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SATA I raptor vs. SATA II drive?

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Intrepid

Member
Joined
Jun 30, 2002
Location
Boise, ID, USA
I'm trying to choose which will give me the best performance for storing my OS and applications. I'm debating between a WD raptor with its incredibly fast seek time, and a SATA II drive with it's fast connection to the rest of the PC. Which will deliver give the best results?
 
*slaps forehead*

for the last damn time, higher potential bandwidth DOES NOT equal higher speeds. There isn't a single consumer drive on the market that can saturate an sata I bus let alone reap the transfer rate benefits of sata II. Some features may make it worthwhile like ncq(although thats debatable), but unless you have an sata II mobo you're wasting your time anyway. Raptors are still the way to go for sheer speed(although the size to price ratio sucks).
 
A raptor doesn't even max out SATA 1, a slower drive will definetly not max out SATA 2. If you're looking for a fast transfer speed, get 2 drives in RAID 0, but I dont see why people need such fast transfer speeds. Lets not make this another RAID vs Raptor thread. I say get the Raptor.
 
is there a noticeable speed difference between ATA and SATA though? I have two options: get a 37gb raptor to put my fave games and os on for my new system, or buy a big SATAII hard drive to store even more. Keep in mind that I have 2 other ATA hard drives that I plan on porting over, so if there isn't a big difference I will get the raptor for booting, and then use the other 340gb of space for extra stuff, or I could go through and get the 250GB SATAII + 160GB ATA + 180GB ATA = 590GB of space instead of almost 400.

which would you guys do?
 
SATA basically means smaller cables, not perfomance increase. The raptor doesnt even BURST faster than IDE 133 speeds. I doubt a 250 GB, 7200 RPM drive will ever transfer faster than 100 MB/s. So Save your money and keep your ATA drives then get the Raptor.
 
jjv687 said:
SATA basically means smaller cables, not perfomance increase. The raptor doesnt even BURST faster than IDE 133 speeds. I doubt a 250 GB, 7200 RPM drive will ever transfer faster than 100 MB/s. So Save your money and keep your ATA drives then get the Raptor.
IDE 133 was a marketing ploy by Maxtor, no drive actually runs that fast.

On benchmarks SATA drives do tend to outperform on burst trasnfer by a LITTLE compared to ATA drives, but really when comparing ATA to non-raptor SATA its just as jjv said, you get smaller cables.
 
Just for note: my 74 GB raptor just benched 55MB/s and my WD 200GB SATA2 benched 54MB/s in Sandra.

Also, I ran Superpi 3 times off each drive alternating between them. I notice about a .04 second difference in 1 million digits and about a .07 second difference in 2 million digits. The raptor is the slower in that one test.

Just interesting, that's all.
I would like to do some game load up time testing off each drive. It'd be interesting if I tested a bunch of stuff off each drive w/ fresh OS installs. hmmmm.....
 
I prefer two 36gb Raptors in raid0 for the extra write speed. Windows installs really quick, as well as other installs and disk write operations. However, to retain my post from a threadjack, unless Gigabytes I-Ram crap comes out soon, nothings gunna reach the potential max of SATA I (for a couple of years).
 
I purchased a 32gb Raptor for my OS and apps, which should be fine, since Windows is no more than 2gb, and most apps are less. I can't wait to try it out once my RAM gets here.

Ok so I really posted to say that your avatar ROCKS apu!
 
masterwoot said:
Just for note: my 74 GB raptor just benched 55MB/s and my WD 200GB SATA2 benched 54MB/s in Sandra.
Sandra is a miserable hard drive benchmark, and drives are extremely hard to benchmark with any degree of accuracy and repeatability across different machines even when the test is not so clearly flawed. This simply doesn't mean a thing.

masterwoot said:
Also, I ran Superpi 3 times off each drive alternating between them. I notice about a .04 second difference in 1 million digits and about a .07 second difference in 2 million digits. The raptor is the slower in that one test.
That's not really a hard drive test at all. It's interesting that you get different results, and it may point to slight buffer differences. But if anything it just serves to point out how little interface differences amount to in real terms, however much wind they may blow up a particular benchmark's skirt. But this function involves the hard drive to such a small degree and is showing a difference that is likely within the margin of error of the test, and as such its hard to draw many conclusions from it.
 
Intrepid said:
I'm trying to choose which will give me the best performance for storing my OS and applications. I'm debating between a WD raptor with its incredibly fast seek time, and a SATA II drive with it's fast connection to the rest of the PC. Which will deliver give the best results?
SATAII is a great hard drive interface, but interface speed does not matter nearly as much as the drive's mechanical speed and buffer optimization. While SATAII drives can appear comptetitve with a Raptor on paper, in reality, no SATAII drive motivates like the Raptor, even with its older interface. The combination of the terrific seek peformance and the typical excellent WD buffer management allows the Raptor 74 to remain quicker in practice.
 
For all reality sake, excluding a raptor, you might at well be using EIDE and might get the same results with the same drive as on SATAII, with only slight diferences in benchmarks, and little to no noticable diferences.

Expanding on noticable diferences, just because it says its faster on paper or on some test, dosent mean it matters, if it moves a few miliseconds faster, you'll never see it, and if those few miliseconds cost you actual money, then you got ripped off anyway. My point is, you'll probably never notice the diference in most cases.
 
FYI I just got a 74gig raptor last night and man this thing flys. I have used the maxtors with the 16mb cache and WD Cavier with 8mb and the Raptor blow both away with pure speed. I really like it :)
 
larva said:
Sandra is a miserable hard drive benchmark, and drives are extremely hard to benchmark with any degree of accuracy and repeatability across different machines even when the test is not so clearly flawed. This simply doesn't mean a thing.

That's not really a hard drive test at all. It's interesting that you get different results, and it may point to slight buffer differences. But if anything it just serves to point out how little interface differences amount to in real terms, however much wind they may blow up a particular benchmark's skirt. But this function involves the hard drive to such a small degree and is showing a difference that is likely within the margin of error of the test, and as such its hard to draw many conclusions from it.

Like I said:
masterwoot said:
Just interesting, that's all.

You're right on the money, larva.
larva said:
t just serves to point out how little interface differences amount to in real terms

That bit w/ Superpi is rather interesting as the program runs consistently faster off the other drive. Not that the times differ--that happens even off one drive. But to have one HD consistently "beat" the other in benchmark on something not seemingly related to data transfer is interesting as you said.
 
ok, been in doubt about going RAID or not (my mobo has 6 SATA ports...) Now I know what to get on my next upgrade; a single 74GB Raptor!
 
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