WD Raptor Worth It?

[BeyRevRa]

Hi, with the building of my new system I opted to go for a WD 74 GB Raptor. To be honest after about a week of the system running I am not as "astounded" as everyone else is by the performance. Is there any sort of test I could do to see the performance enhancement the raptor claims to give?

AMD 64 3400+
MSI K8N Neo Platinum
1 GB Kingston HyperX PC3200
ATI AIW 9600XT
WD Raptor 74GB

 

[Mr5oh]

There are all sorts of benchmarks you can do:

SiSandra is free, and will show how your harddrive performs against other types of hard drives:

<A HREF="http://www.sisoftware.net/index.html?dir=dload&location=sware_dl_x86&langx=en&a=" target="_new">http://www.sisoftware.net/index.html?dir=dload&location=sware_dl_x86&langx=en&a=</A>

PCWizard 04 is another freeware program, not quite as advanced as the first link, but has similar capabilites

<A HREF="http://www.cpuid.com/pcw.php#download" target="_new">http://www.cpuid.com/pcw.php#download</A>

PCMark from madonion would be another option, but it is not free, and really isn't necessarliy any better than the first two programs.

My Desktop: <A HREF="http://Mr5oh.tripod.com/pc.html" target="_new">http://Mr5oh.tripod.com/pc.html</A>
Overclocking Results: <A HREF="http://Mr5oh.tripod.com/pc2.html" target="_new">http://Mr5oh.tripod.com/pc2.html</A>

 

[Mr5oh]

Keep in mind too, that the difference is going to be hard to notice. Yes the drive is considerably faster, but there are a lot of other factors too. However don't think you wasted your money, becuase you didn't, Hopefully I will be replacing my WD 80 gig 7200 RPM, later this week.

My Desktop: <A HREF="http://Mr5oh.tripod.com/pc.html" target="_new">http://Mr5oh.tripod.com/pc.html</A>
Overclocking Results: <A HREF="http://Mr5oh.tripod.com/pc2.html" target="_new">http://Mr5oh.tripod.com/pc2.html</A>

 

[BeyRevRa]

Thanks for the fast response, I will try those tests tomorrow to see. I guess I can blame this on my friend because he hyped it up so much to me and I even said word-for-word "is it a noticable difference?" and he assured me that I would be able to see an extreme difference. So I got my hopes way up, I'm sure it was worth the money since so many other people swear by them.

AMD 64 3400+
MSI K8N Neo Platinum
1 GB Kingston HyperX PC3200
ATI AIW 9600XT
WD Raptor 74GB

 

[arkus]

I've had a lot of 'standard' 7200rpm hard drives in my machine and have this year swapped them out for Raptors. I've currently got 1* 72Gb Raptor and 3* 36Gb Raptors in there (amongst others), and when moving lots of files around across drives there *IS* a noticeable improvement in speed. When several gigs of data are being moved about I can see a substantial improvement.

Of course, if I'm surfing the web, or using Word, there is no noticeable difference at all.

<A HREF="http://forums.btvillarin.com/index.php?act=ST&f=41&t=2765&st=0#entry21597" target="_new">My Rigs</A>

 

[jim552]

True as everyone says the difference is hard to just "feel" as you seem to be doing.

People in general don't notice "speed-ups" as much as they notice "slow-downs". I can't count how many users claim, "My new PC isn't much faster than the old one?". Give-em the old one back for a while and then see what they say!

If you have access to an older 7200rpm drive the thing to do would be to "clone" your Raptor boot/system drive over to the 7200rpm drive, and use that one in it's place. (If you can, replace ALL the Raptors with the 7200rpm drives for even a better realization!)

Since you have been using your Raptors for a while you have a pretty good "feel" for them. If you can do this, when you start using the 7200rpm drive you will notice it's slower.

Aside from that, yes the benchmarks are great, but many of them just measure the "raw drive performance", and that is not always directly transferable to what is seen on a running system. (Different OS, Applications, Controllers, various Hardware, Drivers, all interact and can effect the ultimate perormance.)

All-in-all though, I am and have been a HUGE support or Raptors. I have been VERY pleased with their performance.

For ANY system that I want to maximize speed on I would ONLY purchase Raptors for time critical storage. (boot/operating system/paging files/often used files/etc.....)

 

[BeyRevRa]

Yeah I use the Raptor for all of my programs/OS and then I use a 7200 IDE drive for my random files and such.

AMD 64 3400+
MSI K8N Neo Platinum
1 GB Kingston HyperX PC3200
ATI AIW 9600XT
WD Raptor 74GB

 

[Obtuse]

That's the setup to have. I got windows and all my apps on a 36.7 raptor, all my huge audio and video files on a seperate 160GB 7200 drive. That way, if the os drive craps out or gets corrupted, all your months of patient leeching aren't wasted.

"It's too late now anyway. That song is stuck in my head and the only way to get rid of it is to blow it out. With a bullet!! - Carl