G'day dalemccl,
I think there is a bit of information you're lacking - the HARDWARE of modern mechanical drives still can only transfer at a maximum of about 131 MB/s and this lies within the capability of 1.5 GB/s SATA interface. You won't see any real improvement by going to 3 GB/s unless you have solid state drives. I don't think this will remain the status quo for long though.

You mentioned 1 TB 7200 RPM drives - these wouldn't happen to be Western Digitals would they? There is a rumour that the "7200 RPM WD's" are actually 5400 RPM with lots of on board cache to make them perform about like a 7200 RPM drive. This would not be an issue unless there was sustained I/O (like when generating RealTracks). It doesn't really sound like something a reputable company would do but I have seen stranger things. I do know the WD's generally don't seem to perform as well as their Seagate equivalents. This excludes the VelociRaptor range (10,000 RPM) which are really good.

Please don't take the above as a specific indictment - I like WD's - they are usually very reliable which is important to me - perhaps more so than outright performance in most cases.

Last edited by Lawrie; 08/25/09 02:13 PM.
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