1 Raptor or 2 160gb Hitachi's Raid 0?

[hay112]

Well i'm tight on a budget or i would just raid two raptors. So should i go with one raptor for my os and another drive for extra storage or should i go with two 160gb hitachi's in Raid 0? How would they compare speed wise?

Thanks in advance

[man_utd]

1 raptor is the way to go.

[voodoomelon]

Well, i'd go with the 2x160s.

Speed would realistically be negligable, and you get way more storage with the 2x160s.

Of course people are going to say there is more chance of one of your drives failing, but you have the same chance of losing everything if just 1 Raptor fails.

And when was the last time you had a drive that "failed" anyway? No-one I know has had a drive fail on them.

;)

[tom10167]

Speed would realistically be negligable, and you get way more storage with the 2x160s.




Speaking from experience?


A Raptor with a 250GB hard drive would give you just as much storage as two 160GB drives. :)

[deception``]

Go for the two hard drives in RAID 0. Are you really willing to trade over 200GB of space for a lower seek time?

deception``

[voodoomelon]

Speaking from experience?


A Raptor with a 250GB hard drive would give you just as much storage as two 160GB drives. :)


He said he was on a budget, so I assumed he was going to buy just one 74gb Raptor and leave it at that.
;)

EDIT: Ah yes, I see what you meant now. I'd still go with the RAID 0. He'd have to splash out on a Raptor and another hard drive then, which would cost more than just 2 standard serial/IDE ATA drives.

I think performance wise and cost wise, 2 drives in RAID 0 is the better option.

[hay112]

the raptor option would be the 36gb version and i would get a 250 gig on the side.....

so how big of speed difference is it?

[kayson]

If you'd get a raptor and a 250 gig, I'd go with the raptor. Speed-wise, the raptor set up would be a lot better. If you need that extra 60 or so gb of storage, then obviously the two 160 gb are the way to go. I personally can't fill up a 40 gb hd, so I'd take the raptor.

[TimoneX]

It depends on your usage. If you're moving alot of large files around I'd forget about raptors. Yeah they're fast but they're too small. If you get a raptor for the OS and a single 250Gb for storage then you're not seeing any speed increase over a single drive whenever you're moving data around on the 250Gb drive. I just find the cost of the raptors/Gb hard to swallow. I use 2x160Gb drives in RAID0 and find them to be plenty fast. Just my take, I know alot of guys swear by the raptors, heck if they didn't cost so much per Gb I may well be one of them.

[Electron Chaser]

If you don't need the space right you could always go with the raptor for now and then buy another in the futre and put them in a RAID array. If you do need the space then go with the 160s. I would go for the raptor personally and then if you need the space buy a cheap IDE drive as a storage disk for a few bucks more.

[voodoomelon]

A lot of people are saying the Raptors are a lot faster and I really don't agree with that.

If you RAID x2 160gb serial ATA drives, you will have a theoretical throughput of 300mb/sec, far more than one Raptor. Yes, seek times are a good deal lower on Raptors, but like I said earlier, you will realistically see very little difference between the two setups.

Also, take a look here (http://www.systemcooling.com/wd_raptor-05.html), where the reviewer talks a little about failures amoungst earlier 36gb Raptors in a RAID 0 configuration. Maybe something to bear in mind if in the future you RAIDed 2x Raptors. Also, take a look at the benchmarks on page 3 or 4 of that link, and you will see there isn't that much of a difference between a Raptor and a Maxtor Serial ATA drive. Think how RAIDing 2x Maxtor Serial ATA drives would compare to the Raptor then.

And like mentioned by someone above, if you have a Raptor and a seperate 250gb drive, you won't be using the Raptor to any advantage at all, i.e. if you had games/large file stored on the 250gb.
Windows itself will see virtually no speed improvement using a Raptor over a standard IDE drive, let alone a Serial drive.

;)

[thor17usa]

Go with the single Raptor! I tried RAID 0 with other setups and the Raptor always won.

[Susquehannock]

Personally, I'd go with a single Raptor over a RAID 0 array.

two 7200rpm 80gb/8mb Maxtor in RAID 0

one 10,000rpm 36gb WD Raptor

The second gave me slightly better benchmarks. (ATTO - HD Tach)
And I don't have to worry about losing data with RAID 0 either.
This Raptor is actually more quiet than those pos Maxtor as well.

