Old Raptor HDD

[olimazi]

Fellas,

I have an older 74GB 10k RPM Raptor hard disk drive running as my OS drive - and 2-200GB Seagate Barracudas in RAID 0 for apps and a newer WD Black 1TB drive for data.

My question is about the Raptor - this thing was great in it's time, but now it's old technology - should I keep this as my OS drive or just take it out and use the Raid 0 array for the OS - or even the Caviar Black drive?

The Raptor in benchmarks that I've done only beats the other 2 drive in seek time - everything else the Caviar and even the Seagates smoke it.
The reason I've stuck with the Raptor as the OS drive for so long is for the low seek times - I know the OS needs to find many small files in many different places, so it helps with that.

Some thoughts and recommendations would be cool - thanks!

olimazi

 

[KingerXI]

Sell it for $20 and buy an SSD for $80. That is my advice. Good luck.

 

[StorageGuru]

If you need speed then go for SSD. THe only reason to keep the raptor around is as a tribune to old technology.

 

[el-Capitan]

Get an SSD. You won't know what hit you. My old Raptors are just collecting dust now.

 

[Compman55]

The 74GB raptor is slower than practically any modern 7200rpm 3.5" drive SATA II or SATA III.

Retire it to a backup drive. Or put it in that old windows XP machine you want to keep running for old applications.

 

[Zap]

Out of your 2x200GB=400GB RAID applications setup, how many GB are you actually using? 200GB drives sounds... old and slow. If you aren't using much actual capacity and are just using it because 74GB isn't enough, would 120GB be enough? Newegg has the OCZ Solid 3 120GB SSD for $60 after rebate. How about 240GB? Newegg has the Corsair Force 3 240GB for $140 after rebate.

 

[Smoblikat]

The 74GB raptor is slower than practically any modern 7200rpm 3.5" drive SATA II or SATA III.

Retire it to a backup drive. Or put it in that old windows XP machine you want to keep running for old applications.

If I had a 74gb raptor I would make it a dedicated music drive, put all your music on it and just play from there, no need to worry about any lag.

 

[olimazi]

Yeah, gonna grab an SSD this Christmas and pop it in for OS/apps... the Raptor is slow and loud... but then again my system is old - trying to prolong it's life:
Athlon X2 6000+ 3.2 GHz
4GB DDR2 RAM 800 MHz
Radeon 4850 1GB

Guess the SSD will be the last upgrade, then RIP.
Thanks for smacking some sense into me guys.

 

[OlafSicky]

Yeah, gonna grab an SSD this Christmas and pop it in for OS/apps... the Raptor is slow and loud... but then again my system is old - trying to prolong it's life:
Athlon X2 6000+ 3.2 GHz
4GB DDR2 RAM 800 MHz
Radeon 4850 1GB

Guess the SSD will be the last upgrade, then RIP.
Thanks for smacking some sense into me guys.

I have the same system I put an ssd in it and it sreeeeeeemsssss:thumbsup:

 

[MoInSTL]

I have two 74GB Raptors that were in a RAID0. I retired both. They were great back in the day. KingerXI do you really think I could get $20 for each?

 

[dave_the_nerd]

If I had a 74gb raptor I would make it a dedicated music drive, put all your music on it and just play from there, no need to worry about any lag.

If an off the shelf 7200rpm HDD is too laggy for MP3 playback, you... you may have other problems.

For a DAW, it's more important to be a dedicated drive so the routine system tasks don't foul you up. An old Raptor (they're what, 10k rpm?) would probably be louder than I'd want to use though.

 

[Old Hippie]

do you really think I could get $20 for each?

They're selling for 20.00 on Ebay.

 

[olimazi]

SSD is definitely my next step... I am thinking of using the 2-200GB Seagate Barracudas in RAID 0 for Apps as well as the OS, instead of the Raptor for OS separately.
Would the 'Cudas in Raid 0 be faster than the Raptor? Or are they both old and slow?
Just trying to buy a few months till I can get the SSD - I'm thinking by the holiday season we could see 240GB SSD's for about $100.

Out of your 2x200GB=400GB RAID applications setup, how many GB are you actually using? 200GB drives sounds... old and slow. If you aren't using much actual capacity and are just using it because 74GB isn't enough, would 120GB be enough? Newegg has the OCZ Solid 3 120GB SSD for $60 after rebate. How about 240GB? Newegg has the Corsair Force 3 240GB for $140 after rebate.

 

[Seven]

I retired my 74GB raptor years ago and purchased the Intel G1 SSD. As far as I remember the raptor is still performs faster than any regular HDD in terms of access time. Loading games from it are still sort of worthy.