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Completely regret buying Raptor 150GB (long)

J

johnnyMon

Member
I just built a "workhorse" system that I wanted to be as fast as possible for a reasonable outlay. I chose to use two hard disks, one for applications and one for data. For the application drive, I bought a WD Raptor 150 for $299.

I believed what I'd read about RAID 0 not making a big difference in performance, and I didn't like the increased reliability issues involved with striping across two disks. So I went the single drive route. But when I got my rig built, the HD subsystem didn't feel as fast as it should. Definitely not $299 fast. Then I saw a 70 page sticky thread on DFI-Street.com, in the Software forum, dedicated to posting RAID benchmarks. I decided to benchmark my single-drive Raptor.

Let's compare two solutions:

My setup: Raptor 150GB (single drive).
ATTO avg. read-write: 75mb/s
HD Tach random access: 8.1ms
HD Tach CPU utilization: 1%
HD Tach average read: 76.9mb/s
HD Tach burst speed: 137.3mb/s

Poster from post #1020 on DFI-Street RAID benchmark thread:
2xHitachi 80GB SATA II ($50 each at NewEgg, total $100)
ATTO avg. read-write: 110mb/s
HD Tach random access: 12.7ms
HD Tach CPU utilization: 10%
HD Tach Average read: 97.7mb/s
HD Tach burst speed: 325.6mb/s

He gets between a 27% and 47% performance increase over my Raptor for 1/3 the price (not considering the difference in burst speeds). I could have bought a good video card or put the money towards my dream monitor with that $200! Yes, he has some CPU overhead for the RAID, but I have a dual core and wouldn't notice it. Also I have better random access scores than he does, but the type of performance I want most are application loading times and big file transfers. I would rather have his scores!

But benchmarks are artificial, right? Now look at this page where the user timed various computer operations using a stopwatch, with a single-drive Raptor 74GB installed, and with two Raptor 74GBs installed using RAID 0. Assuming he's not lying and this page is not the work of a mentally-ill person, it's obvious that the RAID 0 solution is much faster in the real world. Link: Who Says 2 Raptors Aren't Better Than One

Some additional details:
- I'm out of my RMA period, otherwise I'd spend the $50 in restocking fee and shipping to return the Raptor.
- I can get an exchange drive from WD. They say my drive should have 84mb/s sustained read, and I'm getting 77. Maybe I'll get a better drive if I exchange it?
- I didn't install the Nvidia IDE SW driver, so I don't have any SATA controls in my Device Manager. I haven't been able to determine whether installing these - which have been problematic for some in the past - could help my performance.

I'm posting this for two reasons. (1) To make sure my Raptor's specs are normal, and to see if anyone has any suggestions for making it faster; and (2) to warn people away from the route I took and to encourge them to use a much cheaper, better-performing RAID 0 solution. I wish I'd taken this route.

I'm not posting this to get into a huge flamewar about RAID vs. non-RAID in general. I would ask people to try to address my specific situation if possible. But in case this thread does degenerate before any valuable info is added, I will leave this important message for those who click on this in the future:

DON'T WASTE YOUR MONEY ON A $300 RAPTOR LIKE I DID! GET TWO CHEAP GOOD DISKS AND USE RAID 0!
 
There have been quite a few posts in the various forums basically stating this, and even the benchmarks on Anand's main site bear all of this out - it's not that much faster than a plain, current-generation single drive, and can't compete with 2 decent RAIDed drives.

Sorry to hear about this. Some credit card companies offer extended return periods - Citibank and AmEx do for some card types...
 
Sorry for you,the best deal right now is the Western Digital Caviar RE2 400GB.
It's got a really cheap price per GB and is fairly fast and quiet.
 
Your 8.1ms access time and 1% utilization and his 12.7ms and 10% utilization mean much more in real world performance than any of those other numbers do. But I do agree that the Raptors are not worth their pricetag, which is why I sold my 74GB many many moons ago.
 
Originally posted by: Inappropriate4AT
Your 8.1ms access time and 1% utilization and his 12.7ms and 10% utilization mean much more in real world performance than any of those other numbers do. But I do agree that the Raptors are not worth their pricetag, which is why I sold my 74GB many many moons ago.
Click to expand...