[fabulouscoops]

I have both configurations, a 36 GB raptor paired with a 120 GB drive, and two 120 GB drives in RAID 0 on two different machines. While I have not actually measured performance, I cannot tell the difference in load times or windows boot-up times subjectively. I prefer the RAIDed 120's since my OS and all my apps and data are on the same drive running at the same speed. If you are not getting the big raptor (74 gig) then I would advise going with the 2x160 RAID 0 set up.

[voodoomelon]

If you were to buy 2x Maxtor DiamondMax 10s, the fastest 7200rpm drives on the market, and put them in a RAID 0 configuration, you would blow one measly 36gb Raptor out of the water, as well as having over eleven times the capacity.
It can't be put any more simply than that.

Take a look here for some benchmark comparisons: Linkage (http://www.gamepc.com/labs/view_content.asp?id=diamondmax10&page=2)

I know you're on a budget, but you could can get 2 of these drives for just $40 more than a 74gb Raptor and have over five times more capacity and nearly twice the speed.

Having said that, 2x 160gb drives would still be faster than one Raptor.

;)

[Big Mike]

Like I said in the other thread, I found that going from a Raid 0 array with 7200 rpm drives to a single cheetah 15k the latency became almost non existant. Of course a cheetah 15k is beyond even a raptor, and scsi tends to make things happen a little better since you arent relying on CPU cycles as much during data transfers.

[Susquehannock]

Scuzzy (SCSI) is the way to go for speed. :D

[{PMS}fishy]

A lot of people are saying the Raptors are a lot faster and I really don't agree with that.

If you RAID x2 160gb serial ATA drives, you will have a theoretical throughput of 300mb/sec, far more than one Raptor. Yes, seek times are a good deal lower on Raptors, but like I said earlier, you will realistically see very little difference between the two setups.


You will never see anything close to 300MB/s ever.

I use to bash SATA and the raptor, untill I got one. This thing delivers on its promises. Im getting 62MB/s sustained read time. My ATA drive was in the high 30MB/s. The 2 fastest ATA drives will be faster than 1 74GB raptor, but also cost more.

Id get 1 Raptor now, wait for the price to drop and then add a second. Thats my plan.

[Tmod]

How about some ATTO scores on the Raptor not in a Raid array and I will post some ATTO scores of my Hitachi's on Raid 0.

Let's compare and see what comes out ahead.

[{PMS}fishy]

Both test run at default settings. WD740 Raptor. Intel ICH-S 6300 Controller.

http://www.pmsfishy.zerobrains.com/upload/atto.JPG

http://www.pmsfishy.zerobrains.com/upload/hdtach.JPG

[voodoomelon]

You will never see anything close to 300MB/s ever.

I use to bash SATA and the raptor, untill I got one. This thing delivers on its promises. Im getting 62MB/s sustained read time. My ATA drive was in the high 30MB/s. The 2 fastest ATA drives will be faster than 1 74GB raptor, but also cost more.


I am aware you'll never see 300MB/sec, but the fact remains that 2 RAIDed drives are faster than a Raptor, which is essentially what the question was in the first place.

And 2x 160gb drives would not be much more expensive at all than a Raptor, bareing in mind that you get 320gb of storage.

I'm not knocking Raptors either, I think they are an exceptional piece of engineering, however, like all new technologies, are still too expensive, and still in early stages of development (low capacities).

I just honestly think hay112 would be better off RAIDing two standard 160gb drives, and take advantage of higher capacity, and the satisfaction of setting up a RAID 0 configuration.

;)

[{PMS}fishy]

I am aware you'll never see 300MB/sec, but the fact remains that 2 RAIDed drives are faster than a Raptor, which is essentially what the question was in the first place.

And 2x 160gb drives would not be much more expensive at all than a Raptor, bareing in mind that you get 320gb of storage.

I'm not knocking Raptors either, I think they are an exceptional piece of engineering, however, like all new technologies, are still too expensive, and still in early stages of development (low capacities).

