WD Raptor - speed test

[Brisos]

I just bought a 74gb raptor disk and would like to test it. It grinds a hell of a lot, and almost all the time.

Can anyone point to a good testing app and let me know what kind of result I should expect from a non-defective disk?

I can borrow Spinrite from work if that is better than anything else out there. I would rather download something free if there is no reason to use Spinrite though. Would save me a trip with my tower to the office.

 

[zagood]

HDTune.

Speeds:
http://forums.anandtech.com/me...id=83&threadid=2287943

 

[Brisos]

Much appreciated. My raptor runs slightly better than the results posted at that link (same extremes, better average). Weird.

Funny thing is - I tried running a 2nd HDTune test and opened a IE window in the middle of it. The drive started grinding and the HDtune test speed went down to 6mb/s. IE took a while to open too, which is the symptom I have in video games when, say, entering a new "area" with new textures to load. Or simply turning around in an FPS type game, viewing all textures around me.

So basically everything is fine until I launch any kind of program. I am not sure HDtune is too good here, or is not pushing the drive hard enough... If launching IE alone will bring the HD to its knees, while HDtune is saying everything is fine, I guess the raptor line is not as good as it is claimed to be. Or I got a lemon.

Since I only have 2GB of RAM, I assumed the games were taking a toll on my old HD by using virtual memory. I bought a raptor drive to see some improvement there but see none.

I will get my 4GB soon enough but it kinda blows to have dropped so much cash and time reinstalling for this.

Any further advice on how to test my drive?

 

[Ben90]

Well what was your previous drive? Most performance 7200 drives nowadays are faster than the 74gb raptors.

 

[KILLER_K]

I dumped my 74gb raptor as soon as i seen my sata 7200rpm 500 gigs wiped the floor with it.

Don't think i'm trying to just attack you. But i was disappointed when i seen the results.For the price and performance i wasn't impressed at all with it.

 

[zuffy]

The old Raptor is too slow nowaday. You should have bought the VelociRaptor or an SSD.

 

[pcslookout]

The old Raptor is too slow nowaday. You should have bought the VelociRaptor or an SSD.

Yeah but which old Raptor are you talking about? I agree it is to slow nowadays but it could be good if you use it as a spare faster drive for something.

 

[zuffy]

Yeah but which old Raptor are you talking about? I agree it is to slow nowadays but it could be good if you use it as a spare faster drive for something.

The 150GB and the OP has the 74GB that is slower than the 150GB. Actually, that is what I doing with the 150GB. Second drive for faster storage.

 

[AyashiKaibutsu]

I dumped my 74gb raptor as soon as i seen my sata 7200rpm 500 gigs wiped the floor with it.

Don't think i'm trying to just attack you. But i was disappointed when i seen the results.For the price and performance i wasn't impressed at all with it.

I'm under the impression that while high density 7200 rpm drives have higher transfer rates than the 74 gig raptor they had higher latency still which would make them inferior for the purpose of installed programs. I use a 80 gig intel for my OS and programs, but I carried over my 74 gig raptor to put programs I couldn't fit on my ssd.

 

[Fallengod]

A 74gb raptor should still have a difference over basic 7200rpm drives. I definitely saw it in games. 74gb raptor is good cause of the access times, thats the entire reason you get a raptor. You should notice games loading faster. I definitely did.

It is true though that some newer 7200 drives like the 7200 WD black, is probably closer to a raptor now, but a raptor still should have slightly faster access times.

I recently replaced my raptor with a velociraptor and I definitely saw a big improvement there as well. (vraptor is much quieter and definitely runs faster and smoother)

PS: Im so glad I spent the whole $100 on a 150gb vraptor instead of buying an SSD. Im sure SSD is faster but, vraptor is plenty fast for anything I do, and I run servers/games/film editing/encoding software.