Question on Raptor

I'm currently using a 120 gig SATA spinpoint for my boot drive, would switching to a 36.7 gig Raptor offer me much more performance? the anandtech review kind of led me to believe it wouldn't

http://www.anandtech.com/storage/showdoc.html?i=2073

but everyone raves about these disks so what to believe? thanks for any info..

karsten

That data seems aimed more at the retail machine usage level .

I generally prefer looking at storagereview.com data for storage devices. Here is the matrix of testing involving both Raptors and a Spinpoint that should be very close to yours in performance.

http://storagereview.com/php/benchm...&devID_0=259&devID_1=249&devID_2=252&devCnt=3

Are there benefits to going to a Raptor, absolutely. Are those improvements justified by the cost. That depends on what the machine is used for. For an average home user, there's no reason to need one. On the other hand, this community does not consist of home users. We tend to stress our machines harder and look for any potential improvements in performance.

On the performance issues, the reduction in both seek and disk latency, reflected in the disk access time numbers is a great improvement. The increased spindle speed adds somewhat to the sustained transfer rate, slightly offset by reduced areal density. These are design concepts that SCSI has used for years to have very fast reliable drives. This design shows throughout the testing that follows.

Personally, I go much farther than this to reduce latency. It's like any other bottleneck limiting performance.