Raptor vs 7200rpm ide 2mb? should i upgrade? HD TACH included

beavismorpheus · Apr 5, 2006

Hey, i bought a 7200rpm IDE HDD a couple years back. it has a measly 2mb cache. I now understand that is pathetic. that was my first build i didnt know squat about hdds. im still not as elite as i want to be, obviously, as im turning to you for insight.

my burst speed was 123mb/sec is that pretty lame?

graphs scores
1.5 gb i scored 55mb/sec
60 gb i got 30mb/sec

Would there be a noticable increase in my gaming and windows start up times? Most importantly, you think its worth the extra 75-100 bucks to my system? I was thinking of catchin a 36.7 for cheap on ebay and using the ide as a storage drive. i only play a couple games at a time.

opty 144
7800gt
1gb ddr500

Snugglebear · Apr 5, 2006

Hard drives are the biggest single bottleneck in the overall system, and using faster drives definitely helps out. However, it depends on what you do to estimate how fast 'faster' will be. 10,000rpm drives will decrease your seek times and increase contiguous throughput over what you have now, even if bursts stay about the same. Those smaller seek times mean more I/Os per second and thus higher overall throughput in an multi-tasking environment.

My only concern is that you're looking at the older 36GB models. Those are quite a bit slower than the 76GB units or the newest 160GB drives. I would suggest waiting until you can get something newer.

MyPCAlexi · Apr 5, 2006

i have noticed a big difference from ide to sata, and 10k rpm drives do add a little bump in performance. like he^ said, hdd's are the biggest bottleneck. so why not upgrade?

Snugglebear · Apr 5, 2006

I saw a big jump years ago when I moved from 7200rpm PATA to 10k & later 15k SCSI. It's almost as good as a processor upgrade for day to day use.

Fferrett · Apr 5, 2006

My biggest jump in performance was when I decided to move to a 6 drive RAID 0+1. Just a little rocketraid 404 controller and cheap ata 80 GB drives - amazing speed. Biggest downside is heat dissipation.

Snuggle is correct about the 15k RPM drives being "the schiznit'. I just can't deal with the price or the noise that they create.

You can find 100GB 7.2k RPM hard drives for $50 now... Slap 2 or 4 together with a cheap multichannel controller and enjoy the speed and added redundancy of more spindles managing the load.

I'm currently building a 4 to 6 disk array for my mediacenter pc. It will be somewhere between 1 and 2.5 TB in size. Just have to find the right deal now...

beavismorpheus · Apr 5, 2006

LLLOOOLLLL!!!!!1111111111

i love your avatar

moz_21 · Apr 6, 2006

I have but one image:

beavismorpheus · May 27, 2006

I upgraded my graphics card, yay! x1900xt in the house

My hard drive is really irritating me now. In fear multiplayer when i turn around corners for the first time, it lags for a split second and i hear the hard drive chugging away.

If I fly throught the level, it lags the first time, but after that, its smooth as butter. presumably after everything is loaded to RAM.

Anyone else have this kind of problem cured with a raptor?

im thinking i deffinately need to upgrade my hard drive instead of getting another gb of ram. i will likely get the extra ram this winter.

NODES · May 27, 2006

either upgrade to a 74gb single raptor or the cheaper route buy 2 used 36gb raptors and raid em.

beavismorpheus · May 27, 2006

I have an x1900xt on a fortron 400w. i was worried i might blow the psu if i run a raid setup.

would two of the smaller raptors use exactly twice the power? what kind of amperage do these hard drives draw? they would certainly be the only two hdds in the rig. storage would be external.

How can i tell how much amperage my PSU has remaining to give before it explodes?

Would raid 36s out perform the single 74?

NODES · May 27, 2006

beavismorpheus said:
.l

?

beavismorpheus · May 27, 2006

^ ololollololollolololol

boris_37 · May 27, 2006

dont even consider upgrading to a single 74gb raptor, big waste of cash. Either do 2x74gb(or if you feel like spending a lot, the 150gb's) in RAID0, or forget raptors altogether. IMO 36gb are too slow and are not worth the price(unless you're getting a really good deal). 90% of users will not notice the upgrade to a single raptor, so it's pointless. If you don't feel like busting for some raptors as they are a bit noisier and hotter, and more expensive... then just buy 1-2 more matching drives to the one you have and run RAID0, it will be a lot cheaper than getting raptors and will run quite fast.

Or you could go for the sweet spot $/GB and get 2 or 3x250GB drives and RAID them... speed would be good and storage would be high.

Just my 2Cents.

JCLW · May 27, 2006

I'd avoid the 36G Raptors - they are slower and do not include fluid bearings.

Hard drives don't really draw that much power compared to most other components. I have four 74G Raptors in my (i830D based) workstation and power has never an issue.

moz_21 · May 27, 2006

beavismorpheus said:
I upgraded my graphics card, yay! x1900xt in the house

My hard drive is really irritating me now. In fear multiplayer when i turn around corners for the first time, it lags for a split second and i hear the hard drive chugging away.

If I fly throught the level, it lags the first time, but after that, its smooth as butter. presumably after everything is loaded to RAM.

Anyone else have this kind of problem cured with a raptor?

im thinking i deffinately need to upgrade my hard drive instead of getting another gb of ram. i will likely get the extra ram this winter.

How much ram are you running?

NODES · May 27, 2006

JCLW said:
I'd avoid the 36G Raptors - they are slower and do not include fluid bearings.

Hard drives don't really draw that much power compared to most other components. I have four 74G Raptors in my (i830D based) workstation and power has never an issue.

im running 4x36gb=Raid0 raptors and i love it.

beavismorpheus · May 27, 2006

How do you think two of these in raid 0 would fair against a single raptor 74?

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16822135106

I know they are kind of small, but storage is not an issue. Storage is taken care of elseware. All I care about is speed.

My average read is 43.8mbs in the 8mb zone test using hd tach. some guy in the reviews says he scored of 100mb/s. I dunno if hes talking about burst speed (which I scored over 100mbps too) or if hes talking about the average read speed.

NODES · May 27, 2006

beavismorpheus said:
How do you think two of these in raid 0 would fair against a single raptor 74?

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16822135106

I know they are kind of small, but storage is not an issue. Storage is taken care of elseware. All I care about is speed.

try to get the newer SATA2 drives there quite a bit better.

the higher RPM's help the raptors out quite a bit. Check out storagereview.com for some tests

beavismorpheus · May 27, 2006

Arent those sataII drives? I thought SATA 3.0Gb/s was sataII. I could be wrong

NODES · May 27, 2006

beavismorpheus said:
Arent those sataII drives? I thought SATA 3.0Gb/s was sataII. I could be wrong

id call to confirm.

3gbs is sata2

Raptor vs 7200rpm ide 2mb? should i upgrade? HD TACH included

Member

Member

New Member

Member

Member

Member

Member

Member

Member

Member

Member

Member

Member

Member

Member

Member

Member

Member

Member

Member

Similar threads