My velociraptors unappreciated by windows

[uRSALOG]

so i ran that windows performance assesment thing and all my other hardware scored above 7.6, BUT when it came to hard drive diks data transfer rate it scored me at a 6.2, is everone else getting this? i have 2 velociraptors 10krpm in raid 0, guess windows really wants ssds now, my poor lil raptors are unappreciated

 

[cjl]

6.2 is fine. Don't put too much weight in the WEI score. It's just sort of a general guideline, not a comprehensive benchmark.

 

[belial2k]

Those 10k drives are not what they once were....most modern 7200rpm drives will beat them in most benchmarks, and for a much cheaper cost per gb. The F3 drives are now the best in the 500gb - 1tb range, and the WD are the best 2tb drives.

 

[senormoll]

People keep suggesting that the 10k's are becoming obsolete but I think it's usually when comparing benchmarks for overall throughput. The access times on a 10k velociraptor are still top-notch. I have one as my windows/boot drive and for accessing all those small files it does it's job well.

As for the WEI, cjl is right...forget about it. It's just a score. I think Microsoft is trying to allow room for the spread of SSDs and the fact that 6gb/s SATA is becoming available. If two raptors in RAID 0 scored a 7.5, where would future drives faster than the x25-m score? I think they just don't want the index to become a joke like it was in vista where 5.9 was an easily achievable score.

Then again, why score everything else in the 7's? Surely there will be improvements in graphics cards and processing power (i9) in the next few years?

 

[cjl]

Those 10k drives are not what they once were....most modern 7200rpm drives will beat them in most benchmarks, and for a much cheaper cost per gb. The F3 drives are now the best in the 500gb - 1tb range, and the WD are the best 2tb drives.

Most modern 7200s will not beat the velociraptors in any benchmarks. You're mistaking them for the older Raptors, which are somewhat obsolete. The Velociraptors are still excellent drives, and definitely worth keeping.

 

[belial2k]

check out the benches for yourself...unless my eyes or these benchmarks are lying the 10k drives are losing almost every benchmark
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/2tb-hdd-7200,2430-7.html

 

[cjl]

Oooohhh, sequential reads and writes.

Those honestly don't matter at all for OS and application drives.

Try these:
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/2tb-hdd-7200,2430-8.html

(Notice the utter flattening that the Velociraptor gives the 7200s).

 

[belial2k]

Well, if you concerned about access times for a boot drive, then a SSD is much faster. I was talking about overall performance and benchmarks, but I know that 10k drives are going to be faster in access times and most I/O. They are about 40% faster in general in access times, but cost 10x times more per GB, and lose in all other benchmarks. (such as sequential read/write and streaming transfer times)...so basically they will boot and load a little faster for 10x the price. Doesn't seem like much of a value to me.

 

[Shadow703793]

They are about 40% faster in general in access times, but cost 10x times more per GB, and lose in all other benchmarks. (such as sequential read/write and streaming transfer times).

SSDs win in pretty much ALL *read* benchmarks. However, they do loose in some write benchmarks like sequential write.

For an OS drive the most important is the 4KB random read/write numbers:

This test writes 4KB in a completely random pattern over an 8GB space of the drive to simulate the sort of random writes that you'd see on an OS drive (even this is more stressful than a normal desktop user would see). I perform three concurrent IOs and run the test for 3 minutes. The results reported are in average MB/s over the entire time:

http://anandtech.com/storage/showdoc.aspx?i=3631&p=22

 

[belial2k]

yes, my point is 10k drives are not enough of an improvement over modern 7200k drives to justify the price. If you are looking for a fast boot drive to decrease boot and load times SSD is the way to go. I really see no point to the 10k drives at the current prices.

 

[notty22]

That is why WD is about to come out with a 600gb drive supposedly at the price of the current 300, I have read. I would think a lot of price adjustments will occur to the lineup.
I have the original Raptor 37g WD360GD-00FNA0 10,000 rpm. Bought it in early 2004, it was 300 dollars.
Its performance with access time is still excellent but its read speeds hold it back, 8 meg cache. Before I got a ssd with my new rig build. I installed win7 exactly the same on that raptor and a 320g 7200 seagate(2007). Performance with boot and application starting differences were not perceivable.
I read somewhere that only ssd's can score in the 7's in wei ? Maybe thats single disk.

 

[senormoll]

I don't know how you can act like SSDs and velociraptors are in the same price point...I got my 150gb VR for 130...an x25-m of that size is hundreds. The SSDs are clearly faster but its not like theyre equal alternatives of the other

 

[belial2k]

Once again...you pay 10x the price for a maximum 40% faster access times, and everything else is slower. So at best its a tradeoff in OVERALL performance. Whatever you gain in access times you lose in read/ write performance. By almost any measure that is a terrible price/performance compared to standard drives. If you really care about blazing fast access times on a boot drive, you should get a small SSD for the same price or cheaper than a 10k drive. I don't feel the need to boot that fast since I only do it once every few days, and my load times are plenty fast for me as it is. Gaining that extra few seconds every few days is not worth 100s of dollars to me. So I wouldn't get either a SSD or 10k drive at current prices, but there are those people out there who really, really, want the fastest boot times possible, and for those people SSDs make more sense than 10k drives.

 

[uRSALOG]

but still 6.2 thats really low i think. considering the rest of my hardware scored over 7.6 heh i think my raptors deserve more credit

 

[cjl]

Once again...you pay 10x the price for a maximum 40% faster access times, and everything else is slower. So at best its a tradeoff in OVERALL performance. Whatever you gain in access times you lose in read/ write performance. By almost any measure that is a terrible price/performance compared to standard drives. If you really care about blazing fast access times on a boot drive, you should get a small SSD for the same price or cheaper than a 10k drive. I don't feel the need to boot that fast since I only do it once every few days, and my load times are plenty fast for me as it is. Gaining that extra few seconds every few days is not worth 100s of dollars to me. So I wouldn't get either a SSD or 10k drive at current prices, but there are those people out there who really, really, want the fastest boot times possible, and for those people SSDs make more sense than 10k drives.

Everything else isn't slower, it's about equal. Velociraptors have an average sequential of around 100MB/s, around the same as top end 7200s. The access times don't just benefit boot either - programs gain significant benefit. Velociraptors, while more expensive than 7200s, are also significantly (>3x) cheaper per GB than good SSDs, and they still absolutely have a place.

 

[cjl]

but still 6.2 thats really low i think. considering the rest of my hardware scored over 7.6 heh i think my raptors deserve more credit

The problem is that they needed to make room for SSDs, which are quite a bit faster than Vraptors. My Intel X25-M gets a 7.6 for example. I would test my Vraptor raid array (which I use for programs, and I love), but it won't let me test a non-OS drive.