Recommend a hard drive to replace my shot OS drive: WD Raptor 74 GB

[i_hate_flying]

Hi, my WD Raptor 74 GB hard drive, which I use as my C: drive with Windows XP Pro 32-bit, just bit the dust. It's suddenly got bad sectors all over the place and doesn't boot. Recovering my critical files that hadn't been backed up took the better part of today, but I have them now. I'm looking to replace this drive. Not sure if they're still the fastest, or if the Barracudas are what people are using now.

The way I learned it, for those of us who want speed in booting and in using Windows, it's better to have a small and fast C: drive with the OS on it. That's why I went with the 74 GB version originally back in January 2007. I only ever used 30 GB of the drive at any given time. WD diagnostics as well as other programs analyzed the problem as bad sectors that are unfixable and recommends replacing the drive. As far as I know, WD offers a 5 year warranty on these, but I'm not sure about in my situation. I usually build my own, but this time I paid a little extra to have a company in Canada do it. They did a great job and it wasn't expensive, especially back when the US dollar was stronger. However, I don't think that WD considers drives bought under those circumstances under warranty. So I'm in the market for a brand new drive. If I can get a replacement for this one, fine, but I'd also like to get up and running ASAP.

Any suggestions on what I should get? I would consider even doing a Matrix RAID with a couple of Barracudas as a little project. I'm living in Europe and can get most of the same stuff as you guys get from Newegg over there. If I order within the next two days, I can have a friend who's coming to visit bring anything that I order from Newegg. Come to think of it, my Barracuda 7200.10 seems to be even faster than my Raptor, but the versions being sold now are the 7200.12's that people say aren't as reliable.

 

[rand_79]

I think all the raptors have a 3 or 5 year warranty .. try getting it replaced. by western digital. they will usually do advance replacement with a credit card
then refund you when they get your old one back.

otherwise you can snag a 500gig WD black or seagate 7200.12 for around 50$ or so online usually.

just a note make sure you have a slipstreamed version of xp sp1 or later
so you dont have to fool around with the hocus pocus crap of it only seeing 127gig when installing. then not being able to expand the boot partition without a 3rd party utility.

 

[JackNaylorPE]

Any suggestions on what I should get?

How far is your wallet ?

http://www.tomshardware.com/news/ocz-ssd-soild-state-terabyte-madshrimps,7200.html

I'm a bit leery myself of jumping into SSD just yet . Our NAS arrived with a set of Seagate's, and behind me while I type this is the pleasant hum of a pair of 15k SCSI Seagates installed in an NT4 box in 2001, running 24/7 as a server ever since. Years ago, I would have said Seagate had a clear edge in the reliability department but today's everyone's reliability ratings seem to be going in the toilet. Check out storagereview.com's reliability ratings at the link below.

http://www.storagereview.com/map/lm.cgi/survey_login

Unfortunately, it's very light on anything new .....site doesn't get the traffic it used to.

Looking at cost / benefit ratios, I like the 7200.12's .... can do a RAID 5 set up for about $150 with 500 GB drives or $ 270 w/ 1 TB drives.

 

[cjl]

Well, the fastest mechanical drive available is the Velociraptor (the 150GB velociraptor is quite a bit faster than the 150GB Raptor, so don't confuse the two). Alternatively, if you have the cash, an SSD could be a good choice. The Intel 80GB X25-M would blow any mechanical drive out of the water, but it is somewhat expensive.

 

[imrul]

velociraptor

 

[JackNaylorPE]

Well, the fastest mechanical drive available is the Velociraptor (the 150GB velociraptor is quite a bit faster than the 150GB Raptor, so don't confuse the two). Alternatively, if you have the cash, an SSD could be a good choice. The Intel 80GB X25-M would blow any mechanical drive out of the water, but it is somewhat expensive.

That's a risky statement to make without qualification. On DTR and access time for example, I believe the 15k Cheetah's still hold that crown. Of course what I mean is when ya say it's he fastest, ya gotta say fastest at what

And is this data outta date ? I thought the new drives were right on par with the VR or am I looking at old data ?

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/hdd-terabyte-1tb,2077-11.html
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/2tb-hdd-caviar,2261-7.html

7200.11 DTR = 127.1 / 99.0 / 61.9
7200.12 DTR = 131.7 / 104.4 / 65.2
Velociraptor = 124.6 / 102.0 / 65.2

 

[cjl]

That's a risky statement to make without qualification. On DTR and access time for example, I believe the 15k Cheetah's still hold that crown. Of course what I mean is when ya say it's he fastest, ya gotta say fastest at what

And is this data outta date ? I thought the new drives were right on par with the VR or am I looking at old data ?

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/hdd-terabyte-1tb,2077-11.html
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/2tb-hdd-caviar,2261-7.html

7200.11 DTR = 127.1 / 99.0 / 61.9
7200.12 DTR = 131.7 / 104.4 / 65.2
Velociraptor = 124.6 / 102.0 / 65.2

Well, I was referring to SATA drives, assuming the OP didn't want to spend a couple hundred on a SAS controller. Of course, the Cheetah 15k.7 and Savvio 15k.2 are the overall performance leaders - the Cheetah being the best at sequentials and the Savvio winning in random IOPS.

As for the numbers you post there, you're forgetting that the velociraptor is quite a bit faster access time, which is a large part of what makes a drive feel fast. Yes, the 7200.12 and Caviar Black can come close in sequential transfer rate, but they lag far behind in randoms. A good 7200rpm drive has a 12-13ms access time, while the Velociraptor is ~7ms. The Cheetah is 5ms and the Savvio is ~4.5 ms for comparison (SSDs are <<1ms).

 

[JackNaylorPE]

Well that was my point, when ya say "faster", indicating "faster at [whatever] is relevant. I have quite a few SCSI drives still i use and I think SAS has a shot at making a comeback with several manufacturers putting SAS controllers on their MoVBos and SAS proces dropping.....unless SSD's just take over completely.

If we wanna get down to comparing specific drives, size, cost and failure rate then become relevant to. I have always found the Raptor's failure rate (25% or so in storagereview.com's database) unacceptable.

 

[i_hate_flying]

Well, I'm also thinking that a 7200.12 or two in RAID would do the trick. I hadn't even considered SSD's until today when I read your responses. Since then, I've taken a really good look at the Intel X25-M 80GB Generation 2. I can get one here in Norway for about 260$ without tax, 325$ with. So much for most expensive country in the world, I've seen this thing for much more over there. I'd rather spend that money on the drive and not an SAS controller, though that might be a project for another time. Now the Intel X25-E, that's damn expensive and absolutely not worth the money from the tests I've seen. The gen 2 stands is faster in almost all the trials. They'll be in stock at my local place next week. Until then, if I can get my Ubuntu live CD to mount my 7200.10, then I'd copy all the files off that and just install Windows while I wait. The drive is recognized, but it doesn't automount and I've never been particularly good with Linux. Guess I'll be sifting through forums tonight.

Edit: Well of course it wouldn't automount, the filesystem was unclean after my main OS drive failed and Windows froze. Anyway, Ubuntu fixed it automatically when I manually mounted it and now it automounts. Success! )))))