Calling all WD Raptor owners!!!

[Duvie]

I got my new system in transition.... have the cpu picked out/ mobo on the way/ ram on the way...next off is I would like some Raptor 10000rpm SATA drives (36gb models)....I will get one first and then get one more at xmas time.

New system

P4 2.6c (hopefully 3.5ghz w/ 5:4 433mhz ddr cas 2,3,3,6)
Abit IC7 (tested to run 270fsb 1:1)
1gb (2x512mb) Geil Ultra Pc3500 (cas 2,3,3,6,1t)

hopefully

2 x 36gb raptors in SATA Raid (video editing/ CAD rendering/ overall system speed)

use my 40gb WD 8mb cache HDD for backup storage. Don't need to much as I have a DVD-RW burner to get stuff off the HDD's....


Questions....

1)What kind of performance increase will I see in load up of windows/ programs/ writing, reading and seeking with only 1 drive in a non Raid config??? Is it like the days the 7200rpm was a major leap over the 5400rpm drives???

2) I heard this drive is faster then other SATA drives due to the fact it is 10000rpm and the others are often 7200rpm. Right?? they are all pretty much rated 150ATA right??

3)What kind of leap in performance oevr the single drive raptor will I get in same situations in question 1.


I searched but I want to hear from users and not reading reviews that I don't like their methods or they just don't describe the sense of system performance...

 

[Ionizer86]

Storagereview has many answers to your questions, though mostly in the form of data. From what I see, the Raptor's sustained transfers are only slightly higher, though the seeks are quick and the drive can do many I/O operations per second.

As for the 150MB/s, that is the interface limit, which has little to do with drive speed because the drives are limited by their mechanics, not the interface to the board. It's faster because of its 10krpm, which mainly decreases seek time.

 

[Duvie]

Thanks I will look at the review but I like hands on reviews casue it is tough to guage noticeable performance from data....

I know the 150mb/s thing and is pretty much the same marketing cheme we have seen from the ata66/ata100/ and ata133 drives that are far below those rates at average tranfer rates....

The seek time I read as 5.2ms which is a far cry lower the the 8.9ms called by many of the 7200rpm drives....

 

[boyRacer]

first time i set it up... i thought something was wrong when it format my 40GB partition in 2 seconds. lol. Other than that... i'm still waiting for my video card to come in so i don't have much real world experience to help you with.

 

[rjain]

the differences are basically what you'd expect from any RPM increase. Seeks are faster because it less time for the part of the track where the data starts to come under the drive head once the head is on the right track. Transfer is faster because the data moves under the head faster, assuming the same data density. The raptors are pretty far behind SCSI 10k RPM drives like the Atlas 10k IV. This is probably the last or second to last set of 10k RPM SCSI drives we'll see, as ~17k RPM drives start to be made and 15k becomes the low end. They are better than those SCSI 7200 RPM drives that were being made 3-5 years ago, if that's any consolation.

 

[Duvie]

I hear when they are in a raid format they are even more comparablt to scsi 10000-15000 drives...is this true???

 

[Duvie]

Originally posted by: rjain
the differences are basically what you'd expect from any RPM increase. Seeks are faster because it less time for the part of the track where the data starts to come under the drive head once the head is on the right track. Transfer is faster because the data moves under the head faster, assuming the same data density. The raptors are pretty far behind SCSI 10k RPM drives like the Atlas 10k IV. This is probably the last or second to last set of 10k RPM SCSI drives we'll see, as ~17k RPM drives start to be made and 15k becomes the low end. They are better than those SCSI 7200 RPM drives that were being made 3-5 years ago, if that's any consolation.

so then when you figure in cost of scsi drives and scsi controller this has the bang for the buck in the ide/ SATA world???

 

[sharkeeper]

so then when you figure in cost of scsi drives and scsi controller this has the bang for the buck in the ide/ SATA world???

Bang for the buck is OK. Still cannot multi like properly configured SCSI (RAID) LD's. There is no comparison.

