Hard Drive Upgrade Options

[jonnyboy88]

Hi, I thinking of increasing my storage capacity but at the same time keeping my high performance hard drive.
Currently, I have:

• 36 GB WD Raptor

• 120 GB WD Cavair

I'm thinking of a couple different options for the raptor:

• Get a 74 GB Raptor and sell the 36 GB

• Get another 36 GB Raptor and put them in RAID 0 (which, while looking around the forums, seems like the better option for performance)

With the Cavair, I'm thinking of either

• Selling it and getting a 250 or 320 GB

• Buying a external hard drive which could entail:
  • Getting an external enclosure and a separate hard drive. (Better performance)
  • Getting an all in one unit like the WD Passport (Usually cheaper)

Any comments/suggestions/concerns are appreciated!

 

[jonnyboy88]

Also, I just read in the Sata 101 sticky that SATA II can sometimes be faster than SATA I raptors, does anyone know more about this?

 

[tuskenraider]

Well if you need more space then the 36GB Raptor, get the 74, otherwise keep it where it's at and upgrade the 120 for more data storage capacity. I wouldn't get an external unless you need to move it around and aren't worried about performance.

Also, I just read in the Sata 101 sticky that SATA II can sometimes be faster than SATA I raptors, does anyone know more about this?

There are no "SATA II"(which is incorrect naming, it should be noted as SATA-300) Raptors. All Raptors are SATA-150(aka wrongly stated as "SATA I").

 

[jonnyboy88]

There are no "SATA II"(which is incorrect naming, it should be noted as SATA-300) Raptors. All Raptors are SATA-150(aka wrongly stated as "SATA I").

Thanks for the reply, but the sticky made it sound like SATA 3.0 drives are faster in general than the Raptors, which is what I was asking about in my question.

 

[tuskenraider]

Thanks for the reply, but the sticky made it sound like SATA 3.0 drives are faster in general than the Raptors, which is what I was asking about in my question.

Well that impression is mostly wrong. SATA-300 describes nothing but the theoretical speed of the interface. There isn't one hard drive that can even remotely surpass SATA-150 speeds so really any drive that has SATA-300 spec is purely for marketing purposes. Yes, there are some 7200rpm drives that surpass the STR(sustained transfer rate) performance of the old generation of Raptors(8MB cache), but none that can touch the seek time performance. And yes, most happen to be SATA-300. Current Raptors(16MB cache) are still tops in STR and seek time. Seek time performance would be a better attribute to consider than STR for and OS/app drive and would be the reason I'd have no problem using an older Raptor for such use.

 

[d4rr3n]

Well that impression is mostly wrong. SATA-300 describes nothing but the theoretical speed of the interface. There isn't one hard drive that can even remotely surpass SATA-150 speeds so really any drive that has SATA-300 spec is purely for marketing purposes. Yes, there are some 7200rpm drives that surpass the STR(sustained transfer rate) performance of the old generation of Raptors(8MB cache), but none that can touch the seek time performance. And yes, most happen to be SATA-300. Current Raptors(16MB cache) are still tops in STR and seek time. Seek time performance would be a better attribute to consider than STR for and OS/app drive and would be the reason I'd have no problem using an older Raptor for such use.

Couldn't agree more,loved my 74gb raptor when I first got it back when it came out and honestly of any single upgrade I ever made the raptor was easily the most noticeable. I don't do many large file transfers so a difference in STR is fairly meaningless to me. But that seek time and random access really stick out when you are bouncing from file to file and folder to folder in windows. Like it so much I just picked up 2 150gb raptor x's. Hate to tell you this Jonny but they werejust on sale for like $170 AR. Could've had alot of speed and ok storage as well.