Raptor 10K vs. Hitachi T7K250 RAID 0 (Results Inside)

[Sucka]

So this has come up quite often lately with the release of SATA-2 and 16MB 7,200 drives plus the addition of NCQ. Well lets put this question to the test, and see if we can't come to a conclusion shall we?

Goal: To determine what drives are best for you. Taking cost and performance into consideration here we will see what is the best bang for the buck, and which drive performs best.

Method: What i did here was take 2x74GB Raptors in a RAID 0 and 2x250GB Hitachi 8MB drives in RAID 0 and tested them in the same system using identical Windows installs. To get the most accurate results i ran each test 3 times and took the middle result to give the most accurate run. I rebooted and defragged between each test. I used Windows XP x64 Service Pack 1 for these tests.

Test Setup:

DFI NF4 SLI-D 6/23-2
AMD X2 4400+ @ 2800MHz
2x512 OCZ Gold VX PC-4000
Sapphire x850 XT Cat 5.7
PCP&C 510 Deluxe SLI
Zalman Air Cooling

2x74GB Western Digital Raptor 10,000 RPM 8mb Cache SATA
2x250GB Hitachi T7K250 7,200 RPM 8mb Cache SATA-2

Both on Nvidia 64k Stripe

Cost:

Using the latest prices from Newegg.com:

WD Raptor: $186.00ea
Hitachi: $123.00ea

WD Raptors for RAID: $372.00
Hitachi's for RAID: $246.00

Price per GB:

Raptor: $2.50
Hitachi: $0.50

As you can see the Raptors are WAY more expensive per GB making them not economically sound to some. Lets find out if the price is worth it.

Results:

Atto:

2x250GB Hitachi T7K250 7,200 RPM 8mb Cache SATA-2

2x74GB Western Digital Raptor 10,000 RPM 8mb Cache

HD Tach:

2x250GB Hitachi T7K250 7,200 RPM 8mb Cache SATA-2

2x74GB Western Digital Raptor 10,000 RPM 8mb Cache

 

[Sucka]

PCMark04

2x250GB Hitachi T7K250 7,200 RPM 8mb Cache SATA-2

2x74GB Western Digital Raptor 10,000 RPM 8mb Cache

PCMark05

2x250GB Hitachi T7K250 7,200 RPM 8mb Cache SATA-2

2x74GB Western Digital Raptor 10,000 RPM 8mb Cache

Acoustics/Heat: While i don't have a real way to mesure this, i will offer my input. The Raptors are much louder than the Hitachi's. The Hitachi's are near silent while under heavy transfers while the Raptors are audible from several feet away.

Heat output from the Raptor's is also greater than the Hitachi's. While both run fairly warm, the Raptors put out much more heat than do the Hitachi's. With Western Digital's warranty this is probably not an issue to most, but something to note.

Conclusion: Obviously deciding a winner here is not easy. Taking price, storage space and performance into consideration we can not come out with a clear winner as everyone's opinion will be different. From a performance standpoint i think it's pretty clear that the Raptors win out overall, while the Hitachi's can certainly keep pace and overtake in a few areas. If raw speed is your thing i beleive going with a pair of Raptors would be the way to go. If you're like me and require more than ~140GB of actual storage then Hitachi's are for you. I will let you decide the overall winner in this one.

Notes: Some things that i would like to point out that can't be "benchmarked": Windows installation on both arrays is about even time wise. While i didn't time it this time around they would probably come out about even. For actual Windows boot times the Raptors pull ahead slightly. The numbers from the tests can be deceiving as the difference is maybe ~1-2 seconds, if that. As for an overall feeling that is hard to say. While the Raptors are blazing fast, the Hitachi's feel every bit as fast navagating Windows. Game loading and such feel slightly faster on the Raptor's, but not enough to be an issue.

Sucka's Pick: Well i'm gonna give the nod to the Hitachi's as far as an overall pick. Short of benchmarking the Hitachi's offer so much more than the Raptors. Price to performance is much better on the Hitachi's. While i won't be turning in my Raptors anytime soon, they just aren't for everyone. This is just a personal opinion, i'll let you decide from the numbers which is superior.

 

[trueplaya4ever8]

Great results Sucka, as usual . I kno what drives i will be picking up when i upgrade, those hitachi's.

 

[Sucka]

Great results Sucka, as usual . I kno what drives i will be picking up when i upgrade, those hitachi's.

You honestly can't go wrong. If you need space these are the drives to get. Through my research prior to picking these up i found that they were the best performers in the 7,200rpm class. My second choice was the Maxtor 16mb NCQ drives, but the Hitachi's beat those out, and i went on some advice of a trusted member here. I think it paid off in the end.

 

[hyperasus]

Nice review Sucka as always. It looks to me like the WD Raptors days are numbered. The larger drives are just getting too close in performance to justify the money they charge for a 10k rpm raptor. Not to mention we have those new ram drives just around the corner. My guess is that before long people will be going with ram drives for operating system and good ol 7200 rpm for storage. Should be interesting to see how it all goes.

 

[Speciale]

I have a feeling this is going to turn into an intersting thread

 

[kukyfrope]

Thanks sucka--I'm glad to see that both choices are good choices, it depends on what the end user is looking for.

