slow raptor advice

[delta152]

I recently upgraded from a WD Caviar WD800 (2mg cache) to a raptor. I loaded the newest drivers and did a fresh install of XP. I have yet to notice any real performance increase. I loaded a minimum of applications and I still have almost 32gb free. I have defraged and now I am out of ideas. I don't believe that the rest of the system is causing any problems and I have not had any conflicts or errors of any kind. I am using the standard power cable and the supplied SATA cable from ASUS. Any ideas on how to speed it up or do I have unreal expectations of this drive?

-ASUS A7N8X Deluxe
-AMD XP 2600+ @333mhz
-Kingston 512mg DDR @333mhz
-ATI Radeon 9700 pro
-Primary IDE Plextor burner
-Secondary IDE Pioneer DVD ROM

Any help is appreciated

 

[silverpig]

What do you mean by you haven't noticed any speed improvements? It's not like it will give you an increase in fps in games or anything. Do some sandra and hdtach benchmarks and post the numbers.

Some day I'll be rich and famous for inventing a device that allows you to stab people in the face over the internet.

 

[jim552]

Unless you are "very sensitive" to performance you likely will NOT "notice" a difference in speed.

I side with the pig!
Do some bench marks and tests.

If you want to "notice" then use your new system a few days do things on it that you would do in a normal day.

After a few days, maybe a week, reinstall your old drives (just pop them back in unless you reformatted them!) and do the same stuff.

If you are like "most people" the speed increase you may not notice, but the decrease in performance will likely be a bit more pronounced!

I have "generally found" that going from a Seagate 20gb Barracuda to a Raptor 36gb should come close to doubling most file copy performance on a very basic system installation.

Also if you have less then 256mb of RAM, then it may be more difficult to notice. Generally it seems Windows XP and Windows 2000 should have at least 256mb for decent performance.

 

[delta152]

I guess I should have been more specific about the kind of performance I was after. A friend of mine has a similar system except he is using a 10k SCSI drive and it seems to pull up programs faster and responds quicker as well. I realize that the seek time for the raptor is still not at the level of a SCSI drive, but it IS closer to a SCSI than an IDE drive in terms of seek time. Can you recomend a specific benchmark utility to use?

 

[silverpig]

hdtach

Some day I'll be rich and famous for inventing a device that allows you to stab people in the face over the internet.

 

[Derek1970]

Had my Raptor now for about 6 months. At 1st it bench marked faster in Sandra. I got my replacement for my IBM 40GXP 7200 drive (original died under warranty) .. loaded it half with data .. ran Sandra on both my Raptor and the IBM ... the Raptor only beat it by a couple hundred Sandra points each time. Looks like my speedy Raptor is slowing down and I only have 10 gig on it (fairly new format and install of XP as well).