Velociraptor vs SSD

Western-Digital Velociraptor are way over priced they are like 300 buxs and it not worth it.

RAID0 has little benefit for gaming or boot performance.

Maybe you should consider an SSD instead, like Intel X25-M G2 80GB. It'll be a challenge to make the stuff fit though. But 2x 80GB in RAID0 would also be possible and still reasonably affordable. It'll be less space but alot higher performance. Your choice.

In that case go for a cheap 7200rpm HDD until you have money to buy a good SSD. No HDD can match the speed of SSDs the difference in performance is huge.

It won't really change in 2 years, HDDs will get bigger and the cost per GB drops even further. SSDs will still be very expensive per GB, but continue to kick butt while HDDs will always remain extremely slow regarding random I/O performance - which is what you need for a system drive.

Generally, a system drive should be an SSD, while a data/storage/download drive should be an HDD. That won't change in like 5 years time.

The performance difference over a cheap HDD and a velociraptor is notible during bench marks is it not?

Yes, but what if you have 400GB of applications and you want all of it to run as quickly as possible?

Honestly, the velociraptors are great drives. I have a pair of them, and I love them. No, they won't match an SSD for speed, but as an all around drive, they are certainly worthy of consideration.

I disagree. The velociraptor isn't going to match the SSD, but it's quicker than that seagate. You're talking RAID for the velociraptors, but not with the SSD/seagate. If the velocirators aren't in RAID, as the 2 you listed aren't, storage capacity isn't as drastic.

You wan't to talk about outrageous price on a drive. The SSDs are 3 - 4 times more per gig than the velociraptors.

^ The same exact thing used to be said about the velociraptors. Though, the price per gig wasn't nearly as crazy when the velociraptors first came out. And now, like all other hardware, something better has come out and the price dropped. The SSDs are a little over the top.

To all the questions :

1. http://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod [...] 6820167016

2, The failure rate on the Raptors in the HD database at storagereview.com is 25%

3. 400 HGB of applications won't fit on two 300 GB raptors in RAID 0

4. RAID 0 does squat for gaming or application performance. See RAID 0 articles on storagereview.com (<2% improvement) and anandtech.

5. I wasn't specifically promotong the 7200.12 as any 500GB per platter drive will do. Relative performance depends on what you are doing and you should pick the drive that fits your needs.

7200.12 has a DTR of 152 to the Raptor's 116....one of the reasons I use them in an NAS which all the office systems back up to. They are also the quietest and lowest temp drives among their major competition.

If gaming is the goal, then the 7200.12 is less attractive ... then in the instance stated, it's not intended as a source drive. The HD is just a repository for the "games you are not playing atm".

C:\Windows OS
C:\Crysis
C:\Far Cry
C:\Sims2

D:\Game 1
D:\Game 2
D:\Game 3
.........................
.........................
D:\Game 26

When you done with Crysis, FarCry, Sims 2 for a while, simply cut and paste the folder from C:\ to D:\ ....... and paste on C:\whatever you are playing next. This may require installing each program to C:\ (SSD) 1st and then copying it to D:\

If that's "too much work" buy a bigger SSD.

Personally, HD speeds don't bother me.....my machines rarely shut off and even when I open the laptop each morning, I don't much care how long it takes to get to the desktop as it's always there by the time I get back from getting coffee.

X25-M 80GB for $240:
http://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/prod [...] _SATA.html (ignore the 6-10 week statement - mine shipped in 4 days)

X25-M 160GB for $460:
http://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/prod [...] _SATA.html

It's been a long time since Intel SSDs have been >400 for the X25-M 80GB.

B&H is reputable too - my dad is quite into photography, and he's spent more than my computer is worth in a single go there before. They always come through with flying colors (it's also where I got my X25-M).

Looking at the 12 boxes her eat home, I average about 10 to 1 for data to program ratio.

But even so...... I'm thinking 40 Gigs for OS, temp and page files, 400 GB of programs that's already 440, leaving only a bit more than 100 Gigs for all the data created in those programs, your games, photos, movies and music library.

The smart solution is to get a fairly cheap 1TB drive for music/photos/movies/music, since it definitely does not need the speed. That's what I did - I initially built my system with just the pair of velociraptors, but I quickly added the 1TB caviar black for additional storage, while keeping OS and apps (and nothing else) on the velociraptors. Of course, I'm running out of space on the TB now, so that's why I'm getting another 2 TB of storage soon (I still have another 200GB left on the Velociraptors though), so I definitely agree that most people will have more files than apps.

Personally, I suspect a lot of 14-year-olds have terabytes of downloaded music and video files, while lots of staid oldtimers are accumulating literally dozens of e-mails...

Sorry for hijacking the thread: But, any one here have personal experiens with the SeaGate ES type HDDs?

I still have old DOS utilities saved that I downloaded back in the days of 1200 baud.....even an offline reader which we used back then cause we paid by the minute for being online.

Jack