I think personally, if I were wanting more file storage space for video/media and such, I would choose the Hitachi drives. Then maybe add something else to my system with the saved money from not buying a Raptor
If I were wanting a bit more speed and size wasn't really an issue, like if I were using this as a Windows system drive or to use it to install my games, I would go with the Raptors.

 

[{PMS}fishy]

500gb is a lot to lose at once.

Looks like the Raptor still remains king. With the new, larger raptor comming out, nothing will be able to touch it, aside from a few U320 offerings.

 

[larva]

Good thread. There are some things I would like to add, though. The exact amount of the difference you will measure between these two setups is completely a function of which benchmark you use. Benchmarks do a horrible job of quantifying hard drive performance, and it is hard to take the precise results of them all too seriously.

Secondly, this isn't really an either-or proposition. Raptors are not cost effective for storage volumes, but they are for the boot partition. Even a single R74 makes the best boot drive, and if you can't resist the Hitachis, use them for the bulk storage.

I've gone through this same thing with the 7k250 Hitachi, also an excellent device and very similar to its successor, performance-wise. The Hitachis are fast, to my mind clearly better than any other 7200rpm drive. They are that because of better seek performance than their competitors. And of course, the Raptor 74 has a lot better seek performance yet, making it king for the boot drive.

Yes, it may only amount to seconds here or there, but that is only because you can only save seconds by radically changing the drive performance for many tasks. It's not indicative of the relative difference between the two drives, but rather the extent of the difference drive speed alone can have on the system's performance, even if its doing something that most would characterize as being largely dependant on drive speed.

 

[apu318]

Very nice info.

 

[AEsnowboarding]

Ok but who needs 500GB for a OS drive? If you use more than 140gb's for your os and games then something is wrong.

 

[Vulcan]

Nice. Looks like the Hitachis keep up pretty well considering they cost 100.00 less and give you about 2.4x more space.

I can't really afford the raptors. But, I'm still on the fence about weather to go with the SAMSUNG SpinPoint SP2004C, Hitachi T7K250, Maxtor Diamondmax 10 or a Western Digital 2500JS... Or maybe something else. I have no idea

 

[Drec]

Sucka nice work, i bet it took some time to do, i would be interested in seeing them compared 1 on 1 no raid0's.

 

[Sucka]

Fishy: Yes you are absolutly correct. Which is why i wouldn't want to place my storage on a RAID 0 to begin with (i back it up one them, but it wouldn't matter if it were lost). It just isn't as fun to test drives unless they are RAID'ed for a review, i'm sure you can agree on that

larva: You are correct as well. It's even harder to place into words what drive is better. In fact, as off as the results may be/seem my opinion can be even more off base. This is why i offered this thread with both results and my opinion included. I'm sure you can agree that a "feeling" between 2 people is completly different. Just like if my A64's aren't clocked past 3200MHz they're slow But you do bring up a good point, take these benchmarks with a grain of salt. They aren't intended to give a "winner" per say, just to give an idea of what to expect benchmark wise, and my personal opinion.

AEsnowboarding: That doesn't have anything to do with this comparison. That is exactly why i posted both sets of results, one from a smaller array, and one from a larger. What you "need" is for the end consumer to decide, not me. If 500GB (or even a single 250GB) isn't your cup of tea, you can see the results from Raptor's right there and make the choice.

Drec: In due time. This was a on the fly review, so i didn't exactly plan out all my testing. I wish i had a set of regular drives to test as well, put things into perspective a little better.

Once again, these results are just for you guys to take into consideration for your next hard drive purchase. If you don't want a large OS drive than don't get it. Some people like to have everything they own on all hard drives (me). I keep a 200GB SATA drive out of my systems with everything stored on it, and i also put that data onto my arrays. This just adds some security should anything happen. I also have avoided RAID for the past year as i felt it never really offered much in the way of performance gains. I'm running a RAID now for 2 reasons. First i have 2 Raptors so why the heck not, and secondly i needed some new drives for storage, so why not just get 2 Plus it's better for benching PCMark's.

 

[Drec]

can't wait for the new raptor.

hehe that'll put these newfangled 7200rpm drives in their place.

 

[Sucka]

Yeah i've been using single Raptor's for a few years now. With the exception of noise and lack of space they're great. The 36GB ones wouldn't even come close to having enough space for me though. Not in my daily computer with all the games i load on there

 

[Drec]

well yeah the 36GB ones are dated, and the 74s are in their last days, when they first came out tho.....

 

[{PMS}fishy]

For what its worth, I run a Raptor for my OS, and 2 Seagate 200gb in Raid 1 for storage.

Best of both worlds. Safe and fast.

 

[Gabber359]

What new Raptors? That immediately piqued my interest, went to the WD site, but can only the find the standard 74GB Raptor, no info on a new breed.

Can someone fill me in please?

 

[cooter]

Sucka thanks for the post but I would like to recommend one thing if i could. HD benchmarks seem to be the most inaccurate that there are (my Fujitsu 15k SCSI drive would lose in your test setup, but it is faster in real world apps).

Could you do some tests with the same setups but instead of using benchmarks use a stopwatch and test load times. VIO1 and I did this in the past. Do things like check the load times for game maps, time for programs to open. Time to do a virus scan, disk cleanup, encode something, save a big file in photoshop.

I think that these real world tests would be very valueble, also if you could do them with single drive and the drive in RAID0 that would be good to.

Just a suggestion/request. But thanks for the current info and taking the time to do that.