Jump to content

Are WD Raptor Hard Drives Really Worth It?


Polizei

Recommended Posts

Seeing as I dont have much cash for anything right now (I will after Thanksgiving Break), Ive been prowling parts sites looking at things I cant afford.

 

I was thinking about RAID 5'ing 3, 250GB Seagate drives like the one I already have, but RAID 5 doesnt really give me a huge performance increase for all the hassle, and Im not too terrified of data loss because Ive got separate partitions on my current drive for data security.

 

I was thinking about getting a single, 74GB Raptor for programs and Windows. My computer is fast enough already in terms of program loading, but sure, for the sheer bad butt-ness of a Raptor drive, I guess I could get one. Sure, Windows loading in 20 seconds instead of 30 isnt worth the $150 price tag (circa NewEgg), but I, um, create "back ups" of friends's DVD's on my hard drive, and having multiple partitions on this single drive when ripping the DVD causes massive data bog down, and songs skip due to my 8MB cache.

 

I was thinking of getting the Raptor and ripping the DVD to it, then cutting/pasting it to the storage drive later, so my songs dont skip.

 

Other than those reasons, I dont really have any to get a Raptor. I hate when my drive bogs down when ripping a DVD and programs loading faster is a plus, but Im not sure if that saved time is worth the price tag.

 

Fellow forum users who have Raptors - can you feel a difference between your Raptor and other 7200RPM drives? Does a single Raptor have a noticable performance increase over a single 7200RPM drive?

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

  • Replies 34
  • Created
  • Last Reply

Top Posters In This Topic

I dont know what was up with my ripping - I was ripping at 2x with a 16x read drive.

 

The songs I was playing at the time were skipping due to the ripping process I think - as soon as the rip finished, the songs stopped skipping.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

The Western Digitals are bar none the fastest SATA drives available. However, the cost you pay for the marginal amount of performance you get over a 3.0Gb/s 7200RPM drive usually makes it not worth it.

 

They do perform better, but since you are on a budget, I don't suggest them.

 

That does beg the question why other HDD Manufacturers have yet to come out with a similar performing drive. Does Western Digital have some sort of Patent on 10k RPM SATA drives?

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

sets see, I have my rig in the sig with 2 raptors, an dfi infinity 3200 with 3 hitachi 80gbs, and another ultra-d with 3 250gb WD's. All setups are setup in RAID 0, is the fastest the raptors? yes, for my use. But on a budget, the 3 hitachi's are an awesome setup. the 3 larger drives are used for storing large databases for work.

 

would I run raptors again? yep, but only b/c I was given one as gift, and the second is a refurb i picked up for under $100. Go look at the raid benchmark thread 3 hitachi 80gb's are an awesome setup with plenty of storage for most people.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Well, for the price of 1, 74GB Raptor, I can get 2 more drives like the 250GB I have in my sig, and set up a RAID 5 with the 3 drives.

 

How would that work in terms of performance? How is the quality of the onboard RAID on this board?

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Well, for the price of 1, 74GB Raptor, I can get 2 more drives like the 250GB I have in my sig, and set up a RAID 5 with the 3 drives.

 

How would that work in terms of performance? How is the quality of the onboard RAID on this board?

 

The onboard raid worked fine for me, just as good as the nf4 controller as far as I'm concerned.

 

Honestly I wouldn't run Raid 0 on such big drives, but then again its personal preference and I did run 4 160GB drives on the nf4 for a while.

 

In any case, 2 or more drives in Raid 0 will be faster than a single 74GB Raptor.

 

Personally, I sugget getting 80GB drives as they still have the best cost/size ratio. And you'll also get better performance (versus a 250GB drive)because each individual drive is smaller and can access each sector quicker.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

I was thinking about 3x 250GB in RAID 5.

 

3x 80GB or even 2x 80 in RAID 0 would be okay I think... Ive got time to think about this still.

 

Raid 5 performance (if its available on this board..not sure about that) is likely as terrible as it is on the Silicon Image controllers on the nf4 boards. Basically it's going to end up about as slow as a single drive, if not slower yet.

 

If you really want Raid 5 (and its unlikely you need the redundancy) you should get a controller card. Or at least think about Raid 1 instead...but even that is unnecessary. Hard drives don't fail often enough to worry about it, especially if you're backing up critical files fairly often.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Well, for the price of 1, 74GB Raptor, I can get 2 more drives like the 250GB I have in my sig, and set up a RAID 5 with the 3 drives.

 

How would that work in terms of performance? How is the quality of the onboard RAID on this board?

 

RAID-5 sucks completely and totally unless you have a nice $150+ RAID card with integrated cache memory

 

forget RAID-5 with anything but a professional controller card

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites


×
×
  • Create New...