Should I get a raptor drive for installing my games? ...or is it a waste?

[sofakng]

Right now I have a WD 74GB Raptor that is split into two partitions:

Partition #1: 14.6 GB (boot partition with applications)
Partition #2: 54.5 GB (games partition)

I'm finding that this is just too little space for me on both partitions. On my boot partition I like to install my applications (Visual Studio, Sony Vegas Video, etc), and on my games partition I like to keep a bunch of games installed and I'm finding I never have enough free space.

Now, I also have CHEAP storage drives in my system (250 GB and 300 GB) but I use those pretty much only for storage of video, pictures, etc, etc.

I was pretty sure I wanted to buy a Raptor 150 GB and use it for installing games and then use my existing 74 GB raptor for my boot partition but seeing as how money IS an object for me maybe I should just buy a Seagate 7200.10 drive for installing games? Should I consider buying two 7200.10 drives and using them in RAID0? What kind of performance is important for an "installed games" partition?

Please help me decide what to do.

Here are my choices (as I see it):

1) Keep all existing drives but install games onto my "slower" (eg. cheap Western Digital) 250 GB and 300 GB drives.

2) Buy a Raptor 150 GB and use it for installing games.

3) Buy one Seagate 7200.10 GB and use it for installing games.

4) Buy two Seagate 7200.10 GB drives and use it in RAID0.

Actually, after writing this message, I'm now thinking that maybe 2x 7200.10 drives is a good option. I have about $200 to spend so I think I could 2x 320 GB drives which is 640 GB of storage. This is WAAAAY beyond what I need for games, but that's pretty cheap for a lot of fast storage?

 

[dguy6789]

Option 3 or 4. I purchased two Seagate 7200.10 320GB drives just a few days ago and am eagerly awaiting their delivery. The speed of those new drives is almost as good as the Raptors and they are cheaper with a larger capacity. Buying a Raptor today is a good waste of money.

 

[sofakng]

How loud are the 7200.10s? I have a water-cooled system so my system is very quiet (although my 120mm case fans are audible). Although, I really don't care about noise but since my system is already very quiet I would like to keep it that way

Also, how much does speed matter for an installed games partition? (any benchmarks on this?)

 

[dguy6789]

Seagate is known for making the quietest drives out there. A good friend of mine has two of the 250GB 7200.10 models and his pc is extremely quiet. I can't say from experience on the noise of the other models, but I imagine it would not be much different. This review hear shows that the 7200.10s are indeed quieter than the Raptors.

http://www.anandtech.com/storage/showdoc.aspx?i=2922&p=5

How much speed matters is merely a preference of the user. For an installed games partition, the speed of the drive would likely affect game load times and little else.

When looking at reviews, be wary of synthetic benchmarks. They often exaggerate the differences between hard drives. For example, look at this page with synthetic benchmarks.

http://www.anandtech.com/storage/showdoc.aspx?i=2922&p=7

Notice the large spread of performance between the drives. Now take a look at the performance of the drives when running an actual real world application. In this case, it is exactly what you are looking for, game loading times.

http://www.anandtech.com/storage/showdoc.aspx?i=2922&p=9

Hope this helps.

 

[Tsuwamono]

i have a Western Digital 80GB 7200.9 RPM SATA and its fast but i would much rather a Raptor. But dont use the raptor for your boot if your going to use it for gaming. my Setup is a 160 GB Seagate SATA for my boot and an 80GB Western Digital SATA for my games. I also keep backup ISOs of all my movies on a 500GB seagate Sata.

 

[imported_flounder]

Having a 320 7200.10 I can attest to its performance, but not its noise level. I came from a Samsung 120g and the Seagate is not even on the same playing field as the Samsung in acoustics, although it is much faster. This is not saying that the Seagate is a noisy beast, but my case (w/ 4 case fans not including gpu, cpu, and psu) is night next to my head when I am on my computer and I can certainly hear it seek, something I couldn't do with my Samsung

 

[MegaVovaN]

RAID 0 is useless...go RAID 1 or no RAID

 

[sofakng]

How is RAID-0 useless? I've heard it is pretty worthwhile...

I'm still not sure which is better though for my needs (7200.10 vs Raptor 150)...

