Is a WD Raptor worth $100 more?

[teiresias]

So I'm juggling around my HDDs. I've currently got a 150GB Maxtor as my main HDD in my PC, with a smaller 20GB HDD just there for some storage. What I'm thinking of doing is getting rid of the 20GB HDD (give it to my brother or something), and moving the 150GB Maxtor to an external enclosure since I mainly use it just for storage anyway.

Now, that means I need a new HDD internally for the PC. I think I want something in the 70-80GB range. Just doing the Newegg search nets me

This, a WD Caviar 80GB 7200RPM 8MB Cache HDD. It costs about $47.

However, I'm been juggling around the idea of getting the 74GB WD Raptor, but I have no experience with these 10,000rpm drives. Would any performance increase actually be worth the premium (I mainly use this PC for gaming and multimedia functions such as MP3 playing and iTunes, though all of this stuff would be on my external HDD)? How noisy is a Raptor drive? I'm just wondering what people think of these options. Thanks guys.

 

[secretanchitman]

i think you will be fine with the caviar...the raptor is just a couple of seconds faster in terms of game loading, windows booting, etc...

 

[bob4432]

when i went 10k it was scsi, but the raptors are nearly identical and in some areas faster than their 10k scsi counterparts (the 74GB) versions. i did this because i wanted to learn about scsi.

as far as performance, the overall computing experience is somewhat more responsive but i woudl not say a night and day difference. plus i was able to write off the expensive on taxes. that being said if i didn't have the tax write off, i would probably get a newer, larger hdd and not worry about the difference in rpm.

also, just get a larger hdd, look at the benches and get one of the faster 7200rpm units in 200-320GB.

 

[Varun]

They are good drives, but with the huge price premium I would say they are not worth it. People will tell you they are faster (and I am sure they are a bit faster) but you would notice more speed with more RAM than a Raptor vs any new large capacity HDD IMHO.

 

[teiresias]

Thanks for the opinions guys. I don't really need a huge amount of space on my internal drive since I'll be using my external drive most of the time for that kind of thing, which is the reason I'm looking at only approximately 80GB of space on the drive.

I've never dealt with RAID before eith, but would it be advantageous to possibly buy two of the Caviars and run them in some kind of RAID configuration, does that boost performance at all or is it mainly just a back-up failsafe kind of thing? This will all be on a ABIT NF7-Sv2 mobo by the way.

 

[ElFenix]

i'm not even sure that a 74 GB raptor is any faster than a 400 gig WD SE16 drive

 

[Velk]

Originally posted by: teiresias

1) I've never dealt with RAID before eith, but would it be advantageous to possibly buy two of the Caviars and run them in some kind of RAID configuration,

2) does that boost performance at all or is it mainly just a back-up failsafe kind of thing?

3) This will all be on a ABIT NF7-Sv2 mobo by the way.

1 - If you have to ask, probably not.

2 - In terms of two drives, it's an either or. You can either have RAID-1, which is also called mirroring, which makes one drive a copy of the other, basically making only one of them usable, or you can have RAID-0 which merges the two disks into one big disk, which has faster transfers ( still the same seek though ) but has the downside that if one goes, they both go.

3 - This board has no native SATA support, which is more of a pain in the butt that you might think the next time you have to reinstall windows xp from scratch and can't find the driver floppy to load the mass storage controller so the installer will work. ( I recommend making a slipstream copy of the XP install CD with the SATA drivers included asap 8) ). Other than that, my experience with using RAID-0 from that board was mostly positive.

 

[mauiblue]

I bought two Raptors and put them in a RAID 0 array because I could and I just wanted to. I like the performance I get from them and they have been performing well for almost two years now. I do a bit of video editing and I have a feeling that if it was not for the Raptors, transcoding and assembling on Premiere Pro would take a bit more time.

 

[AlgaeEater]

Every time I've stepped up with Hard drives over the years (from RPM to MB Cache) I've never really noticed that much of a difference. I mean somewhat of a difference I guess... usually with boot times, but that's pretty much it.

The only significant boost I ever got was using Raid for the very first time. Now I can't live without it. Not for gaming really (Levels load like 2-4 seconds faster, not much of a difference) but Windows Boots up in a fraction of what it use to and defragging literally takes 5 minutes.

But in the end, the Raptor probably isn't going to be much better for the asking price. I think it's a bit over-rated in my opinion.

 

[teiresias]

So it's sounding like I might be better off getting two of the Caviars and running them in RAID 0 (after reading up on RAID a bit, though maybe I'd do RAID 1, or whichever one is the mirrored setup). That definately saves me some cash.

 

[bob4432]

unlesss you are moving huge files (hundreds of MB or GB) go with a mirrored setup. risking your data is not worth it. sure many will say that the chances of losing a dive is very low, but if you happen to be the one that it happens to it won't matter how low chances were as you are now out the data.

 

[DaRkLoRd666]

if u have less then 1gb ram get more ram, that way once its loaded in memory the hd doesnt matter if u have more then 1gb of ram get teh cheaper one, it saves u money. but if u want the stuff to be loaded into memory 1 sec faster and money is not a question get the fast hdd.

 

[teiresias]

Well, it's not really a question of I "need" to see stuff load one second faster. It's just I'm reorganizing my HDD situation in the PC and was trying to find a nice efficient setup and maybe get to play around with RAID or a faster HDD in the process. I also already have a gig of RAM so that's not really an issue.

Backing up isn't really that huge a deal once I finish this process because stuff I need to backup will be on the external drive and I'm rather religious about backing up important stuff (for me it's mainly just writing and archived stuff I've authored) onto DVDs, none of which would be kept on the actual PC.

The only stuff that would be on the internal HDDs would be XP and apps, and maybe I'd keep copies of some frequently used media on there, but nothing that wouldn't already be on the external drive (moving stuff like that to the external also makes it easy to move between working on the desktop downstairs and the laptop upstairs).

I think I'm just going to buy two $50 80G Seagate Barracuda HDDs and RAID them.

 

[DaRkLoRd666]

dont buy 2 80 gb, thats a waste of money if u want 160gb just get a 160 gb hd for about $70

ur better off with 1 hdd.

i was sayin earlyer just to get 1GB of ram, and 7200RPM hdd, the 10000 is just pointless unless money is not an object.

 

[Skott]

The Raptors are nice. I have one. They do load games and access files a bit faster but you wont be gimped with a nice 7200 drive. It really comes down to your budget and needs. If you need alot of storage then a good quality big 7200 drive will do you better than a smaller sized higher priced Raptor. If you want the best of the best in terms of speed, not too concerned about size of drive, and got the readily availble cash then the Raptor is nice.

Some people get both. A raptor to run the O/S and play the games on and then another 2nd 7200 drive for storage of pics, music, whatever. This is more expensive than just getting a single Raptor or a single 7200 drive though. It definetly adds to the cost of the system.

Let your wallet and needs dictate the decision.

 

[secretanchitman]

Originally posted by: Skott
The Raptors are nice. I have one. They do load games and access files a bit faster but you wont be gimped with a nice 7200 drive. It really comes down to your budget and needs. If you need alot of storage then a good quality big 7200 drive will do you better than a smaller sized higher priced Raptor. If you want the best of the best in terms of speed, not too concerned about size of drive, and got the readily availble cash then the Raptor is nice.

Some people get both. A raptor to run the O/S and play the games on and then another 2nd 7200 drive for storage of pics, music, whatever. This is more expensive than just getting a single Raptor or a single 7200 drive though. It definetly adds to the cost of the system.

Let your wallet and needs dictate the decision.

well said! :thumbsup: