Opinions about Raptor Drive

[Quakindude]

I currently have a WD2500KS 16Mb cache, 250Gb SATA3 drive as my primary drive.

I have a chance to pick up a WD Raptor 8Mb Cache, 74Gb drive for $100.

I know the Raptor is faster than the other drive I have, but is it enough of a difference to warrant gettin6g the Raptor?


TIA!

-Tom

[garetjax]

Originally Posted by Quakindude

I currently have a WD2500KS 16Mb cache, 250Gb SATA3 drive as my primary drive.

I have a chance to pick up a WD Raptor 8Mb Cache, 74Gb drive for $100.

I know the Raptor is faster than the other drive I have, but is it enough of a difference to warrant gettin6g the Raptor?

I would say no. The difference between the Raptor, which spins at 10k RPM but has only 8mb cache, versus the Caviar which spins at 7.2k RPM but has 16mb cache is negligible at best. In my eyes, the two almost cancel each other out. But as far as straight performance goes, however, the Raptor will squeak ahead by a tiny bit. You most likely won't even notice the difference between the two drives other than disk space.

The real question, if you still want to purchase that Raptor, is what are you going to use it for? I use my 74GB Raptor only for my OS and associated applications like Photoshop and ripping CD's. I use a 120GB to store all my music and media files, and my second Raptor is my dedicated game drive. With that said, if you are planning to replace your Caviar drive with the Raptor, I would say that, at most, your purchase would really be a sidewise upgrade, unless you needed an extra hard drive for something else.

[One4yu2c]

I'm with Garet - you're just not going to see $100 worth of a performance boost over your current drive.

[fps justin]

you could get another WD 250g 16mb and go raid? That might give you more performance than having a raptor. It would give you half a terrabyte of HDD space.

[polobunny]

There's little to no difference of performance between the 8MB Raptors and the 16MB Raptors (WD740GD & WD740ADFD)
Even at $100.00 (refurbished?) I don't think they're really worth it.

[Quakindude]

It's a buddy of mine selling it. It's 3 months old. I already have two WD2500KS drives. I've had them in Raid 0, but there wasn't enough of a performance increase for the things I do to warrant the possible data loss by running a Raid 0 config.

I was thinking of putting the Raptor as my OS drive only, but now I don't think I'll mess with it. I have this WD2500KS in two partitions, one 100Gb for the OS and related apps and the other part for games. I then have a second HDD, a SATA Maxtor, installed with another 120GB of space. Then there's my 1Tb Lacie external FW800 drive. So I don't really *need* this Raptor drive. The Raptor whine would probably drive me nuts anyway.

Thanks folks.

[yurimxpxman]

I would also say no. I'm using a Raptor right now, and I'm very sorry I bought it instead of a larger capacity drive. There just isn't much of a difference in speed, and they're really tiny.

[screwballl]

for desktop use, go with storage over speed...
if it is a long term server with corporate duties then go ahead and use the raptor

[JCLW]

It depends entirely on you usage pattern.

If you need high STRs (ie: accessing large files) then high density (ie: large) drives are for you. And/Or RAID 0.

If you need fast seeks (ie: multitasking) then Raptors are for you.

If you need both, then look at Raptors in RAID 0.

But for the average user, any current generation SATA drive should be plenty fast.

All the newer Raptors have FDB (fluid) bearings, and are just as quiet as any other drive I've used.

[garetjax]

Originally Posted by screwballl

for desktop use, go with storage over speed...

I find the speed of a Raptor for OS use to be very beneficial. Even though the capacity limits of a Raptor are small, using a second, larger capacity hard drive to store secondary files such as music, videos, games etc. on it can be a good idea.