Digital and Hitachi. I was quite disappointed, to be honest. Sure, they are faster than the previous generation models, but as far as I can tell, it is just the electronics and fine tuning – not a result of the new recording technology.

But there is a new kid on the block. The Samsung Spinpoint F1…It’s the all new performance desktop drives from Samsung, where for the first time they have incorporated Perpendicular Recording Technology. They are quite new, and I feel so bad that they were not available in Sri Lanka when I bought my 500GB Spinpoint T166 500GB last Thursday.

Wanna know about this new kid? Head over to Tom’s Hardware Guide, for the review.