I just honestly think hay112 would be better off RAIDing two standard 160gb drives, and take advantage of higher capacity, and the satisfaction of setting up a RAID 0 configuration.

;)

Well I posted my scores. We will soon seen how the 2 SATAs fair.

[TimoneX]

This is from my 2x160 maxtor DM9 sata array. All I had at the time was the v2.7 of the HDtach program. Transfer rates won't tell the whole story anyway because it won't take into account the raptor's impressive access times. I do think it's clear though that raptors no longer hold the huge performance lead they once did over competing 7200rpm solutions.

Sandra too tells a similar story rating my array only a few % behind a raid0 raptor array, though I have even less confidence in sandra's HD scores.

[Mud]

i wont go with the 36gb version of raptor if i were u, i think u shud get a 74gb raptor and stick with it for awhile until u can afford another, sounds like a good solution to me.

[{PMS}fishy]

This is from my 2x160 maxtor DM9 sata array. All I had at the time was the v2.7 of the HDtach program. Transfer rates won't tell the whole story anyway because it won't take into account the raptor's impressive access times. I do think it's clear though that raptors no longer hold the huge performance lead they once did over competing 7200rpm solutions.

Sandra too tells a similar story rating my array only a few % behind a raid0 raptor array, though I have even less confidence in sandra's HD scores.

Look at your access time and CPU usage. Thats terrible. Im getting less than 1% CPU usage, as well as much faster access times. Looking at the benchmarks the single Raptor still is the better solution.

[Tmod]

{PMS}fishy,

Can you do a test using 32 meg instead of 4 on ATTO?

Tmod

[{PMS}fishy]

http://www.pmsfishy.zerobrains.com/upload/32mb.JPG

[TimoneX]

Look at your access time and CPU usage. Thats terrible. Im getting less than 1% CPU usage, as well as much faster access times. Looking at the benchmarks the single Raptor still is the better solution.

I couldn't disagree more and as I said it's an old benchmark. For my purposes a tiny raptor 36 or 74Gb drive would be filled in minutes. If your intended purpose is gaming with no video editing or other HD real estate hogging applications then a Raptor is definately a viable alternative, but they just don't have the same performance edge they once did. CPU usage seems to be all but meaningless I toss around 20-30Gbs at a time without effecting the system performance much and I believe any raid0 array will show higher CPU usage as compared to a single drive whether 2x160Maxtor or 2x74 Raptor. Matter of fact I believe I have some old benchies with a single 160Gb maxtor and the CPU usage was nearer to 3%.

I ran a sandra file system benchmark and got 92Mb/s. According to sandra 2005 lite 2x74Gb raptors in raid0 are 95Mb/s. While sandra isn't exactly the end all be all in HD benchmarks I still don't think it's all that far from reality here.

[TimoneX]

To make sure we're comparing apples to apples I grabbed HD tach v3 and got this. Obviously results that change this much from version to version need to be taken with a grain of salt.

[{PMS}fishy]

Whats with all the spikes in your benchmark?

Can you run ATTO as well?

[TimoneX]

Not a clue and not a clue. :) Keep in mind this is a benchmark of a 320Gb(305Gb acutal) array. Comparing it to a 74Gb single drive is certain to introduce some anomalies.

Either way I think we're somewhat off the subject material here. The simple fact is that the raptors are getting a bit dated to my mind and some of the newer technology is dulling their once large performance lead. Proper functioning NCQ, 100Gb/platter tech, larger caches, better firmare optimization...etc. I don't have a problem with raptors I just question whether they're still worthy of the large $/Gb premium they command.

[{PMS}fishy]

Not a clue and not a clue. :) Keep in mind this is a benchmark of a 320Gb(305Gb acutal) array. Comparing it to a 74Gb single drive is certain to introduce some anomalies.

Either way I think we're somewhat off the subject material here. The simple fact is that the raptors are getting a bit dated to my mind and some of the newer technology is dulling their once large performance lead. Proper functioning NCQ, 100Gb/platter tech, larger caches, better firmare optimization...etc. I don't have a problem with raptors I just question whether they're still worthy of the large $/Gb premium they command.


NCQ does not provide any benift in a single user environment. Its yet another feature that provdies nothing. Don't belive me, hit google.

