Are WD Velociraptors worth getting for budget system build?

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bubblegum_bill

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Oct 15, 2016
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Hi there,

I am building a rather budget conscious gaming PC and I have come to the point where I am deciding on a drive. I know SSDs are the best bet but at NZD$140 for a 240GB model it's a little steep. This led me onto velociraptor 10K rpm drives as a faster alternative to an HDD. Some secondhand models on ebay seemed suspiciously cheap (they DID only have a 16 MB cache size though).
So this brings me onto the question: Are 10K RPM drives worth getting as a cheap (albeit slower) alternative to an SSD, or should I suffer the agony of waiting to play BF1 and Forza 6 while I save for and SSD?

Come to think of it, is it worth getting a small SSD to use as a disk cache for a hard drive or is this a stupid idea?

Any help appreciated! Thanks in advance.
 
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bubblegum_bill

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Oct 15, 2016
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Thanks for the quick reply! For now I think that's what I will do. I'll get a decent hard drive and then if I have some money to spare later on I can add an SSD. (I've only ever used computers with HDDs anyway, so I won't know what I'm missing!) I know there is an advantage for SSDs in terms of load times for games, apps and boot times etc, but as long as there is enough RAM using an HDD shouldn't affect framerates, am I right?

Aside from that, is there a great risk to buying a secondhand hard drive? I know they can be prone to knocks but if they are in good nick is it still not a good buy? Buying secondhand would allow me to get a faster hard drive or a bigger hard drive for my money.
 
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ArtPog

Admirable
Sep 17, 2014
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As Philip C. has advised you, avoid purchasing a used HDD - whatever its make/model. It's little more than a crapshoot at best and the chances are good that by & by you'll regret the purchase.

With respect to the VelociRaptors...we've worked with a number of them over the years and have never been particularly impressed with this model vis-a-vis other HDDs, notwithstanding their 10,000 RPM. They're decent HDDs as far as they go but nothing special in our experience. And as previously suggested, it's simply too risky to purchase a used disk of its type.
 
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bubblegum_bill

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Oct 15, 2016
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Would it matter if they were SATA II? If it's a hard drive it shouldn't be bottlenecks by SATA II speeds, though SATA I would be a bit slow. Heck, my gigabyte mobo that I bought has four SATA II (as well as four SATA III) ports anyway :pt1cable:

I'm not about to use an old HDD as a boot disk, but since I have so many SATA ports is it worth me chucking a few of these in a raid 5 or raid 1 array and storing say my music collection on them? Or are these things so old it wouldn't be worth it and they'd fail at short notice?

Forgive me, the smartest thing would be to get a 2TB 7.2K rpm drive and leave it at that, but I'm trying to shave off costs so I can put more money into my graphics card (which I need to get soon) so I'm looking at dirt cheap options :)

 
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bubblegum_bill

Commendable
Oct 15, 2016
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Sorry ArtPog, just saw your message! I agree with you in that regard, I wouldn't use an old HDD to store all my games or worse, use it as a boot drive, but is it worth getting a couple and chucking then in a raid 1 or 5 array to store music and photos? All of my music and photos would be backed up onto my laptop and/or our 4TB backup drive anyway.

Thanks for all your replies btw guys, much appreciated! :)
 
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