Can a Western Digital Caviar GP 1TB handle this?

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Ferris1

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I am looking to upgrade to a 1TB drive in my HTPC. I would like to use the Western Digital Caviar GP for its low power, heat and sound. I am just not sure if the lower (than other 1TB drives) performance numbers will have an impact.

I currently have a Seagate Barracuda 7200.8 SATA drive. My most taxing, though rare, situation is recording/writing 4 OTA HD programs, recording/writing 3 analog programs and watching 1 HD program/video, which my drive handles no problem.

I have found many reviews comparing drives but I'm not sure what statistic I need to be concerned with--write speed, IO speed. I can use HD Tach or HD Tune to find the limit for my drive, but is there a way to measure the "current" load so I can tell where I am in relation to the limit?

On a related note, is there a way to tell which component is the limiting factor for a given process? I know I can look a CPU meter and tell if that is maxed out. Is there a comparable tool(s) for disk usage, bus speed, RAM speed, etc.?
 
The statistic I think you'll most be interested in will be non-sequential writes. Since you have four streams going at once, the data will be splattered all over the drive. Just make sure the new drive is close to your old drive, or better, and you'll be fine.
 
On a related note, is there a way to tell which component is the limiting factor for a given process? I know I can look a CPU meter and tell if that is maxed out. Is there a comparable tool(s) for disk usage, bus speed, RAM speed, etc.?[/QUOTE]

A CPU can only do so much. But HD's can very so much I doubt you will find a tool that will peg it at its limit.
 
Thanks for the info, folks. I guess the lower power, lower heat, and lower cost GP seems like a no brainer for my situation then.
 
Justintoxicated, is there a way to find the optimum size? What do you suggest?

--Never mind, I realized that the max, 64k, is best for (only/mostly) large video files.
 
There are also some filesystem tricks you can do if you're using something like XFS, ie, setting the minimum preallocation size to 500MB.
 
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