Raptors: Are they worth it?

AEsnowboarding · Jun 12, 2005

I was thinking about getting one for my OS and Games to run on. Are they worth the price in speed? How loud are they? Also what are the chances of WD comming out with a larger Raptor drive? Say 160 GB or something arounf there. I am looking for pure speed because my 160 and 250 are enough for storage. So are these the fastest drives without going Raid or SCSI?

d94 · Jun 12, 2005

http://www17.tomshardware.com/storage/20031114/raidcore-05.html

musawi · Jun 12, 2005

So are these the fastest drives without going Raid or SCSI?

Pretty much yeah!

They are fast, they are a tad on the loud side though.

AEsnowboarding · Jun 12, 2005

How loud would you say?

apunkrockmonk · Jun 12, 2005

Probably as loud as HDs that were made 4-5 years ago. You can only hear them when they're accessing though. If you have anything that you wouldn't consider silent or near silent cooling you probably won't even be able to hear it.

jjv687 · Jun 12, 2005

How much of a difference do the make though in terms of MB/s? Like whats an average 7200 RPM, 8MB cache, SATA drive transfer at in MB/s and whats a raptor do?

flamerail · Jun 12, 2005

Try and get a seagate 10,000 drive. Know a buddy who is a licenced computer dude? ask him to see if his supplier has them. My buddy scott has 2 Seagate 10,000s

AEsnowboarding · Jun 13, 2005

jjv687 said:
How much of a difference do the make though in terms of MB/s? Like whats an average 7200 RPM, 8MB cache, SATA drive transfer at in MB/s and whats a raptor do?

Seek time compaired to any other SATA HD is just crazy.

Raptor
Cache 8MB
RPM 10,000 RPM
Average Seek Time 4.5ms
Average Write Time 5.9ms
Average Latency 2.99ms
Interface Serial ATA150

WD Caviar SE
Cache 8MB
RPM 7200 RPM
Average Seek Time 8.9ms
Average Write Time 10.9ms
Average Latency 4.2ms
Interface Serial ATA150

Vance S · Jun 13, 2005

If you ask me, no they are not worth it. But I also have not owned one so I don't have first hand experience with it. From what I've read, they make a difference of only seconds. To me that is not worth spending so much money on a drive with such a small capacity. Even if they made a noticable difference in terms of load times I don't think it would be worth it for me as any 7200 RPM drive seems to load up fast enough.

OldOne · Jun 13, 2005

I have two raptors in raid0 and I am on the map in DC first about all of the time.I have not used one at a time.

jjv687 · Jun 13, 2005

So instead of taking .0089 seconds to find your data, they will take .0045 seconds. I dont know about you guys, but I dont think I'll be able to notice a .0044 second decrease of time in anything. I cant even blink that fast.. If I can get a 36 GB raptor for $50 or so, I might take it just so I can say that I have a raptor, but I wouldnt spend over $100 on a 36 GB hard drive thats less than 5 miliseconds faster than normal drives.

yogipower · Jun 13, 2005

If you have money for raptor,
I will say u should get one because its little bit louder than 7200rpm but its really faster than 7200rpm.

Run HD tach whenever u get ur raptor.

musawi · Jun 13, 2005

So instead of taking .0089 seconds to find your data, they will take .0045 seconds.

When I got my raptor everything loaded up quicker, always first in the map in CSS, everything just ran faster. How you put it, it might not seem that much but I certainly felt the increase in speed from the windows install to boot up times to games.

johan851 · Jun 13, 2005

So instead of taking .0089 seconds to find your data, they will take .0045 seconds. I dont know about you guys, but I dont think I'll be able to notice a .0044 second decrease of time in anything. I cant even blink that fast.. If I can get a 36 GB raptor for $50 or so, I might take it just so I can say that I have a raptor, but I wouldnt spend over $100 on a 36 GB hard drive thats less than 5 miliseconds faster than normal drives.