I have gift cards to Best Buy (about $250) which will easily cover the Raptor 150 purchase, but I can also easily sell the gift cards on Ebay, buy a 7200.10 from Newegg and then pocket the other $150 or buy something else nice...

Alsoy, my current Raptor is only an old generation WD740GD (first generation Raptor?)

Does that change your suggestions any? (eg. I can buy a Raptor 150 and then partition it so the OS and games are both on it?)

 

[MegaVovaN]

Raid 0's speed increase is only marginal, you probably will not notice it under normal use.
But FAILURE rate doubles: one of two hard drives dies, your data is gone! yay!

 

[HannibalX]

Keep it simple, buy a 150GB Raptor and divide it right down the middle. Sell the 74GB Raptor on FS/FT and recover part of your cost.

 

[nerp]

I have a Raptor as well as a new Seagate 7200.10. The seagate is fast but frankly, the raptor blows it away.

 

[mercanucaribe]

No. Do you ever get mad because your game is taking too long to load? To me the second off my loading time is not worth the money.

 

[Ruptga]

Originally posted by: mercanucaribe
No. Do you ever get mad because your game is taking too long to load? To me the second off my loading time is not worth the money.

Yup, I'd just install games to one of your existing storage drives. If they're really terribly cheap you can install the older ones that don't have as much stuff to load there, and put the newer ones on your raptor.

 

[Nathelion]

whatever you do... don't go for raid 0. There are several reviews here at anadtech showing how utterly useless it is for anything but a fileserver.

 

[Matthias99]

Originally posted by: Nathelion
whatever you do... don't go for raid 0. There are several reviews here at anadtech showing how utterly useless it is for anything but a fileserver.

It helps with a few other things (such as copying huge files around, and some types of video editing) -- but game loading is not one of them. That's generally bound more by seek time, as the game is usually trying to load hundreds or thousands of small resource files (or pieces of a big resource archive). A Raptor will help -- a little -- and an SSD would be even better.

But neither of those is really cost-effective given that you're looking at saving a few seconds on game loads and level transitions.

 

[Aikouka]

Originally posted by: dguy6789
Option 3 or 4. I purchased two Seagate 7200.10 320GB drives just a few days ago and am eagerly awaiting their delivery. The speed of those new drives is almost as good as the Raptors and they are cheaper with a larger capacity. Buying a Raptor today is a good waste of money.

I own two raptors and two 7200.10's... I strongly disagree.

 

[dguy6789]

Originally posted by: Aikouka

Originally posted by: dguy6789
Option 3 or 4. I purchased two Seagate 7200.10 320GB drives just a few days ago and am eagerly awaiting their delivery. The speed of those new drives is almost as good as the Raptors and they are cheaper with a larger capacity. Buying a Raptor today is a good waste of money.

I own two raptors and two 7200.10's... I strongly disagree.

http://www.anandtech.com/storage/showdoc.aspx?i=2922&p=9

There is no question that Raptors are faster. However, they are not significantly faster. They are only a little bit faster and for the amount you pay versus the performance you get and the space you lose, it is just not worth it in my opinion.

As to the argument of Raid 0 vs. none:

Anandtech consistently states in their articles that Raid 0 is useless for the average desktop user. People confuse this and think that they meant that Raid 0 is useless altogether. People should read a bit more carefully.

Second, there are MANY accounts of other people saying Raid 0 is useful for desktop use. Many reviewers other than Anandtech state this. Not only this, but a large amount of users also claim that their Raid 0 setup gives them a very smooth and snappy experience. I have seen Raid 0 first hand and while it is not some radical performance increase, the performance improvement does make general usage just a bit smoother.

 

[tweeve2002]

I had 2x 120GB WD drives in a RAID 0, on my Asus P4P800 Deluxe motherboard and loved it, no matter how full the drive got I always had good speed. now days I have to run the drives separate in single drives on my new motherboard. I noticed a huge performance loss. I also have had 1 600GB raid 0 array that had 100% file fragmentation and less than 1% free space and I didn't notice any huge loss from the raid when I pulled files from it.

So I say if you are willing to take the risk of a RAID 0, go for it. Though in my opinion I wouldn't create a raid now days that is bigger than 400GB. Its just a big risk to loose alot of info. I know I almost lost my 600GB raid 3 times. I finally broke the raid and am now running it as 2 separate drives.