I want to know if i should get Velociraptor or WD Caviar Black

[Knighthawk375]

I was thinking of getting a Velociraptor
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822136322&cm_re=velociraptor-_-22-136-322-_-Product

or a WD Black Caviar
http://www.bestbuy.com/site/Western+Digital+-+Caviar+Black+1TB+Internal+Serial+ATA+Hard+Drive+for+Desktops/8909595.p?id=1213047091732&skuId=8909595#tabbed-customerreviews

what would be the difference in the 2 for my system
also i was wondering about Raid i dont know if my system is setup for that

 

[dndhatcher]

The Samsung F3 500GB is both faster and cheaper than either of those drives.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822152181

Only WDs new 2TB drives have 500GB platters and can beat the F3s performance.
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/2tb-hdd-7200,2430.html

 

[JackNaylorPE]

Simply put, when looking for the answer to "what is the best HD ?" all answers are inevitably wrong from one perspective or another. When comparable models that spin at the same speed, have same areal density, same cache, etc, the differences in performance align most closely with how they are tweaked. A drive tweaked for excellent I/O performance may therefore suffer a drop in max DTR.....a drive tweaked for gaming, might thereby suffer in movie editing.

The answer therefore for YOUR usage can only be found by checking out the performance charts and pick whatever 500 GB per platter drive performs best under your usage patterns. The WD Black 2 TB is a good choice but at smaller capacities, you are limited to the Seagate 7200.12 or the Spinpoint F3. The 7200.12 excels in gaming, multimedia and pictures whereas the F3 wins at music and movie maker. See the comparisons here (copy past link in manually, link won't work in forum):

(http://www.tomshardware.com/charts/2009-3.5-desktop-hard-drive-charts/compare,1006.html?prod[2371]=on&prod[2770]=on)

Look at the tests that reflect your usage patterns and choose accordingly.

 

[trnddwn33]

I'd have to agree with DND, I'd go with the Spinpoints. Velociraptors aren't really doing it any more.

SSD's are the way to go if you're looking for performance, but then the price goes up significantly

 

[sminlal]

I keep seeing posts saying that 7200RPM drives are "faster than" Velociraptors. Just because a drive has a faster transfer rate doesn't make automatically make it better. The other, very important metric for a hard drive is access time. No 7200RPM drive has an access time as fast as a 10,000RPM Velociraptor because the slower RPM drives simply have to wait longer for the platter to rotate the correct data sector until it's underneath the read/write head.

If you're looking for a drive that reads or writes large files quickly, then yes - look for a drive with the fastest transfer rate. But in my experience what most people looking for general-purpose performance improvements really want is faster boot and application startup times. For that kind of performance, access time is much more important, and a Velociraptor will out-perform other drives even if those drives can transfer the data faster once they've gotten around to actually finding it.

Of course an SSD blows away all the mechanical drives because it doesn't "rotate" at all and has an access time that's about 100X faster than a standard hard drive.

 

[dndhatcher]

in my experience what most people looking for general-purpose performance improvements really want is faster boot and application startup times. For that kind of performance, access time is much more important,

Is access time really substantially more important in OS and game load times? Once you hit the application you want the filese should be fairly consecutive and relatively large compared to a seek if they arent badly fragmented. I do know going from a seagate 7200.10 400GB to a Samsung F3 cut my Vista load time substantially (over a 30% decrease). I do not have a velociraptor to compare with.

 

[cjl]

Is access time really substantially more important in OS and game load times? Once you hit the application you want the filese should be fairly consecutive and relatively large compared to a seek if they arent badly fragmented. I do know going from a seagate 7200.10 400GB to a Samsung F3 cut my Vista load time substantially (over a 30% decrease). I do not have a velociraptor to compare with.

Yes, the application loading and boot times are primarily dependent on the access times of the drive in question. Raw transfer rates help a bit, but not as much as you might hope.

 

[sminlal]

Once you hit the application you want the filese should be fairly consecutive and relatively large compared to a seek if they arent badly fragmented.

The location of the files is not the only factor. The drive not only has to move the head to the right track, it also needs to wait for the spinning platter to bring the correct sector to the read/write head. The latter is called "rotational delay", and it's involved in every I/O request whether the heads move or not. Even if the files are on the same disk cylinder, each read has to wait for an average of half the rotational delay.

In fact, on a disk that's completely defragmented with all of the boot files located close to each other, a drive with a higher spin speed will actually fare even better in relation to a slower RPM drive because almost ALL of the wait time will be rotational delay. And of course the higher the RPM, the less the rotational delay.

On a very fragmented disk, a higher proportion of the access time will be in waiting for the heads to seek to the correct cylinder, and since the higher-RPM drive doesn't necessarily do that any faster the performance gains over a slower-RPM drive may not be as much.

 

[Knighthawk375]

Best answer selected by Knighthawk375.

 

[JackNaylorPE]

II do know going from a seagate 7200.10 400GB to a Samsung F3 cut my Vista load time substantially (over a 30% decrease).

That has much more to do with changes in areal density two HD generations later than vendor differences. Today, the F3 leads on DTR while the Seagtes generally lead in application performance. The 7200.12 excels in gaming, multimedia and pictures whereas the F3 wins at music and movie maker.