Windows 7 Do a need a larger hard drive when windows 7 RTMs

[confused]

Do you need a larger hard drive when windows 7 RTMs

I have a dual core (2300 I think fairly slow for a dual core yet my performance scores are in the 3s and 4s

My Point: I have a 80 GB hard drive and the performance score showed 2.0. Would a sata hard drive about 160gb drastically change the performance. Or would I just have a larger hard drive?

 

[reghakr]

I wouldn't say "drastically", but it sure would help.

My C: drive is already at 37GB out of 52GB.

But I shrank my hard drive a created another partition where I install all my 3rd party applications. had I installed them on the C: drive, I'd probably be out of space.

I'd say the graphics card is the one that slows Windows7 down. I have a cheap onboard NVidia 6100 nForce with 128 MB memory.

on my high-end PC, I have a NVIDIA GeForce 8500 GT 512 MB memory

Performance score for the cheap PC is 3.0. On my high-end machine, it's 5.2

 

[jimbo45]

I have a dual core (2300 I think fairly slow for a dual core yet my performance scores are in the 3s and 4s

My Point: I have a 80 GB hard drive and the performance score showed 2.0. Would a sata hard drive about 160gb drastically change the performance. Or would I just have a larger hard drive?

Why only 160 GB -- you can get SATA 1TB and 750 GB really cheap these days. Even PC World in the UK (not normally my favourite store but I needed a Disk NOW!!) has 750 GB SAta drives for 68 GBP (inc VAT).

My experience in computers is that it doesn't matter how much Disk space you have it's never enough. These larger capacity disks are also faster as well and have a bigger cache.

If your motherboard still supports IDE then IDE drives cost almost nothing but they can be noisy and are much slower. Like all things compromise is usually th name of the game --but with modern processors and a decent amount of RAM (even 1GB is usually OK for Windows 7 provided you aren't running too many heavy duty applications although I'd go for more) Slow disks can KILL a system more than anything else.

Cheers
jimbo

 

[reghakr]

Why only 160 GB -- you can get SATA 1TB and 750 GB really cheap these days. Even PC World in the UK (not normally my favorite store but I needed a Disk NOW!!) has 750 GB SATA drives for 68 GBP (inc VAT).

Very good point!

Even my 2 year old cheap $399.00 E-Machine came with a Hitachi 150GB SATA drive and a 22" monitor.

Example of dirt cheap hard drives:
Western Digital 200GB Hard Drive Today Only $29.99

But when I compare ratings with my other computer, it's the graphics and game performance is very poor.

Go to DODTracker.com: Real-time Tracking of Every Deal of the Day on the Web , and look under the Computer and Electronics section for deals of the day.

 

[Kyle]

Windows 7 only requires 40 GB of hard drive space (15 GB Free) to perform correctly. So if you have that, you're good.
Though, that's not including any files and programs you need. 80 GB should be fine for a regular user.

Sata will only speed up file transfers/moving. You'll notice speed improvements when moving, writing, and copying files, but probably not much elsewhere.

 

[iroken22]

I have windows 7 installed on a 30 GB hard drive and have no trouble with it. So what Kyle said would be recommended but if you are on a tight budget then you can get by with less.

 

[davehc]

My 7 installation is pretty much loaded up with software, including the complete Office 2007 suite and several graphics applications. The total useage is still under 25Gbs.
If you are a heavy game player, you may gobble up space, but a remedy for that is to use another hard disk for your installations. This has other advantages, but I suppose on reflection, comes down to the same though - more disk space, wherever that may be.
I agree with Kyles remarks regarding SATA. But if you are buying new, it is a way forward. Don't buy s/h or you may get fobbed off with a standard sata. I had a quick look for some benchmarking but failed, but, roughly the difference between the original standard sata and ide is about 130(ide) /160kb(sata)/sec - I doubt you would notice that. More recent Sata drives can use 600 kbs/sec or even more - without an increased noise factor.

