Raptor 150

[phillyman36]

Hey my rig has 3 hard drives
Wd raptor 150
Seagate 750 gig 7200.11
Wd 750 gig
my os and programs are on the raptor 150. Have any of you ditched(ebayed) your raptors for wd640? I have enough space with the 2 other drives but im wondering since the newer drive is faster with the exception of seek times is it time to get rid of it? Thanks for any info

 

[EarthwormJim]

Unless you're running out of space why bother?

The raptor may have lower transfer rates, but it's access times are better.

For an OS drive, I'd say access times are more important.

 

[known12345]

Hmm EarthwormJim, can you or someone else please explain what you mean by access times? I mean from my understanding, Ive heard that they have to do with the time it takes for your computer to access a file, for example, the speed it takes to open a program from the time you double click on it. Well when i went on youtube and typed in "SSD" and clicked on the various links comparing the speed it takes for a computer with a SSD to boot up compared to a typical 7200 rpm SATA drive, the SSD only beat the SATA drives by only a few seconds. However in one test it was double the speed, for example this one.

Granted the speed improvement it is still a significant percentage but I mean the fastest SATA drives (Velociraptor for example) have access times of about 7.0 ms whereas some of the Mitron and MemoRight SSD drives have access times as low as 0.1 ms. Since the access times of SSD are significant slower then those of SATA drives (0.1ms vs 7.0 ms), why aren't boot times from SSD even faster (maybe 10 sec boot?)? I mean I am sure there is just some things you cant speed up (possibly the comp's check of all the components) but I mean if access times deal with the time it takes to "access" things, shouldn't SSD be blazing fast?

 

[EarthwormJim]

It's the average time it takes for the head in a hard drive to seek/access a particular sector (not a whole program).

Seek times are only half the picture, the other have is raw transfer rates, which SSD drives are still lacking in.

In most of the reviews I've read, SSD drives are faster but for single user desktops, it's not a huge difference compared to a regular hard drive.

It's great if you can access every single bit on your drive in one second, but not helpful if you can only transfer say 50mb/s.

 

[known12345]

Thank you for the clarification Earthworm, it makes much more sense now. Was wondering however, what transfer speed would have to be attained by a SSD drive for the boot times of SSD drives to be 20 sec or less? I mean SSD already has access time taken care of, what transfer speed would need to be attained?

 

[EarthwormJim]

Boot times aren't 100% disk drive limited, so I'm not really sure. It could be that a lot of time is wasted, waiting for some elements to load, while other dependent elements are just sitting there idle.

The newer SSD drives (read expensive) have transfer rates above 100mb/s though, so they're pretty close to being inline with hard drive transfer rates.

Hard drive access time specs that you see are averages, if the data is sequential, then you could have sub 1ms access times too.

I remember that ram drive you could put into your computer, tests were done with OS installs and boot times still weren't that impressive.

 

[known12345]

Thank you again EarthwormJim for helping me to understand hard drives. I guess right now, it isnt exactly a given that a SSD is completely better then a hard drive. Or I should say the performance increase doesn't completely justify the price. I mean the access times of SSD are good but I mean as you said earlier, it isnt all about access times but a combination of access times, transfer speed, and to a degree other components of a computer. I guess Ill wait till Christmas when SSD are more developed to decide to purchase an SSD drive. Thank you again for all your help.

 

[JohnGalt47]

I have both the old 150gig Raptor drives, a brand new Velociraptor drive and a Hitachi 7K1000. All of them test the same in my computer. I wouldn't bother getting a different drive if it was me.

 

[phillyman36]

Thanks for all the info much appreciated

 

[Old Hippie]

Originally posted by: JohnGalt47
I have both the old 150gig Raptor drives, a brand new Velociraptor drive and a Hitachi 7K1000. All of them test the same in my computer. I wouldn't bother getting a different drive if it was me.

John, I saw your other post, and if you can't see any differences with your program, I'm gonna suggest it the program's fault or operator error.

Why don't you try a real program, like HD Tune?