The Raptor is still the fastest SATA drive, and no one has even come close to matching its speeds. Sure you can make a RAID array thats faster, but you can just do that with 2 Raptors, and you have a faster array yet again.

If you want storage space, and 74gb is not enough room than thats understandable. To say that there are other drives out there that can give the Raptor a run for its money is not. Its still hands down the fastest, and I haven't even seen anyone try to make something faster.

[TimoneX]

NCQ does not provide any benift in a single user environment. Its yet another feature that provdies nothing. Don't belive me, hit google.

The Raptor is still the fastest SATA drive, and no one has even come close to matching its speeds. Sure you can make a RAID array thats faster, but you can just do that with 2 Raptors, and you have a faster array yet again.

If you want storage space, and 74gb is not enough room than thats understandable. To say that there are other drives out there that can give the Raptor a run for its money is not. Its still hands down the fastest, and I haven't even seen anyone try to make something faster.

<sigh>

I'm very familiar with native command queing. I've yet to see a test conducted that presents the proper environment for NCQ to show it's strengths. This is a SCSI feature and has been for decades. It's not a SCSI feature for nothing it is beneficial in a file server environment with multiple data requests from multiple sources. You're correct in assuming a single user is unlikely to gain much from NCQ, but it's there none the less and works correctly on newer drives, but not on the raptor from the evidence I've seen.

The raptor may well still be the fastest single Sata drive though this too is now debatable. Just the same this is not the point of this thread. The thread subject was comparing 1 raptor to 2 7200rpm sata drives in raid 0.

There are other drives out there that give the raptor a run for it's money. It's not the dominant force it was many months ago when they first appeared. Technology keeps marching on and HDs are no exception. Just as was mentioned previously Maxtor DM10 & maxline III drives come very very close to raptor performance and surpass the "king" in many situations and at a far lower cost/Gb.

[Tmod]

Here is a WD 80GB SATA non raid and a pair of the WD 80GB SATA drives on Raid 0.

The Hitachis are faster on RAID 0 but slower on single channel.

I will post the Hitachi's when I get home.

EDIT: Almost forgot that the RAID combination cost me $125.00 for both drives. Excellent performance per dollar spent.

[deathman20]

Get a raptor, the 36gig or 74gig version what ever you wish. They are fast, you don't have to worry about setting up a raid array, take little CPU power, 5 year warrenty.

People forget to mention this fact, Raid Arrays provide little improvment over a single drive in normal day applications. In games the time difference in negaligible. The main benifit of Raid is for reading/writing data to the drive at fast rates without slow downs. Great for video editing, large file movements, databases, etc.

Raid 0 has a greater chance of failing then 1 drive too. Why risk it if theres not going to be a preformance gain that you will utilize.

Get one of the raptors and a spare drive if nessisary. If you can't even use a good chunk of the large harddrive whats the point in getting them then?

[Steven4563]

i would go with Raid0 setup if it was me picking

[TimoneX]

The newer raptors with the "Esata" interface are $229 for 74Gb on newegg. That's $3.09/Gb...ouch. You can get a Maxtor DM10 250Gb w/ SataII interface for $167($.668/Gb) that offers most of the performance of the raptor. One thing I've found with HDs is what seems like enough space today won't be enough tomorrow. Heck I use 60Gb drives on my kid's computers and they get cramped with the bloated games around today.

[Tmod]

Ok given {PMS}fishy's post with the ATTO test at 32mb and my WD 80GB Sata on single channel at 32mb we see that my WD has a performance advantage up to the 256 mark.

While he does have me at the top end I paid $60.00 USD for my drive and have double the storage capacity assuming he has the 36GB Raptor.

I think everyone will have to agree that according to the material presented that the Raptor has little advantage for the price and you even lose a little on the bottom end.

I know this is going to raise alot of stink but the images speak for themselves. In no way have I altered or tweaked my image to get that performance as I am sure {PMS}fishy has not modified his image either.

Tmod

[TimoneX]

The raptor's real advantage is not in transfer rate, but in access times, where it does in fact still command a respectable lead to new products. The Maxtor DM10 has a 9ms access vs the raptor's impressive 4.5ms time. However the Maxtor also has 2x the cache at 16Mb which I think partially addresses this deficit. Additionally the faster access times are great for smallish file transfers(typical usage) but relatively unimportant when large files are being moved around.

