WD RAPTOR

[xWilDx]

Can someone tell me if this is worth the money? and also is it true that the raptor is very noisey? Im wanting a fast HD but reports of the raptor being very noisey puts me off buying one.

 

[Quiksilver]

Originally posted by: Quiksilver
What excellent first posts you have, they are all "Help me plz, I can't figure out what parts to get". Rather than breaking them into separate threads(like you did) for each section you could have just made one thread in general hardware with "Plz help me I'm clueless and don't know anything about what to choose for my new computer" because at this point, I would have to agree with the above poster you haven't done any research of your own and just signed up here. So I'll just give you a nice hint because I'm feeling nice.

Read Reviews:
anandtech.com
tomshardware.com
madshrimps.be
techpowerup.com
hardocp.com

Once you've taken the time to do your own research please come back and try again.

...

 

[Twsmit]

They are worth it if you want the absolute fastest drive for your PC. (but now with advances in technology I'm not even sure that is valid anymore... I got my Raptor a year ago and even then it was more for fun than anything else.)

If you have a Quad core, 4 GB ram, SLI monster rig and you are looking to eek out more performance a Raptor is probably a good buy. If your building a $1,200 rig, heck no, it is a poor value and a 500GB+ drive holds more and is almost as fast if not faster due to tech advancements made in the two years since the 150GB raptors came out.

 

[sutahz]

http://forums.anandtech.com/me...1=raptor+perpendicular

 

[Cheex]

No.

 

[n7]

I like using Raptors as an OS drive, as the nice seek times give a snappiness that benchmarks can't really measure.

But for those not as concerned with snappiness, Raptors are not a good deal.

 

[Cheex]

Snappiness is great but at the same time, the 750GB HDDs are about equal and the 1TB HDDs are faster than Raptors. If cost is a concern, which in most cases it is, the 500GB price/performance ratio is hard to beat and the speed come pretty close to what the Raptors offer.

Note: This is not from personal experience...just gathered info that I've sifted through.

 

[n7]

I don't ever recommend Raptors as a good value; they aren't.

If you have very high end system already though, & don't mind spending money to get the best, you should be running a Raptor for your OS drive (if you don't want the prices of SCSI or SSD) + a 1 TB Samsung F1 or more

/imho

 

[gchanjam]

Depends on two main things. Money and your actual storage needs. Of course price comes into play first and foremost and if you are on a budget, bigger HDD's with new technology are the better buy. However, if you don't use very much space to begin with, why not get a Raptor? I myself could cram everything I have easily onto a 150GB Raptor and still have plenty of space but a lot of people aren't the same.

 

[lopri]

Well although Raptors have been getting long in the teeth, I wouldn't use a 750GB disk for a OS/boot partition. 150GB Raptors are still the fastest on the desktop today, albeit noisiest as well. On the other hand, I'd call it a day for 74GB Raptors.

 

[xWilDx]

thankyou for your comments, i think i will buy a Raptor for a OS/boot partition to speed it up and a 1 tb western digital caviar for storage and i will also research more on how to insulate/dampen the noise.

 

[sutahz]

I was under the impression that the ADFD (or w/e the 2nd rev of the 74GB raptor is) was the 'fastest'. The 150GB is a better deal then the 74GB, but for the last micro % of performance. Unless the 150GB has a new revision that makes it even better then before.

Why wouldnt you use a 750GB as a boot drive lopri?

 

[SickBeast]

The Raptor's days are numbered IMO.

SSD's offer far better seek times and pretty much negate any advantage the Raptor has.

 

[n7]

Originally posted by: SickBeast
The Raptor's days are numbered IMO.

SSD's offer far better seek times and pretty much negate any advantage the Raptor has.

Write speeds are weak on all but the fastest SSDs.

I'd like to hope that by the time SSDs are affordable, that's improved a lot though, & i'm sure it will have.

