Raptor worth it?

Looking for a new drive for my OS, games installed on Samsung 500GB Spinpoint.
Is it worth investing in a 150GB Raptor or should I choose something bigger in the 7200rpm range?

depends on what you are going to do with a raptor.

In games, loading times will be a little faster (not a whole lot though) and framerate will be unaffected. Boot times should decrease a bit, and apps that are read/write intensive will see a very good boost.

Another consideration is noise. If you are one of those people who can't tolerate any noise coming out of their computer, you should look elsewhere, as raptors can be noisy at times.

If you have plenty of cash, go for it, but if you are trying to save money, this may be one of the better places to make a sacrifice, unless you know you will be running read/write intensive apps.

I do have a couple raptors in my build, but I could afford them, so it wasn't an issue. If my budget had been reduced, they would have been one of the first things changed on my list.

System

Quadcore Q6700
BFG 8800 GTX OC
4GB Crucial Ballistix
Gigabyte N680SLI-6DQ
Creative Fatal1ty Pro

So fairly near top of the range.
Guess its gonna be the Raptor then (just for the OS, its only money!)

I think it's about time that WD released a 300GB PMR Raptor.

Yup, but its like Nvidia milking the 8800's because it has no competition at the top end. Until another HD company releases a Raptor trouncing 10,000RPM HD, Raptors are going to be overpriced and small storage.

it depends what program you will use, for store large file, go get 500Gb.
for speed, raptor is the first choice.
I install my os in raptor, 500GB samsung for movie. The top two pc upgrades for me are 2Gb ram and Raptor HD in last year.

If this is your system, I have no problem suggesting a raptor. I get annoyed when people talk about buying raptors, AID0 setups, soundcards, etc when their CPU is an Intel <=4xxx and their video card is a 7600/8600GT or a 7900GS. The raptor will decrease the load time for your games/boot windows. (if you are like me, you never shut down, so that last one is something I don't care about.) You should be seeing good frame rates in your games, so anything that will decrease load times would be your next concern.

As Kyle pointed out, you can also consider setting up an AID0 setup. While I do suggest a Raptor for your OS drive, I never suggest an AID0 setup for your OS. There is simply to great a chance of your RAID driver getting corrupted and needing you to reload EVERYTHING. You could setup an AID0 setup and put the windows swap file on it, as well as your video games. You should still see a lot of improvement, and if your AID0 dies, reloading isn't so bad.

Most get the Raptor for the OS and applications.
Then a larger drive for data. The data drive doesn't need to be as fast.
I forget how fast the Raptor is until I boot off another hard-drive.

Am I missing something here? Why is everyone saying the Raptor is so fast? Almost all the reviews and numbers say that burst (because of the SATA300 interface) and sustained (because of very high bit densities 250GB/platter vs. 74GB/platter) transfer rates are higher on the new generation of 7200RPM HDDS than those of the Raptors. Please enlighten me.






I know the access time is better. Is that extra 5ms translating into huge performance? Clearly I'm not getting something if everyone seems to agree the Raptor is a God-send.

Is this because it's an older [lower density] drive? Or are you comparing it to the AAKS's and .11's of the world?

for desktop uses, quick access times do make a large difference, as does high platter density. one of the advantages raptors have, ironically, is their smaller capacity; quicker to defrag, partitioning isnt absolutely necessary to keep data organized, backing up the whole hdd is quicker, and theyre as fast, and faster than the fastest current 7200s.

transfer rates in themselves only play small part in overall hdd performance. raptors top out at 87MB/s (not bad for using an older technology), but that doesnt mean theyre only going to be as fast as a 7200 that also happens to top out at 87MB/s. quite the opposite.

take for example a 3.5" 1TB hdd @ 7200rpms, its going to take noticably longer to have to search around that whole 3.5" platter at a slower rpm for different files, than it would for a smaller 2.5" platter at faster rpms. so fragmentation also happens to affect the raptor less, than it would other 3.5" hdds.

again, access times as a result of rpms play a large part as to why raptor are still considered faster than most hdds, and are relatively affordable, but, disproportionately priced compared to current 7200s, too.

Yes and I have 2 in Raid 0 ... so worth it if you have the dough!

Try this chart.

That is also telling me that a 7200.7 (which I currently have in my system) is faster than a 7200.10 (which I also currently have in my system) and I find this difficult to believe. I have never thought the price premium was worth it for the Raptor and it's especially true now. Newer drives with their Sata/300 interface and larger Cache are as fast or faster than the Raptor and have a much lower per GB price.

Oh, I thought he was just building a PC, didn't know he was trying to put a workstation together.

Close enough, as opposed to server I/O.

