Is Swapping My Hard Drive Worth It?

[TrayB]

I recently lost a secondary hard drive (wont spin) that was rather old, a 200gb WD,
and bought a replacement for it but now I'm wondering if I should use the replacement as a new primary(or solo HD) as my working HD is rather old too

My Current Primary is a Barracuda ST3320820AS - 320gb 3gb SATA 7200 8mb cache (15GB Free Space)

My New Drive is a Western Digital WD20EARS - 2tb 3gb SATA 64mb cache

The hard drive that broke has the stuff that wasn't replaceable(pictures, movies, music, avi's, mpeg's, ect...)

It would be a headache to reinstall windows and download all my various software (mostly games), but would be possible just very time consuming

I'm wondering if the cache differences would significantly increase performance enough to offset this headache

Either way I need the new drive space (diablo 3 and fear 3 comming soon), and I'm wondering if anyone who knows HD's well thinks running windows off of the newer HD would be worth it

P.S.

If system information helps

OS - Windows 7 Ultimate 64bit
CPU - AMD 955 3.2 Quad
Mobo - Asus M4A77TD
RAM - 2x Patriot 1333 2GB DDR3 PC3-10700
VC - GeFroce GTX 285

I have attempted to use SiSoftware Sandra to do a Benchmark Comparison of the Drives, but cannot find the WD20EARS for a comparison run :/

PPS

sorry for the long post, but I appreciate anyone who can reply =D

 

[Trotter]

Honestly, I wouldn't do it. Sure the ST3320820AS is getting a little long in the tooth but the WD20EARS is a Green drive which means it is built to save power not give performance. Use the WD as a data drive and buy a WD Black drive to use as your main (when you can afford it).

 

[S0ULphIRE]

Or a Barracuda 7200.12, which is only a hair away performance-wise from a Black, but for a lot less money.
Newegg.com - Seagate Barracuda ST31000524AS 1TB 7200 RPM 32MB Cache SATA 6.0Gb/s 3.5" Internal Hard Drive -Bare Drive

 

[Trotter]

5 year warranty > 3 year warranty.

 

[S0ULphIRE]

Assuming you'll be using the same clunkin 1tb drive in 3 years lol. Given the rapid increase in performance on SSDs and massive price drops, I don't think many people will stay with mechanical drives unless they've got 2-3Tb drives. I love teh future!

 

[MindoverMaster]

IMO, HDDs will always be used for mass storage.

 

[iFargle]

Or for those who don't care about HDD performance.. I'm happy with my 1TB Seagate as my main drive

 

[S0ULphIRE]

I hope not. I mean look at when HDDs were first released. It was 1980 when the first standard 5.25 was made, holding only 5 megabytes and costing $1,500.
History of hard disk drives - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
30 years later, we have drives the same size that hold 3TB for $179 (that's a 59,999,900% increase in storage space and a 738% decrease in price). And that's not even touching the advances in the speed of drive access that happened at the same time.

SSDs were just starting to be used in the 1980's, so they're not a new technology by any stretch. Now with people getting tired of the slow read/write rates that traditional mechanical drives offer, everyone is starting to concentrate more on developing SSD technology. Make no mistake, in the next few years SSDs are really going to start improving in leaps and bounds. I'll quote this post in 2 years marked.

 

[C0RR0SIVE]

I have seen nothing but horrible reviews of the 3tb drives :-\

I don't see a 1TB or 2TB SSD coming around for $80 anytime soon.

 

[S0ULphIRE]

Depends what you mean by soon I guess. People are predicting $1/Gb in 2012, and if HDD pricing history is anything to go by that price will drop fast.