It's more than that. You're also getting an increase in read/write times, so once you access the data, you pull it off the HD faster. .0045 vs .0089 is access time for a single file, but whenever you're loading a program, loading windows, or really doing anything, you're going to be pulling multiple files from multiple locations. This involves reading each file after it's accessed. Since the Raptor benefits from read/write times roughly 50% faster than a 7200RPM, a hard drive based application like installing something, running a search, defragmenting, loading windows, loading a map or program, etc, is going to feel (allow me to generalize) 50% faster. Loading a game usually takes you 30 seconds? Now it's going to take 20. Loading a map takes 15? Now it's going to take 10. People spend hundreds on their processor for that kind of difference, and I don't see why you'd let yourself be bottlenecked by a hard drive when the rest of your components rock. Ever tried installing a fast hard drive in an old PII or Pentium system? They're actually fairly fast.

The Raptor makes a tremendous difference in the overall feel of your system because the hard drive is often your biggest bottleneck. Benchmarks alone can't measure this kind of thing, just as benchmarks alone can't measure the better "feel" people who have SMP systems talk about. It's an overall boost in performance, not just an access time difference.

JKeefe · Jun 13, 2005

apunkrockmonk said:
Probably as loud as HDs that were made 4-5 years ago. You can only hear them when they're accessing though.

I agree. When my Raptors (2x36GB) are idling, they are inaudible outside my case. The write mechanism seems to be rathe loud though, and the grinding of the motors can be heard at some distance.

AEsnowboarding · Jun 13, 2005

johan851 said:
It's more than that. You're also getting an increase in read/write times, so once you access the data, you pull it off the HD faster. .0045 vs .0089 is access time for a single file, but whenever you're loading a program, loading windows, or really doing anything, you're going to be pulling multiple files from multiple locations. This involves reading each file after it's accessed. Since the Raptor benefits from read/write times roughly 50% faster than a 7200RPM, a hard drive based application like installing something, running a search, defragmenting, loading windows, loading a map or program, etc, is going to feel (allow me to generalize) 50% faster. Loading a game usually takes you 30 seconds? Now it's going to take 20. Loading a map takes 15? Now it's going to take 10. People spend hundreds on their processor for that kind of difference, and I don't see why you'd let yourself be bottlenecked by a hard drive when the rest of your components rock. Ever tried installing a fast hard drive in an old PII or Pentium system? They're actually fairly fast.

The Raptor makes a tremendous difference in the overall feel of your system because the hard drive is often your biggest bottleneck. Benchmarks alone can't measure this kind of thing, just as benchmarks alone can't measure the better "feel" people who have SMP systems talk about. It's an overall boost in performance, not just an access time difference.

Nicely said. You ever think about working for WD

Well I have to wait a little bit but I think I am going to get one or two.

jjv687 · Jun 13, 2005

Hmm I'm kinda thinking about getting one if I can score a nice price on a used one from the classifieds. Whats the life epectancy on these drives? And I already have 2 drives in my case and I only have room for 3 total, so I'd have to stack them right next to each other. I have a 120mm intake fan blowing directly on my hard drives, so would that be alright? I know the raptors generate a lot of heat so I'm concerned about that. I guess a raptor would be the only thing I would want to do to increase my computers performance until I can afford a new nForce 4 setup. Thanks for the info johan!

Susquehannock · Jun 13, 2005

My 36gb Raptor is nice & quiet. Seems some are louder than others - had trouble
with the platter making contact with the outer shell. Read more here : * The Raptor Discussion Thread! *

Will say that I get slightly better HD Tach scores with a single Raptor than two
7200rpm Maxtor in RAID 0. That may have something to do with my Promise controller though.
All in all I am much happier with the single Raptor = less work & chance of data loss

Bar81 · Jun 13, 2005

If you value a snappy, responsive desktop and marked decreased load and application installation times then you get a Raptor. Otherwise, spend your money elsewhere.

JKeefe · Jun 13, 2005

jjv687 said:
What's the life epectancy on these drives?

It is excellent. They have a 5-year warranty, as oppossed to your typical 1- or 3-year warranty on other desktop drives. They are basically SCSI drives with a SATA interface, and you can tell as soon as you see one and hold it in your hands.

And I already have 2 drives in my case and I only have room for 3 total, so I'd have to stack them right next to each other. I have a 120mm intake fan blowing directly on my hard drives, so would that be alright? I know the raptors generate a lot of heat so I'm concerned about that.

I think that their heat output is exaggerated. It's a good idea to cool any hard drive, but I don't think a Raptor would die any faster than another uncooled drive. If I had to guess, I say it would last longer due to its superior quality. Your 120mm fan blowing on your drives will be fine.

Raptors: Are they worth it?

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