Adding Raptor - How do you use it?

[leepark]

Will I notice a significant improvement in speed (boot up, install, gaming, etc.) by adding a 74 Raptor? (Sorry for the dumb question but) How would one go about using 2 HDDs? Do I have to reinstall everything? Because the Seagate is set as C: I have to start from scratch and make the Raptor the C:, correct? I can't make the Seagate D: and Raptor C: without starting over, correct? (As far as I know, you can't change the letter on the Seagate). Would the Seagate act as the storage drive for files, videos, pictures, music, etc.? For those of you who have a Raptor and a "regular" HDD, how do you use it?

 

[fstime]

OS and apps and games on the Raptor, backup on the other hard drive, and no you dont have to format the Seagate, just unplug it, format and install windows on the Raptor, plug it back in, reboot.

 

[leepark]

What letter assignment would the Raptor and Seagate receive if done as you say? Currently, I have Seagate as C:, DVD as D:, CD as E: Removeable A (on FDD) as F: and Removeable B (on FDD) as G:

Would that setup that includes the Raptor speed things up significantly?

 

[Aquila76]

If you have an app like Ghost (or know somone who does) and can copy the partition from the Seagate drive to the Raptor, that will save you a lot of time. And yes the Raptor will be much faster than your Seagate for boot and load times.

 

[Aquila76]

I believe that your drive letters will all bump up one (Seagate = D:, DVD = E:, CD = F:, etc.)

Here's a good link for the speed increases:

http://www.anandtech.com/storage/showdoc.aspx?i=2073

They compare the Raptor to several other drives, including a 120GB Seagate.

 

[leepark]

What does "faster" mean in reality? Does anyone with experience chime in? For example, how long does boot up (etc.) take with one and how long with the other?

Wouldn't the Seagate or Raptor get bumped down to H:?

 

[Aquila76]

I can't give you an accurate idea of the speed increase, because I went from a really old P3 system to a top of the line A64 with the Raptor drive. The article discusses it better than I can explain, anyway.

Windows gives preference to Hard drives as top priority letter assignments, IIRC. I know when I added a new HDD to my old system it added the new drive as D: and pushed my DVD and CD-R up to E: and F:. I'm assuming it will do the same for you.

 

[joshc]

You can change the drive letters in Windows XP- right click my computer->manage->disk management.

 

[piromaneak]

Read my giant ass Is the WD Raptor really worth it? thread to figure out if it is faster or not. 4 out of 5 ADA certified dentists say its faster does that mean its faster? I don't know but I'm getting one and ill find out soon enough.

 

[akugami]

The Raptor will have a very nice boost to boot times. Especially if you're using older 7200RPM SATA or IDE drives. More recent 7200RPM drives have closed the gap but the Raptor is still faster.

Load times in games such as EQ 1/2, WoW, HL2 are huge. I can tell you right now that where my older system with a 7200RPM drive seemed to take forever loading Farcry levels, my Raptor flew through the level loading screens. This is probably the main reason why a gamer buys a Raptor.

For general office stuff (word processing, spreadsheets, minor graphics work) you will see such a minor speed upgrade that it's unnoticeable in real world use.

One other area it'll provide a slight boost is when you are running a lot of apps and need to hit the page file. Since the Raptor is faster, it'll give a slight performance boost.

Is it worth it to you to get a Raptor? Dunno, but I have one and I like it. My OS is installed on it as well as games and other apps I might need. Everything else is going on a larger storage drive I plan to get later.

 

[n7]

Very simple solution for the HDD letters: Unplug the IDE HDD during the Windows install on the Raptor

Then all will be well, & you can set your Seagate to whatever letter your heart desires.

BTW, Raptors do help with overall snappiness with the system IMO.
I love mine

 

[Steven the Leech]

Originally posted by: n7
Very simple solution for the HDD letters: Unplug the IDE HDD during the Windows install on the Raptor

Then all will be well, & you can set your Seagate to whatever letter your heart desires.

BTW, Raptors do help with overall snappiness with the system IMO.
I love mine

That is how I would do it, or at least change the boot order in bios/copy old drive to new drive/format old drive and boot up, then assign drive letters to own preferences [except C:]