[deception``]

The raptor's real advantage is not in transfer rate, but in access times, where it does in fact still command a respectable lead to new products. The Maxtor DM10 has a 9ms access vs the raptor's impressive 4.5ms time. However the Maxtor also has 2x the cache at 16Mb which I think partially addresses this deficit. Additionally the faster access times are great for smallish file transfers(typical usage) but relatively unimportant when large files are being moved around.

This pretty much sums it up well. Raptors generally "feel" faster simply because their gains are noticed through short-burst operations such as common desktop use and opening files. But when it comes down to tasks that require more long-run usage, their seek time advantage becomes a bit of a diminishing return especially once price is factored in.

deception``

[Susquehannock]

The raptor's real advantage is not in transfer rate, but in access times, where it does in fact still command a respectable lead to new products. The Maxtor DM10 has a 9ms access vs the raptor's impressive 4.5ms time. However the Maxtor also has 2x the cache at 16Mb which I think partially addresses this deficit. Additionally the faster access times are great for smallish file transfers(typical usage) but relatively unimportant when large files are being moved around.


This pretty much sums it up well. Raptors generally "feel" faster simply because their gains are noticed through short-burst operations such as common desktop use and opening files. But when it comes down to tasks that require more long-run usage, their seek time advantage becomes a bit of a diminishing return especially once price is factored in.

deception``

Oh yeah. :)

[{PMS}fishy]

Ok given {PMS}fishy's post with the ATTO test at 32mb and my WD 80GB Sata on single channel at 32mb we see that my WD has a performance advantage up to the 256 mark.

While he does have me at the top end I paid $60.00 USD for my drive and have double the storage capacity assuming he has the 36GB Raptor.

I think everyone will have to agree that according to the material presented that the Raptor has little advantage for the price and you even lose a little on the bottom end.

I know this is going to raise alot of stink but the images speak for themselves. In no way have I altered or tweaked my image to get that performance as I am sure {PMS}fishy has not modified his image either.

Tmod


Its the 74gb drive.

I deffinatly did not alter the images. Im not the type of person to do that.

[Tmod]

I deffinatly did not alter the images. Im not the type of person to do that.

I wouldn't think you would!

As promised here is my Hitachi's on Raid 0.

http://users.keyway.net/~tmod700/hitachi.jpg

[Susquehannock]

What are your system specs Tmod? I'll bet you are using a newer(better) chipset than me. (nForce2 here)
The Promise controller on this Soltek board requires I set up a "single disk RAID array"
to use one single SATA drive.

Here is what I get with my single 36gb Raptor :

http://server2.uploadit.org/files/Susquehannock-atto2.jpg

Notice how the write times exceed the reads at 32mb & above. Just as
deception`` mentioned above^. This may have to do with my RAID controller
though as I haven't seen this with all Raptor set ups.

[RJARRRPCGP]

I would recommend a Seagate HDD for people that want a WD Raptor HDD, but can't afford one.

With the exception of maybe Hitachi, the Seagate HDDs have the lowest latencies available for 7,200 RPM HDDs. That's the lowest latency you can get before you're required to jump to 10,000 RPM or higher.

[{PMS}fishy]

I would recommend a Seagate HDD for people that want a WD Raptor HDD, but can't afford one.

With the exception of maybe Hitachi, the Seagate HDDs have the lowest latencies available for 7,200 RPM HDDs. That's the lowest latency you can get before you're required to jump to 10,000 RPM or higher.

Not only that, they have a 5 year warranty on a lot of their drives, they are the most reliable, and the quietest. Im looking for a good deal on a pair of seagates for some RAID1 storage.

[Susquehannock]

Not only that, they have a 5 year warranty on a lot of their drives, they are the most reliable, and the quietest. Im looking for a good deal on a pair of seagates for some RAID1 storage.

Warranty period can be very important, especially if you're building
for a customer.

I will never use Maxtor again for this reason. Had two drives in RAID 0
go up at the exact same time. And it was only 3 weeks after the one year
warranty expired. :mad:

[Tmod]

What are your system specs Tmod?

