Raptors are for...

[Battalion23]

Hey, I just wanna know real simple:
raptors cost a lot more than regular or sata hdd's , just because they work at 10000 rpm , or because their just more reliable ?
Or maybe just buy a regular hdd , and a raptor and put the os on the raptor ?
help me, explain me in simple terms...
thanks.

 

[DaveSimmons]

If you go to the main AnandTech website, choose the Storage tab, and find the "Raptors in RAID" article it will show you the difference between a Raptor and standard drive.

They are nice drives, but most people with modest budgets are better off spending the extra money on more RAM or a better video card.

 

[Bateluer]

Originally posted by: DaveSimmons
They are nice drives, but most people with modest budgets are better off spending the extra money on more RAM or a better video card.

Or for rich people to have RAIDed Raptors AND lots of RAM AND fast video cards

 

[Battalion23]

Ok, read about raptors. didn't like the raid part so much, but like the raptor.
I'm going to change my system plan now, instead of 2 250gb sata 16mb hdd's , one 300gb sata 16mb , and on 74 raptor to hold the os and all programs, while the 300gb will hold the music and pictures.
thanks.

 

[imported_Kensai]

Hrm... Most Anandtech forum neffers are people who like bang for the buck parts. Raptors are expensive for the small performance boost that you gain.

 

[CrimsonCutie]

Raptors can be very good at handleing data quickly on and off disk.... so if you are doing Photoshop or Premier... you have your program sratch disk (the tempory work its doing) and the output complied work to another raptor... It faster than haveing standard ata or sata drives.

 

[Battalion23]

quicker - got it , but not better in all other aspects ? quality , long life ?
putting the os and programs on the raptor will be better , right ?

 

[Stangs55]

Here's my setup w/hard drives:

1 Raptor for my OS
1 Raptor for my "Program Files" (appz, game, etc)
1 Seagate 7200.8 400Gb for Storage of Pictures, Videos, etc.

This may not be practical for some people, but I find it extremely effecient. I used to have my 2 Raptors in RAID 0, but this was a poor use of the drives in my opinion. Good luck.

 

[imported_Kensai]

Originally posted by: Battalion23
quicker - got it , but not better in all other aspects ? quality , long life ?
putting the os and programs on the raptor will be better , right ?

~ Yup
~ Nope
~ Nope
~ Nope

You'll see a slight performance gain in boot times, load times, etc. etc. Not really worth it in my opinion.

 

[SonicIce]

38.9% faster spindle speed that translates into a much lower performance increase for double the price means only buy it if you have money to waste on stuff.

 

[Polish3d]

I always get the attack chopper first in BF2 because I'm always the first into the map.

 

[Stangs55]

Originally posted by: Frackal
I always get the attack chopper first in BF2 because I'm always the first into the map.

You don't get there before me

 

[User1001]

Originally posted by: Battalion23
Ok, read about raptors. didn't like the raid part so much, but like the raptor.
I'm going to change my system plan now, instead of 2 250gb sata 16mb hdd's , one 300gb sata 16mb , and on 74 raptor to hold the os and all programs, while the 300gb will hold the music and pictures.
thanks.

Seriously, I think you're better off going with a hd that has NCQ. Performance is just as good and sometimes even better.

 

[Stangs55]

And on a side note...I noticed that you said you were getting 16mb buffer HD's....I'm therefore assuming these will be Maxtor. Purchasing Maxtor hard drives is about as smart as asking Michael Jackson to babysit your son. Maxtor makes the cheapest, most unreliable, shortest lasting, piece of schnat hard drives (or, arguably, piece of PC hardware) that exists.

I have owned 6 Maxtor hard drives in my life. 4 failed within the first 13 months and the other 2 failed in about 2.5 years. Simply put, they are absolute pieces of crap. If you REALLY want that 16mb buffer, then get the new Western Digital HD...but, for your own sake, don't get Maxtor. Better yet, get a Seagate 7200.8 with NCQ and get a HD with a 5 yr warrenty that will actually outlast its warrenty.

/rant

 

[Cerb]

Originally posted by: Kensai
Hrm... Most Anandtech forum neffers are people who like bang for the buck parts. Raptors are expensive for the small performance boost that you gain.