Cheers!

 

[tallman45]

I would put the pagedata file on the single 40gb (8mb cache ?) which will help performance in that area.

Raid 0 shines with large file transfers, you may see very little if any benefit in loading of the os and apps from a Raid vs single drive. You may see more by putting os on one raptor and apps on the other. As always it depends on how you configure the array (stripe size) and the application that you need it optimized for.

 

[Duvie]

well I will be coming to you guys when I am ready to do it....

 

[Sideswipe001]

FYI - I load faster in games with my 2 WD 7200 RPM 8MB in RAID 0 than my friend does on his single Raptor. Not a lot, but a second or two. I always do load faster. The Sandra scores were close - I got about 40K, where he got about 38K. But again, this is my RAID compared to his single drive. I'd bet if he had RAID that he would be beating me out every time.

(And yes, our systems are almost exactly the same)

 

[orion7144]

Duvie, With my Raptors in RAID 0 I can install WinXP Pro in under 10min. When I had my 2 120gig WD SE drives in RAID 0 it was closer to 25min. So i'd say it is a huge increase. Overall "feel" is faster too but that could have something to do with my 2.4C @ 275FSB.

Not sure if you read my post in the IS7 MB thread but when the temps dropped here last week, my ambient room temp dropped to 55F and I was able to hit 300FSB stable 5:4 OCZ PC3700 Gold (folding DC client while playing UT2K3) for a few hours before I bumped it back down to 275. CPU temp never even came close to 60C. I am going to wait till I get another one (Kids don't want me killing theirs) off of here then I will see if it can run 300 the rest of the winter.

 

[Alex]

Originally posted by: orion7144
Duvie, With my Raptors in RAID 0 I can install WinXP Pro in under 10min. When I had my 2 120gig WD SE drives in RAID 0 it was closer to 25min. So i'd say it is a huge increase. Overall "feel" is faster too but that could have something to do with my 2.4C @ 275FSB.

lol

 

[rjain]

Originally posted by: shuttleteam

so then when you figure in cost of scsi drives and scsi controller this has the bang for the buck in the ide/ SATA world???

Bang for the buck is OK. Still cannot multi like properly configured SCSI (RAID) LD's. There is no comparison.

Cheers!

Yep. You can't connect 15 drives to a single SATA controller.
Also, scsi drives aren't that expensive if you're looking for a small, fast system drives. Music and movies, which take up most of the disk space on most of our computers , don't need much transfer speed or access latency if you have a nice memory buffer for them, so 7200 RPM IDE drives (even without DMA) are plenty fast for that.
So, in short, I have a small, fast SCSI drive for the system disk and a large, slow IDE drive for long-term storage, music, and movies.

 

[fkloster]

1)What kind of performance increase will I see in load up of windows/ programs/ writing, reading and seeking with only 1 drive in a non Raid config??? Is it like the days the 7200rpm was a major leap over the 5400rpm drives???

All I know is apps and windows loads stinkin' FAST compared to my old 15k cheetah u160 2nd gen.

2) I heard this drive is faster then other SATA drives due to the fact it is 10000rpm and the others are often 7200rpm. Right?? they are all pretty much rated 150ATA right??

Yes & Yes

3)What kind of leap in performance oevr the single drive raptor will I get in same situations in question 1

don't quite know...but Sata raid 0 w/8k stripe for gaming rocks = 67k Sandra drive bench smokes a Cheetah 15k 2nd gen.

 

[Regs]

The amazing part is actually the firmware of the Raptor which makes it faster than any other SATA drive, not just the raw RPMS.

Trufully though, I've noticed only a slight difference with my OS on my sata on boot up. I think a hard drive is only going to push Mr.gates software so far in lengths of speed on boot up. Applications though, especially ones like Photoshop, Sound Forge, and 3dmax, either when you open or save files, the transfer and write speeds are a big improvement.

