AnandTech Article: Q2 2004 Desktop Hard Drive Comparison: WD Raptor vs the World

[kuk]

AnandTech Article: Q2 2004 Desktop Hard Drive Comparison: WD Raptor vs the World


Thank's to Anand and his weblog post:

I know I said the storage review would be posted last week, well in reality it was - you just can't read it If you couldn't tell, we had a ton of coverage/articles go up last week and I didn't want them competing even more with one another for attention. The new HDD test suite and first article based around it goes live on Monday. It was fun to write, and I hope you all enjoy it.

Kuk

 

[Algere]

Cool

A sneak peek

 

[alexXx]

how did you find it?

 

[Budman]

Date: June 7th, 2004

 

[kuk]

Originally posted by: alexXx
how did you find it?

On a note next to a fifty dollar bill, left on the bedside table after night with An..........err, nevermind.

 

[SilentZero]

Good review.

 

[GoSharks]

intresting to see that many of the benches dont show any HUGE speed differences between the 75gxp and the raptor II. 5 seconds diff between the two in far cry, and 7 in UT. idunno about you guys, but to me when the load times are that long already - it doesnt really make too much of a difference.

the differences just arent that large, considering it has been 4 years since the 75gxp has come out. as a comparison, the I/O numbers shown at storage review show a much larger difference. interesting results that AT have put out.

 

[oldfart]

Looking at the older IBM 75GXP and Maxtor D740X drives, it's interesting to see that the fastest drives of today are around twice as fast as the fastest drives from a few years ago.

Wow, a 75GXP DeathStar that is still working?!

 

[Corporate Thug]

so, looking the game benchies is it safe to say that there is practically no advantage in having a 36 gb raptor over a 8mb cache mass storage HDD?

 

[sharkeeper]

Buying a HDD just for gaming is like buying a diesel truck because it doesn't run on gas. (of course the latter would be good in today's market!)

If you're into gaming, buy for capacity and use the unspent funds on more ram. It will go much further.

Cheers!

 

[SickBeast]

This article confirms what I already was fairly certain of:

My Raptor 36GB was a complete waste of money and gives me hardly any performance improvements over my Maxtor 120GB SATA drive. Maybe I should just sell it and be done. Mine is a 2nd generation drive, too, I made sure of it before I purchased it.

I was expecting to double my hard drive performance, but it wasn't even close to that. Maybe 20% at best. Very disappointing.

 

[SUOrangeman]

Let's not forget that the Raptor is/was intended for the enterprise market which demands speed over capacity at times. It wasn't meant to be the say-all-end-all solution for the general consumer market. However, the price-point offered by the Raptor (controller+drive costs versus that of SCSI) raised a few enthusiasts' eyebrows.

Nonetheless, I'm happily running a first-gen Raptor at home with the added confidence offered by its five-year warranty.

-SUO

 

[gururu]

I'm still running a 15.3 IBM deskstar 75gxp...
really was considering a raptor, but now I don't know. Anand just complicated my life.

 

[Stealth1024]

Hey I'm still running a 45GB IBM Deathstar in my desktop.

Right now I'm using the notebook which has a 7200RPM 60GB drive. HUGE speed improvement over that old 4800 or 5200 RPM generic that was in it.

 

[Ionizer86]

7200.7 80GB here Looks like the review dispels the notion that the 7200.7 is slower than the DM9+ or the WDSE's

 

[GoSharks]

Originally posted by: SUOrangeman
Let's not forget that the Raptor is/was intended for the enterprise market which demands speed over capacity at times. It wasn't meant to be the say-all-end-all solution for the general consumer market.

perhaps it was originally intended for the enterprise market, but from looking at the storage review database, the raptor only has advantages in desktop/workstation usages. it does not compare at all with scsi 10k rpm drives in SR's server tests.

 

[sharkeeper]

Let's not forget that the Raptor is/was intended for the enterprise market which demands speed over capacity at times.

Marketing BS.

Cheers!

 

[InlineFive]

Originally posted by: alexXx
how did you find it?

Probably noticed that in the urls that "showdoc 2072" and "showdoc 2073" were missing from the article list. However 2072 doesn't lead to anything.

 

[dudeman007]

Thanks for the article. Finally a good review of the two different routes.

 

[MDE]

I would have liked to see the Raptors in a RAID0 as many people with them are buying them for that purpose.

 

[SickBeast]

Yes, but wouldn't RAIDing the Raptors have similar effect to RAIDing the 7200RPM behemoths? In essence what I'm saying is that the graphs would be very similar, only the performance deltas would be increased, no?

 

[James3shin]

and to think i was gonna try and spend a 100 or so on a raptor over some ram...pfft.

 

[MDE]

Originally posted by: SickBeast
Yes, but wouldn't RAIDing the Raptors have similar effect to RAIDing the 7200RPM behemoths? In essence what I'm saying is that the graphs would be very similar, only the performance deltas would be increased, no?

Maybe, maybe not which is why I would've liked to see a Raptor RAID tested.

 

[Ken90630]

Greetings, Everyone:

Before anyone decides not to buy a Raptor because of any one article or this thread, I suggest you read this article. It's a year old, but the info is still entirely applicable since the Raptor hasn't changed at all since then (except that fluid dynamic bearings are now being used in new production models, which makes it quieter).

Not trying to start an argument here; as we all know, HDs (like many components) are subjective -- a lot depends on what you're going to be doing with the hardware. I just wanted to share an article that helped me make my decision to buy a Raptor for a second computer I'm getting ready to build. (And with a 5-year warranty, an MTBF rating of almost 137 years at 24/7 usage [!], and at $50 off with a rebate deal, the choice was a no-brainer for me. )

Always good to consider multiple sources and multiple points of view before making a significant purchase like a hard drive.

:beer:

 

[screw3d]

Where are Samsung drives? I am kinda interested on how it performs against the IBMs, particularly for the 160GBs