Actually, they are quite cheap for it, now that most new boards have SATA. The Raptor is on the heels of 15k SCSI drives in desktop use, and right in line w/ 10k SCSIs in server tests (though for most servers, you're still better off going SCSI for RAID). Overall, quite cheap, if you really care for that extra bit of performance, when you could get a slower drive 3x or more the size for the same price.

Overall, Seagate and WD are good for performance on a budget. Seagate being quieter and w/ a 5yr warranty, WD being a touch faster.

 

[EvilRage]

Originally posted by: User1001
Seriously, I think you're better off going with a hd that has NCQ. Performance is just as good and sometimes even better.

NCQ has been tested for desktop usage, and the performance gain is even less than the gain between the average 7200RPM hard drive and the Raptor. NCQ is not worth it for the average desktop user. In my opinion, NCQ appears to be a feature more oriented towards servers and workstations. I even seem to remember reading some benches with NCQ drives, and I swear some of them were faster for desktop usage with NCQ turned off. Yeah.

Originally posted by: Stangs55
And on a side note...I noticed that you said you were getting 16mb buffer HD's....I'm therefore assuming these will be Maxtor. Purchasing Maxtor hard drives is about as smart as asking Michael Jackson to babysit your son. Maxtor makes the cheapest, most unreliable, shortest lasting, piece of schnat hard drives (or, arguably, piece of PC hardware) that exists.

I have owned 6 Maxtor hard drives in my life. 4 failed within the first 13 months and the other 2 failed in about 2.5 years. Simply put, they are absolute pieces of crap. If you REALLY want that 16mb buffer, then get the new Western Digital HD...but, for your own sake, don't get Maxtor. Better yet, get a Seagate 7200.8 with NCQ and get a HD with a 5 yr warrenty that will actually outlast its warrenty.

/rant

While I also have noticed a trend in Maxtor's hard drives' poor reliability, nowhere did the OP say he was getting Maxtor drives. I don't understand your assumption, but I'd also recommend the WD 16MB cache drives. While normally I'm a Seagate fan (I've gone through 3 Seagate PATA drives) their latest drives haven't impressed me. In fact, they're having all kinds of problems with their larger capacity external drives. I'd rather have to not use a 1-year warranty than have to continually use a 5-year warranty. And once again, a recommendation for NCQ... I'd skip it, see above for the why.

 

[Novercalis]

For those who ishes to do heavy Video editing, durning dvd and cd, capturing/ripping dvd/cd...
would it be best to get a raptor for it than to save time.
time = money and raptor also = money but reading this thread, it seems this is ideal to me? is it

 

[1921Photoelectric]

Stangs55 Don't hold back tell us how you really feel about Maxtor I had my issues with them also. I don't post much my advice is go for it. You won't be sorry, as for bang for the buck yea you could do better, but satisfaction is worth the extra $$$

Beer is proof that God loves us: Benjamin Franklin

 

[QuantumPion]

OMG, I had to write this entire post over again. The forums said I used a censored word, although I didn't, and it crashed causing me to lose everything. So lame. Anyway,

Why is it so fashionable to bash maxtor these days? I remember back in the day when maxtor's (and quantum's) were the premium, and WD were the trash drives that were failure prone. I've been using maxtors exclusively (until my newest box which has a raptor) and I've never had so much as 1 bad sector, let alone a failed drive. My previous box had 2 cheap maxtor's in raid 0 and they worked perfectly for nearly 3 years. Before that I was running them individually for over a year. Before that I had two other maxtor drives which had at least 2 years of use before selling them.

As a computer tech support guy at my university, just about every failed hard drive I encountered was a WD in an oem machine. I suspect everyone bashing maxtor saying "oh I had 20 maxtor drives and 19 of them failed but I had 1 WD drive that has worked for 30 years!" are just full of it.

 

[BOLt]

IMO, WD Raptors are not worth it. Just get yourself a nice SATA or SATAII HDD and be satisfyed.

 

[nick1985]

ive never had a maxtor fail. meh...

