Thinking more on this topic, a VM would be faster because the VM software already knows where the empty space is -thus skipping the physical reads, and the physical reads from disk would be fewer because the used space is compressed.

Just came across this thread… When FOG uploads an image- if you are doing an upload of the FULL hard drive, all used and unused space must be read by the FOG client. When deploying an image, unused space is recognized in the image file and is much smaller than the size of the full hard drive. The compressed image is written to the FOG server very quickly.

When uploading a full image that has high compression %, the read speed of the originating hard drive will be the critical choke point. Get the hard drive with the fastest sequential read.

You could try the Toshiba MK3001GRRB. It is a 15k RPM SAS drive with sequential transfer speeds of 198.82MB/s read and 196.77MB/s write. If this is installed on a desktop, you will need a SAS controller.