 

[Moosetek13]

Windows 7 only requires 40 GB of hard drive space (15 GB Free) to perform correctly. So if you have that, you're good.
Though, that's not including any files and programs you need. 80 GB should be fine for a regular user.

Sata will only speed up file transfers/moving. You'll notice speed improvements when moving, writing, and copying files, but probably not much elsewhere.

So you won't notice improvement in program loading time?
Or in swapfile transfers?
Or in anything else that requires moving, writing, and copying files?
What does not require moving, writing, and copying files, except for pure CPU/NPU calcs??

Moving, writing, and copying files - from and to the OS kernel - is what usually takes the most time.

And define what a 'regular user' is. Is it a person that only uses the internet and e-mail?
Is it a person that edits spreadsheets or documents, or graphic or video files?
Is a 'regular user' a person that creates 3D animations?
Or, is a 'regular user' someone that records a lot of TV shows to the HD? How much space does that take? And is 80GB enough?
Is it a person that... what?
What is a 'regular user'?

'Regular user' only means what any singular person does regularly. And that means something different for each one of us.

 

[davehc]

Moosetek. You have a tendency, in your posts, to be rather brittle. Perhaps, instead of criticising the posts of others, you could offer something constructive. Your input, as I see from one or two of your earlier posts, can be of value. But to "nitpick" others only leads to bad feelings on what is, otherwise, a very friendly forum. Kyle's last paragraph was loose in its presentation, but not to the point that warranted such an outburst.

That aside. As a "regular" user, what would you mean by

"Moving, writing, and copying files - from and to the OS kernel - is what usually takes the most time."

 

[Kyle]

So you won't notice improvement in program loading time?
Or in swapfile transfers?
Or in anything else that requires moving, writing, and copying files?
What does not require moving, writing, and copying files, except for pure CPU/NPU calcs??

Moving, writing, and copying files - from and to the OS kernel - is what usually takes the most time.

And define what a 'regular user' is. Is it a person that only uses the internet and e-mail?
Is it a person that edits spreadsheets or documents, or graphic or video files?
Is a 'regular user' a person that creates 3D animations?
Or, is a 'regular user' someone that records a lot of TV shows to the HD? How much space does that take? And is 80GB enough?
Is it a person that... what?
What is a 'regular user'?

'Regular user' only means what any singular person does regularly. And that means something different for each one of us.

Technically, I covered all that by saying copying/moving/writing files, but sure, if you want to get extremely technical.
The fact of the matter is, more than 50% of computer users don't do much more than download music, visit internet sites, chat on MSN, AIM or Yahoo, and do some writing in Word. For those menial tasks, there is no possible reason to warrant any sort of upgrade into SATA over PATA, as they simply aren't doing enough to see a good performance/size to price increase over their previous speed.

Anything beyond doing any of that, I would consider the user an enthusiast, as would most of the online community, as you must have some knowledge to be able to do such advanced things with a computer. I'm pretty sure a regular user isn't someone you go to help for, because you know that they have no knowledge beyond "Click here and the computer does this, type in this and it does that, and gets me to my desired outcome" They have no idea about tweaking, graphics, downloading programs and the like because if they did, they'd 95% of the time know how to fix a computer, with which the knowledge comes of the inner-workings, and they would be able to answer the question themselves.

So you see, a regular user and an enthusiast are easily defined 95% of the time, which pretty much makes that an accurate assessment, don't you think?


As for the whole "Writing to the OS kernel" junk, you're getting in way over your head. The kernel is just the basis for the operating system, and is generally uninvolved in changes made by the user. Most changes are user level, and therefore performance will not be modified significantly by a faster drive.

Now, can you please stop trying to be-little users, and participate in a less "Attack people because I art holier than thou" way?
It would be greatly appreciated by the staff and users.
Thanks.

 

[reghakr]

confused,

A note on SATA drives,

You'll either need connectors on your motherboard or a power supply with the correct connections for a SATA drive.

If your computer is old, you probably don't have either.