Well.... In an exact setup .... OS installed on both Hd's at different tests .. Forget benchmarks (even though Toms Hardware proves it, The WD 150gig Raptor not only Loaded XP ready to use in like 10 seconds (as oppsed to 30+ on the Seagate SATA2 160Gig), Improvement In MMORPGS (and others games that swap files of HD, and load new areas), Photoshop CS2 started in like 3 seconds lol, and operated at a faster speed ... I could go on for ever on every improvement.... lol but opinions are like buttcheeks (everyone has them) I am just basing mine off of real world comparisons on the same system with the same programs that I use every day)

So based on this I would have to say if you have the money to spend, it is a worth while investment...

Only con I have found is heat (get a heatsink + fan combo) and the noise lol ..... reminds me of the old Hard drives from the windows 3.11 days


If you are wondering specific program / game improvement .. just ask ill let ya know


-chris

Thats because Raptors were fast. As was mentioned, they are in the process of being "dethroned". This first started with the 750GB drives, and is now in full swing with the newer harddrives (7200.11) and 1TB drives. Are Raptors slow POSes? No, but I wouldn't mind getting 80% of the speed, with 4x the room. (and thats not even mentioning the reduction in heat or noise.)

As for (zorg I think) whoever posted that TOMS chart, not even close. First, I hope that TOMS harddrive charts are better then their video card charts. Second, I'd believe HD tune read/write results before I'd believe a synthetic benchmark. (I'd believe real world timed tests above either of those, but no body linked those.) Third, his showed the newer harddrives including the 7200.11 series, while yours didn't. Raptors are being passed, each new drive comes closer and closer.

Get a wd750 it is about the same speed and it is a lot bigger.

I was the one that said that. I agree that the Raptors need a rework with PMR, or they will be in trouble. I don't know why WD is neglecting them.

You may not have faith in synthetic benchmarks, that's fine. The charts could use an update, but if you look at the bottom of the chart you will see a 7200.11 series hard drive. Whether it is the same as the one in the HD Tach bench or not I don't know, because they didn't specify. By the way, I just looked and they updated HD Tach, it's a lot better than it used to be.

From some rumors I've heard, take it with a grain of salt since they are rumors, WD will refresh the raptors during 2008. This could be completely bogus though, so don't take my word for it. But think about it, Why update the raptors when there was no competition? Now that segate, and hitachi are getting higher transfer rates than the raptor, it gives them a reason to update it. Before it was just the raptor and the WD PMR drives at the top. The WD PMR taking the transfer rate crown. But now Hitachi and Seagate are above the raptor as well.

Hopefully by mid/end 2008, will have a new raptor. Unfortunately I'll be buying a new rig around February's launch of the nvidia 9x00 series (if they do indeed launch in February), so I'm going to nab 2 raptors for my workstation/gaming rig. I'd like a refresh, it will come, but when is the big question.

Topic is debatable.


Compare the Raptors to the .11's or the AAKS drives then see

Then your claim is BS (I would have believed 20sec, but 10 is hardly enough to get through the bios, which doesn't even use the harddrive.) Don't spread BS around, not everyone likes it. I'm also going to suggest you don't call people names. You can make a bad name for yourself real fast.

@KyleSTL

The random access performance is actually the biggest factor of the performance of a raptor. The numbers you showed are applicable to applications that do continous reading of big files, like editing DV-AVI files. A raptor helps in game loading and windows because it is able to quickly locate files and load it to RAM. A lot of the time spent in a read or write in a 7200 drive is spent searching for a specific sector. Also unlike a raptor, when you get to fill at least half the capacity of a regular 7200 drive, the performance starts to drop quite quickly.



Since the OP already has a very good system and he already has another 500GB disk, a raptor would complement it nicely.





Though it's notable that the 7200's have quite caught up to a Raptor in terms or transfer rates.

I admit to not having a vast amount of detailed/technical knowledge but I have built pc's for myself and friends. When I built my setup I bought a Raptor 150X because I was aiming to have a high-end system. I installed Windows XP & games on the raptor but soon ran low on space. So recently I bought another 150X to run the OS on one and games on the other. Works great!! A friend and I (one who I built a pc for and he too has a raptor) play COD4 we are first in EVERYTIME with a difference of maybe 5-6 seconds.

Referencing what someone said about not getting one if you have other things to upgrade... I would say the opposite because the hard drive will be one of the more pain in the @$$ things to upgrade in the future. Just remember you are only as fast as your slowest or weakest part. If you have the $$$ I'd buy either a 75 or 150gb and run games off them only. But as far as "are they worth it" I'd say it’s a matter of bragging rights really and if you'd spend the money on one. But yes it does load faster and will continue to if you do proper maintenance and keep unnecessary stuff from loading when windows loads.

Sorry for being long-winded...

The IT guys here would not agree, they think the Raptor is a poor server drive.