[colug-432] I/O Error?

[Rick Hornsby]

On Dec 6, 2012, at 22:55 PM, "Thomas W. cranston" <thomas.w.cranston at gmail.com> wrote:
> What to buy?
> 
> I've narrowed my choices to a Seagate Momentus XT ST750LX003 750GB 7200 
> RPM 32MB Cache 2.5" SATA 6.0Gb/s Solid State Hybrid Drive -Bare Drive
> 
> or
> 
> Seagate Momentus XT ST95005620AS 500GB 7200 RPM 32MB Cache 2.5" SATA 
> 3.0Gb/s with NCQ Solid State Hybrid Drive -Bare Drive
> 
> There's a $40 price difference. I'm thinking get the 500 GB drive that 
> has half the Gb/s, and put the extra money towards another 2 GB of RAM 
> as most of the stuff I do is going to be running out of RAM anyway.


RAM is good.  Those drives aren't _really_ apples-to-apples.  There is more to those than just 50% more space.

If your SATA bus isn't 6.0Gb/s, you're essentially wasting the cost there.  On the 500GB side, I'm not sure most consumer devices, like a daily laptop (I'm making an assumption that 2.5" = laptop), are going to really benefit much from NCQ - a feature that used to only be found in higher end SCSI drives.

If you're running a 4800 or 5400RPM drive right now, be prepared for more noise, vibration, heat, and shorter battery life when you bump up to 7200RPM.  The drive is faster and a little more responsive, but that comes at a cost.  Given that you're switching over to a hybrid, however, that may be a wash if they're spinning the disk down.

If your laptop is something you haul around with you, but you have a desktop at home you may want to consider if you really need to drag 750GB worth of stuff around.  A *NIX based OS like Linux or OSX could benefit quite a bit from another 2GB of RAM.  Windows, not as much.

Check the device you're putting the memory into.  You might have to pull all the existing DIMMs to get your +2GB.  For example, if you have 2x1GB now, you will want to replace both with 2x2GB.  It might be just a tiny bit more complex than just purchasing another 2x1GB DIMMs and thinking you'll have a place to add them alongside the existing memory.