It would seem that just like everyone else out there I have the same problems and woes.
I powered on my rig last Saturday morning only to get a SMART warning from my Epox Nforce4 Ultra motherboard.
SATA1 hard disk failure imminent; backup data and replace disk immediately.
I wondered if the report was correct. Well sure enough it became painfully evident that there was something
wrong. When I went to check the System Log from Windows XP I found quite a few disk errors which all but confirmed the earlier report. I did some quick research and decided to take this opportunity to step-up from a 7,200 RPM drive to 10,000 RPM drive. With the HP Proliant servers we have at work the hard drives (SCSI, SATA, SAS) go up to 15,000 RPM. I chose the Western Digital Raptor X WD1500AHFD 150GB 10,000 RPM from NewEgg.com of course. (Image courtesy of NewEgg.com)
Let me just tell everyone that the performance boost is very noticeable. I will admit that I had to re-install Windows XP so that is probably also playing into the equation, but the system and GUI are much more responsive than before. I would quantify it at between 15% and 20% increase in performance. The Raptor X is only a SATA (1.5Gbps) while my two previous SATA drives were (3.0Gbps) but that doesn’t seem to really matter. The drive has a clear top to it so you can see the actual head and disk platter, just be careful not to push/lean on it.
Cheers!