I am running a Abit NF7-S with the onboard SATA controller.

Partition is NTFS with 16K stripe and 16K cluster sizes.

Here is a run on ATTO of my WD 80GB NON RAID SATA drive.

There seems to be something screwy with your drive there as that seems low to me.

Tmod

http://users.keyway.net/~tmod700/wd%20sata.jpg

[tcat92]

Based on my recent install of the Hitachis, I think its a no brainer to go with those instead of the Raptors. These are for the most part quiet. I'm a quiet freak, Sonata case and all, and I'm satisfied with the quiet factor of these as well as the speed I'm getting. I also only paid $57 each from NewEgg last week. Here are my results:

[Susquehannock]

>>>>>>>>>
There seems to be something screwy with your drive there as that seems low to me.

Tmod

Not sure but I think it's because of the Promise RAID controller. Running SATA
on this board requires one to set up a single disk array. My ATTO scores are
actually slightly faster than when I had the RAID 0 Maxtor array. Don't
have the screenies since they both took a dump. :mad:

You ought to see the ATTO scores that nForce4 board owners are getting
with single Raptor. It's clearly better architecture than this nf2.

[Tmod]

Susquehannock,

I would like to see the Hitachis on the nForce4 as well.

When you install that single drive in a array do you specify the stripe size or does it not use that setting?

Also what cluster size are you running?

Tmod

[hay112]

well it looks like i'm gonna go with a pair of hitachi's

[Susquehannock]

Susquehannock,

I would like to see the Hitachis on the nForce4 as well.

When you install that single drive in a array do you specify the stripe size or does it not use that setting?

Also what cluster size are you running?

Tmod

Nah, it doesn't specify stripe. And cluster size is default 4k. I've always been
under the impression that using anyting but 4k for NTFS caused issues with
certain programs, so I haven't tried it. Besides, 4k is required for file
compression. Read that at the M$ websyte I think.

[Mr.Guvernment]

Well, i'd go with the 2x160s.

Speed would realistically be negligable, and you get way more storage with the 2x160s.

Of course people are going to say there is more chance of one of your drives failing, but you have the same chance of losing everything if just 1 Raptor fails.



;)


no - you "double" your chances of something dieing.

[voodoomelon]

I know, but I like to look at it from the other way... :D

;)

[Tmod]

Originally posted by Susquehannock
I've always been
under the impression that using anyting but 4k for NTFS caused issues with
certain programs, so I haven't tried it.

The only time I have run into any problems with a 16K cluster size is running anything older then XP. The problem that comes to play is on older OS's such as 2000 is that defrag doesn't work with the 16K cluster size.

I have not had any other issues besides that one.

I just run Norton Speed Disk to alleviate the problem.

Tmod

[Tmod]

Originally posted by Mr.Guvernment
no - you "double" your chances of something dieing.

Whether or not you have one drive or two drives running raid the bottom line is if the one single drive goes or one of the array drives you are screwed.

Yes you do increase the chances of a drive going bad the more you add, But one single drive can fail just as easily as one array drive.

I think the key here is backup no matter what drive arrangement you are running.

Tmod

[deathman20]

Whether or not you have one drive or two drives running raid the bottom line is if the one single drive goes or one of the array drives you are screwed.

Yes you do increase the chances of a drive going bad the more you add, But one single drive can fail just as easily as one array drive.

I think the key here is backup no matter what drive arrangement you are running.

Tmod

Ya the key is backup. And welll if you don't want to backup to say a Flashdrive or CD/DVD's your left with a harddrive. So that means if hes got only 2 drives in his computer there is no form of redundancy on the computer at all if running raid.

Running drives as one at least you can copy critical files to the other drive for backup. Mainly tax info, resume's, personal work/data, save game data, pictures (well that would should go onto a CD/DVD really).

[tcat92]

The problem that comes to play is on older OS's such as 2000 is that defrag doesn't work with the 16K cluster size.

Tmod

Is this true? I haven't had to defrag my raid0 yet. And I'm running win 2k and I have 16k clusters. Is defrag not going to work? If so, any suggestions on how to defrag it?

Thanks.

