Seagate Barracuda 16 MB or WD 74 Raptor 8 MB.

[badge]

I'm about to build a C2D e6600 system. I have two hard drives available in which to load my Windows XP Pro 32 bit operating system on.

Of the two drives I have, which is the better solution. Which drive would you choose to use as your main OS drive? And Why?


Seagate Barracuda 7200.10 (Perpendicular Recording) ST3250620AS 250GB 7200 RPM 16MB Cache SATA 3.0Gb/s Hard Drive - OEM

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16822148144



Raptor 74GB 10K RPM SATA 1.5Gb/s Drive with 8MB Cache

http://www.provantage.com/western-digital-wd740gd~7WNDG250.htm

 

[Codesmith]

The Raptor is fast, not just in term of average and minimum sustained reads/writes, but also in terms of quick access time and high IOps.

Its only disadvantage is its high cost per GB.

Truth is most people are better off getting a cheaper drive and spending the difference on other system components.

People tend to vastly overestimate the degree to which hard drive affect their systems performance.

http://www.storagereview.com/articles/leaderboard.html
http://www.storagereview.com/php/benchmark/bench_sort.php
http://www23.tomshardware.com/storage.html?modelx=33&model1=117&model2=124&chart=45

If you already own a Raptor use it, if buying a Raptor forces you to cut back on other components then don't buy one.

 

[badge]

Thank you for the links. From the looks of things the older version Raptor 74 8 MB 1.5 I have performs significantly better than the newer Seagate 16 MB 3.0 drive.