I do indeed hope to be able to pick up an SSD as my main drive sooner rather than later, but unlike the rich, i have to wait for prices to become reasonable

 

[SickBeast]

Originally posted by: n7

Originally posted by: SickBeast
The Raptor's days are numbered IMO.

SSD's offer far better seek times and pretty much negate any advantage the Raptor has.

Write speeds are weak on all but the fastest SSDs.

I'd like to hope that by the time SSDs are affordable, that's improved a lot though, & i'm sure it will have.

I do indeed hope to be able to pick up an SSD as my main drive sooner rather than later, but unlike the rich, i have to wait for prices to become reasonable

To me it's not a big deal. There are drives that cost less than the Raptor that also generally outperform it while offering far greater capacity.

I'd love to see how two 3200AAKS drives in RAID-0 obliterate a Raptor 150gb, all while costing less and offering 500gb greater capacity.

 

[lopri]

Originally posted by: SickBeast
I'd love to see how two 3200AAKS drives in RAID-0 obliterate a Raptor 150gb, all while costing less and offering 500gb greater capacity.

It surely does in most accounts but Raptors have one distinctive advantage that's called Random Access.

Edit: Just in case - I am not advocating Raptors. (at all) I myself dumped Raptors for two 250GB's in RAID0 for better acoustics with Vista. But had I been using XP, I'd still have kept the Raptors.

 

[nerp]

I own two raptors now and I love them. On an indentical machine, using a 7200.10 seagate or a Samsung Spinpoint T series drive is noticably slower than with a Raptor as a boot drive. I'm sure someone can cough up some synthetic benchmarks to state otherwise, but real world usage can't be measured because every system is different. All I know is that the Raptor is fast as heck and if you can afford it, use one as your system/game install drive for sure.

SSD is interesting but I don't think it will be worthwhile for at least another year or two.

 

[djplayer]

I don't agree w/ these opinions whatsover.. I run 4 HD's and 3 OS's on my main computer.. It's setup in RAID 0 w/ 2 150gb 16mb cache raptors..... The feel is much better than other hard drives that I've used.. The write and read speeds have also shown better in comparison w/ 2 350gb WD caviar's setup in RAID 0. Now it may not be worth the $ when comparing price to performance.. but for those trying to squeeze the most out of the most.. raptors are the way to go..

servers run 15k SCSI drives for a reason..

 

[xWilDx]

Well i think thats enough convincing, i will be a proud owner of a HD named after a dinosaur lmao(might be relavent soon!) ty for your posts most appreciated!

 

[xWilDx]

I forgot to ask if any proud owners of the raptors had to mod there cases with coolers etc? for the extreme heat the kick out and the noise? whats best for this?

 

[EarthwormJim]

Originally posted by: xWilDx
I forgot to ask if any proud owners of the raptors had to mod there cases with coolers etc? for the extreme heat the kick out and the noise? whats best for this?

It's not that extreme of heat. Hard drives in my case are mounted just behind the front case fans. Besides hard drives don't need to be kept that cold, 40 or 50c is just fine.

As far as performance, I had two 36gb raptors in a raid 0. I really didn't notice that huge of a difference over my 300gb seagate. Boot times weren't really improved, windows loaded faster but you still end up waiting for the raid rom to load.

If you really want a significantly faster hard drive, consider looking at 15k drives. If you're feeling adventurous you can pick up a nice 75gb or 150gb 5th gen cheetah (sas) on ebay for pretty cheap. Controller cards are under $100 on ebay too.

I still have my 3rd gen cheetah that I got off ebay and it's been running strong for several years.

 

[SickBeast]

Originally posted by: xWilDx
the noise

You can get cases that have rubber washers to buffer the vibration from the HDD; that can help a fair bit with the noise.

 

[imported_wired247]

I used these charts to choose hard drives. I realized that raptors are decent, but 1) they are not the fastest out there, due to higher data density with perpendicular recording hard drives and 2) they are expensive in terms of $/GB

http://www23.tomshardware.com/...15&model2=678&chart=37