[tcat92]

It looks like its not true. Or maybe just for Raptors. I'm gonna give it a try and see for myself I guess.


http://www.ocforums.com/showthread.php?t=286173&highlight=defrag+16k

[Tmod]

Originally posted be tcat92
It looks like its not true.

Well you need to read my post again as I said it will work in XP but not 2000 or older.

That person in that thread did not specify what OS they have, If it is XP then yes it will work.

I invite you to contact the likes of Diskeeper, PerfectDisk and O&O defrag and ask them if their product will defrag a 16K cluster size on Windows 2000.

Tmod

[RoadWarrior]

IMHO, Any pair of 8Mb 7200 drives in RAID 0 will beat a single 74G raptor, some 2Mb pairs might just edge it out too. The newer 8Mb cache drives are beating the 36G raptors run single, so the 36G is yesterdays news. They've gone and got a rep like the Voodoo though, remember how often in the past you had to put up with lamers arguing their Voodoo 3 was superior to your GF2 GTS? It was good in it's day, but it's day has gone, accept it dammit! :D Time is catching up with the 74G raptor too, 6 months ago it had a clear lead, now, it's only a marginal lead over the latest generations of 8Mb 7200 High capacity mainstream drives. Time was when it had 50% more performance than higher end mainstream drives, now, that is down to a 15% lead, and with both in RAID 0 configurations it's down to less than 5%, is 15% worth double the price for half the storage? is 5%? Then comparing RAID 8meggers against it, it's like 25% less performance for the same cost and a quarter the space.... tick tick tick tick tick

Road Warrior

[TimoneX]

Precisely and I've not seen any definitive testing that compares the older 74Gb raptors to the newer 74Gb raptors but I did notice the price jumping about $50 from $179 to $229 on newegg. What's the difference between the WD740GD and the WD740GDRTL aside from the obvious fact that one is retail & one is OEM? Please tell me it's not a $50 box! The newer ad says ESATA and the older ones say Serial ATA. What is ESATA? Is that code for SATA II? Geez they even increased the shipping by $1 apparantly due to the box. WD needs to get the *SIZE* of these drives up w/o killing the performance to make them reasonable IMO. I think WD could improve the raptor's appeal dramatically by releasing a version with a SATAII interface, proper NCQ functionality, 16Mb cache, and most of all a single 100Gb platter at an MSRP similar to what their "old" 74Gb OEM drive is going for. The improved performance and size would probably reinvigorate their raptor line and improve the hefty $/Gb ratio as well. I doubt it would hurt their profit margins much if at all either. Slapping an ESATA interface on there looks like a thin coat of paint.

[deathman20]

You think shippings bad, I saw on the site, the same drive, 2 different numbers, the same price, same box. Only thing different was the shipping for one was $1 more.

[hay112]

so what stripe size do u guys think i should use?

[TimoneX]

16k

[hay112]

16k

that's what i'm leanin towards

[pcgamer4life]

I'd say the 2x 160's, I doubt there's that much speed difference in the two.


Hell, just go with whatever is cheaper.

[Tmod]

hay112,

If you are running XP go with 16K stripe and 16K cluster.

I have tried several combinations of stripe and cluster size and always ended up going back to 16K/16K.

Tmod

[Susquehannock]

The only time I have run into any problems with a 16K cluster size is running anything older then XP. The problem that comes to play is on older OS's such as 2000 is that defrag doesn't work with the 16K cluster size.

I have not had any other issues besides that one.

I just run Norton Speed Disk to alleviate the problem.

Tmod
--------------------------
hay112,

If you are running XP go with 16K stripe and 16K cluster.

I have tried several combinations of stripe and cluster size and always ended up going back to 16K/16K.

Tmod


Hmm, I got best results from 16k stripe - 4k cluster. The default 64k stripe
caused all sorts of boot issues and such. Guess it really depends on the set up.

[Tmod]

Susquehannock,

I have both Highpoint Raid setup and the Silicon Image SATA Raid and have tried anywhere from 64K down to 4K. It all comes down to 16K/16K for me.

I have not run any real large drives on it though so maybe that is a deciding factor as well.

Also maybe the promise likes the 4K cluster.

Tmod