 

[CraigRT]

Originally posted by: Stangs55
And on a side note...I noticed that you said you were getting 16mb buffer HD's....I'm therefore assuming these will be Maxtor. Purchasing Maxtor hard drives is about as smart as asking Michael Jackson to babysit your son. Maxtor makes the cheapest, most unreliable, shortest lasting, piece of schnat hard drives (or, arguably, piece of PC hardware) that exists.

I have owned 6 Maxtor hard drives in my life. 4 failed within the first 13 months and the other 2 failed in about 2.5 years. Simply put, they are absolute pieces of crap. If you REALLY want that 16mb buffer, then get the new Western Digital HD...but, for your own sake, don't get Maxtor. Better yet, get a Seagate 7200.8 with NCQ and get a HD with a 5 yr warrenty that will actually outlast its warrenty.

/rant

You are the equivalent of me in regards to Maxtor.
I wouldn't put a single kilobyte file that is important on a Maxtor hard drive, I dont trust them for anything. All my supplier carried a couple years ago was Maxtor. Because of their ridiculous failure rate, they completely stopped carrying them. Now onto Seagate, yet to have any problems! What a surprise... I have had SO many of the DiamondMax 8+ 40gig models, the failure rate is around 75%, there are still a few left out there in the office, but at this point, if I get to the computer for routine maintenance, I'll ghost the 40gig over onto a Seagate and put the 40gig on the shelf, because they've all failed at some point or another. Makes me sick how much their drives cause me headaches... such friggin junk.

 

[nick1985]

Originally posted by: CraigRT

Originally posted by: Stangs55
And on a side note...I noticed that you said you were getting 16mb buffer HD's....I'm therefore assuming these will be Maxtor. Purchasing Maxtor hard drives is about as smart as asking Michael Jackson to babysit your son. Maxtor makes the cheapest, most unreliable, shortest lasting, piece of schnat hard drives (or, arguably, piece of PC hardware) that exists.

I have owned 6 Maxtor hard drives in my life. 4 failed within the first 13 months and the other 2 failed in about 2.5 years. Simply put, they are absolute pieces of crap. If you REALLY want that 16mb buffer, then get the new Western Digital HD...but, for your own sake, don't get Maxtor. Better yet, get a Seagate 7200.8 with NCQ and get a HD with a 5 yr warrenty that will actually outlast its warrenty.

/rant

You are the equivalent of me in regards to Maxtor.
I wouldn't put a single kilobyte file that is important on a Maxtor hard drive, I dont trust them for anything. All my supplier carried a couple years ago was Maxtor. Because of their ridiculous failure rate, they completely stopped carrying them. Now onto Seagate, yet to have any problems! What a surprise... I have had SO many of the DiamondMax 8+ 40gig models, the failure rate is around 75%, there are still a few left out there in the office, but at this point, if I get to the computer for routine maintenance, I'll ghost the 40gig over onto a Seagate and put the 40gig on the shelf, because they've all failed at some point or another. Makes me sick how much their drives cause me headaches... such friggin junk.

i have had bought several 40 gig diomand max 8+'s for me and my family/friends over the years. never has 1 failed. you probably got a bad batch or something

 

[BTA]

Raptors are for people with more money than brains.

Like me

 

[DRavisher]

Originally posted by: Kensai

Originally posted by: Battalion23
quicker - got it , but not better in all other aspects ? quality , long life ?
putting the os and programs on the raptor will be better , right ?

~ Yup
~ Nope
~ Nope
~ Nope

You'll see a slight performance gain in boot times, load times, etc. etc. Not really worth it in my opinion.

Is not the Raptor a so called enterprise grade product? That is, they should be as reliable as SCSI drives? If that is the case (and I believe it is) then quality and long life are definate Yup's... And it is most certainly better to put the OS and programs on the Raptor over ANY 7200 drive, current or any coming in the near future. I've said it before and i'll say it again: It is simply impossible for any 7200RPM drive to beat a Raptor in random seek (on average). Not possible. At all. Not without a drastic change in harddrive technology (NCQ, 128MB cache, none would help much)... Seektimes are what matters in these scenarios, had transfer rates mattered then RAID-0 would give better performance...