Hard Drive Performance

[jaycjayz]

Hello,

I have 4 hard drives on my system. I use a Raptor 10K RPM 36.7GB drive as my MS Windows and programs drive. It is a SATA Drive (first in the pictures)
I have another SATA drive, which is my WD 250GB (second in the pictures)
Then I have an OLD WD 120GB Drive (third in the pictures)
Lastly, I have a Seagate 300GB drive (last picture)

I ran HD Tune to try and figure out why my Raptor drive wasnt performing as fast as I had hoped. Ive noticed that the WD 250 seems to out-perform the Raptor (in general usage settings.)

After running HD Tune, I still have no answers (maybe its because I have no idea what I am looking for.) It looks like the Raptor has better access times, but comes no where near 150MBs (which is what I thought I was getting when I made the purchase.

My system is:
CPU Type DualCore AMD Athlon 64 X2, 2200 MHz (11 x 200) 4200+
Motherboard Asus A8N-SLI Deluxe
Memory 2GB PC3200 DDR
XP SP2 with all updates.

The SATA drives are hooked directly to the mobo.

Why doesnt the Raptor run as fast as it claims? Could there be a problem in my system?

 

[Guest]

After running HD Tune, I still have no answers (maybe its because I have no idea what I am looking for.) It looks like the Raptor has better access times, but comes no where near 150MBs (which is what I thought I was getting when I made the purchase.

Erm... Well.. Something is really borked with the Seagate 300GB drive readings... The first 3 look fine though. My 2 year old WD 2000JD drive does just about as good as your raptor for some reason...

 

[SomeJoe7777]

Raptor looks just fine to me. 8.0 ms access times vastly outperforms the rest of your drives. WD250 has a higher burst speed because it's probably SATA300, Raptor is SATA150, which actually doesn't matter hardly at all.

And yes, something with the 300GB is b0rked. Bad cable, maybe. If IDE, it may be misconfigured (master/slave) or stuck in PIO mode.

 

[jaycjayz]

I re-ran HD Tune today. This time it ran a lot more like the WD 250. Have no idea why it was running so slow the first time I ran it.

I still have no idea why the Raptor is performing so equal to the rest of the drives. The whole reason I purchased the drive was because it was supposed to run soooo much faster than your typical IDE drive.

I realize the access time is faster, but shouldnt it be running closer to 100 MBs in transfer times?

 

[choirbass]

it really depends on which raptor you purchased too, in regards to transfer rates. the oldest GD raptors from 3-4 years ago max out at just over 60MB/s with a minimum around 40MB/s, which is actually the same one you have, they can be had for as little as $20 now on ebay (or less even, since theyre no longer available in retail). the newest ADFD raptors from just last year have beginning transfer rates about 85-87MB/s, middle transfer rates about 75MB/s, and end transfer rates about 55MB/s

transfer rates aside, its the access/seek times that actually affect practical performance in the majority of cases. faster random access/seek times = faster practical application performance. aside from rpms, platter density also has a large effect on practical performance too.

transfer rates by themselves really are overrated when it comes to practical performance in most cases. but as was pointed out, i would be much more concerned with the performance of your 300GB based on that bench, with access times at almost 27ms, and transfer rates at only 2-6MB/s, i cant imagine its even usable really, given that... though strangely the burst rate is missing from the bench result too. your 250GB is also reading at 68 degrees celcius, which is guaranteed to be much higher than its rated operating temperature, so, most likely its reading incorrectly

based on those few things, and your complaints even, i would say theres maybe more wrong than just raptors performance being possibly subpar in general use. maybe just a bunch of incorrect readings, and subpar performance in other areas... who knows.

 

[jaycjayz]

This is the information provided to me when using Everest.
The Raptor drive is: WD360GD-00FLC0 (36GB, 10000 RPM, SATA)

 

[choirbass]

yeah, thats the original 36GB GD raptor. 37GB platter, 8MB cache, 10k rpm, etc

heres a link to the 3 newer ADFD raptors. 75GB platters, 16MB cache, 10k rpm, native sata, etc: http://www.wdc.com/en/products/Products.asp?DriveID=245


edit: the oldest raptors are still fast even compared to other current hdds, especially considering how old they are. but because of how old they are (almost 4 years), expectations should be about as such

come to think of it, the oldest 36GB GDs are almost 5 years old now (released early 2003), its nearly time for their warranties to expire, the oldest GDs anyhow, lol.

but again, as was pointed out, the bench results for your raptor are about in line with whats normal for that revision.

 

[jaycjayz]

I just bought the drive about 1.5 years ago.... from newegg dot com.
Why would they even be selling a drive thats that old at that point?

 

[choirbass]

i did the same thing, they were being sold until around mid-late 2005 (maybe into 2006, but not sure), then they were discontinued. so now i have 2 original 36GB GDs from 2003 at frys electronics, and 2 newer 36GB GDs from 2005 at frys.com, ended up with 4 of them in raid 0, but, that was before i realized raid 0 really was overrated for most things. just more of a pseudo effect, tbh. (had to do enough testing to even find that out, since i had enough hdds that i could use... then came all the reviews, only further backing that up yet again)

but, that was just their lifespan in retail, which explains why they were still available after so long.

ive since purchased a single 74GB ADFD as a replacement, earlier this year actually, and distributed the 4 other raptors to other purposes, (upgrades, backups, etc). definetly happy with it compared to what i had before anyhow, theyve tuned the raptor a lot since then i found (firmware updates, performance upgrades, noise reduction, etc).

 

[rockyjohn]

Is your SATA Raptor plugged into the first SATA connector (#0 or #1 depending on MB)?

 

[jaycjayz]

Yup