Those are three programs I work with the most which is why I decided to get a raptor. When you need to save file sizes in the MBytes, Sata is the way to go.

 

[Duvie]

Originally posted by: fkloster
1)What kind of performance increase will I see in load up of windows/ programs/ writing, reading and seeking with only 1 drive in a non Raid config??? Is it like the days the 7200rpm was a major leap over the 5400rpm drives???

All I know is apps and windows loads stinkin' FAST compared to my old 15k cheetah u160 2nd gen.

2) I heard this drive is faster then other SATA drives due to the fact it is 10000rpm and the others are often 7200rpm. Right?? they are all pretty much rated 150ATA right??

Yes & Yes

3)What kind of leap in performance oevr the single drive raptor will I get in same situations in question 1

don't quite know...but Sata raid 0 w/8k stripe for gaming rocks = 67k Sandra drive bench smokes a Cheetah 15k 2nd gen.

Thanks FK this is the type of info I need to hear...Sounds like raid o which I want to run is faster then a 15k cheetah which is scsi..So which is it ppl??

 

[rickn]

I really want the new larger (74/76GB?)version. any update on when they ship?

 

[sharkeeper]

Raptor 360 RAID0

Cheetah 15k.3 RAID0

Questions?

Yes even a single Raptor will generally *feel* faster on the desktop than a single X15. However, (unless all you do is time opening programs and installing Windows) that is where the similarities end. I know as I tried these configurations with a machine and application that loves i/o. The Raptors didn't fare well at all mainly because of the ide-like command set that it depends on. Call it the Achilles heel if you want.

In our lab, i/o is important as fillrate (and 3Mark scores!) are to gamers so we notice.

If you want the absolutely fastest boot up times, SATA RAID w/10k is your best bet.

It will be interesting indeed to see how the second revision of Raptor stacks up under stress with TS & CQ.

Cheers!

 

[XBoxLPU]

Originally posted by: shuttleteam
Raptor 360 RAID0

Cheetah 15k.3 RAID0

Questions?

HOLY SH!T :Q

How does 2RaptorsRaid0 compre to 210KSCSIRaid0 ?

 

[nolovenohope]

Duvie, I don't mean to hi-jack your thread, but I don't see the need on making another WD raptor thread as you already have a nice large one going here. I am curious to as how much louder these drivers are? I got a Dell 400SC from the recent deal, and the heatsink/fan are pretty loud compared to my 2 Seagates which I'm running in there now a Barracuda V and a 7200.7. Will the Raptor produce a hi-pitched whine that won't let me sleep at night?

 

[Duvie]

Originally posted by: nolovenohope
Duvie, I don't mean to hi-jack your thread, but I don't see the need on making another WD raptor thread as you already have a nice large one going here. I am curious to as how much louder these drivers are? I got a Dell 400SC from the recent deal, and the heatsink/fan are pretty loud compared to my 2 Seagates which I'm running in there now a Barracuda V and a 7200.7. Will the Raptor produce a hi-pitched whine that won't let me sleep at night?

NO problem...good qeustion...I generally can't here my 7200rpm drives now with the case fan and power supply fan.

 

Originally posted by: nolovenohope
Duvie, I don't mean to hi-jack your thread, but I don't see the need on making another WD raptor thread as you already have a nice large one going here. I am curious to as how much louder these drivers are? I got a Dell 400SC from the recent deal, and the heatsink/fan are pretty loud compared to my 2 Seagates which I'm running in there now a Barracuda V and a 7200.7. Will the Raptor produce a hi-pitched whine that won't let me sleep at night?

I certainly dont have those whines......

 

[Horsepower]

I use my raptors in a rather unconventional way. There are no internal drives in my system. I have an SATA removeable rack and an IDE removeable rack and insert the drive of my choice. As far as performance, in a non-raid setup, the raptor is much faster than my previous 7200 rpm drives. I can't report on noise because the cpu fan is the loudest I have ever experienced (D875PBZ/3.0)