This guy nailed it.
 
raptors are more for epenis that much else. sure....quake4 in ultra quality loads 10 seconds faster...but it still takes forever -.-;
 
Only reason i would see to buy a raptor besides prestige is for reliability as they are rated to run 24/7, while normal 7200rpm discs are not (could be wrong though)
Getting a raptor 74gig and a 250 gig hdd is cheaper and much better set up than one 150gig raptor anyways.
 
Originally posted by: Dark Cupcake
Only reason i would see to buy a raptor besides prestige is for reliability as they are rated to run 24/7, while normal 7200rpm discs are not (could be wrong though)
Getting a raptor 74gig and a 250 gig hdd is cheaper and much better set up than one 150gig raptor anyways.
Click to expand...

This is true, as Raptors are targetted for the server/workstation market. I think they are rated for 1,200,000 hours MTBF. (24/7 for over 136 years)
 
good post, and welcome to AT.

i'm glad to hear your thoughts on your experience w/ the 150 raptor. i have 2x 74gb raptors in raid 0. i'm not going to comment on whether it's worth it or not, but i have 2 benchmark screenies if anyone's interested.

single 74gb raptor on fresh xp pro sp2 install
IMAGE

2x 74gb raptors on fresh xp pro sp2 install
IMAGE
 
Thanks for the responses, everyone. I checked and my credit card company doesn't offer this return protection (good suggestion tho!). I don't think I'd get enough for it on ebay as it's used and I have zero feedback, but I could always try. I pretty much agree with everyone's comments, and although I don't know if I agree with Inappropriate4AT and trexmgd, I hope you guys are right. 🙂
 
Meh...my 2 74GB Raptors in RAID0 work great. Nice and fast. Depends on what you use them for. For some things they will be better than others.
 
You should be able to sell that Rapor 150 at a very decent price and get two 250GB SATA hdd's. I use 2X80GB Maxtors for more than two years now and still loving it. My next plan is to get those WD RE's 300GB in pair and should get better results. Before my 2X80GB, I had 2X40GB in RAID 0. And that was many moons ago. In fact, the 2X40GB where of the deathstar series. And IBM has long been out of the hdd business. I've been on RAID 0 since '98. Had one crash with the DeathStar hdd's but was able to recover in couple of hours because I have a cloned hdd that is kept off line. When I need to rebuild the hdd, I just plug it in and reclone it back to the new raid. RAID 0 is not always the fastest on every application or task. But is sure ain't that slow than the fastest. Maybe a millisec or two at the most. But when it comes to large file transfer and large program start up, it leaves the rest in the dust!

Another option you have is to probably get another Raptor 150 and place it on a RAID 0. Now that is the ultimate hdd configuration! For 2-hdd RAID 0 anyways.
 
Is there anyway HDTach could be mis reading my hard disk performance? I have a pair of 250GB drives in RAID0, and the figures are ridiculously good.

Just running stock at the moment:

ASRock Dual Sata II
4400+
2Gb Ballistix @ 2-2-2-5
RAID0 2xMaxtor DiamondMax Plus 10 NCQ 250GB SATA-II 16MB Cache

I'm at work, but can post screenshots later when I get home. Basically, the figures are cwayzee, so could HDTach be screwing up somehow?
 
I still don't get what it is with all you RAID 0 freaks and game load times. Maybe if you get all the porn off your HD and defrag it once in awhile you wouldn't be having these problems 😀

RAID 0 needs to stand for 'zero fault tolerance'. I hope you don't have anything loaded on it that's critical because sooner or later one of the drives will glitch, and a few hundred gig of data will go 'see ya'.
 
Originally posted by: kenrippy
good post, and welcome to AT.

i'm glad to hear your thoughts on your experience w/ the 150 raptor. i have 2x 74gb raptors in raid 0. i'm not going to comment on whether it's worth it or not, but i have 2 benchmark screenies if anyone's interested.

single 74gb raptor on fresh xp pro sp2 install
IMAGE

2x 74gb raptors on fresh xp pro sp2 install
IMAGE
Click to expand...

Thanks for the info! I'm debating on getting another 74GB raptor for RAID 0 to load my games on (OS will stay on another HD). Have you noticed any difference with application load times between the two setups? Not sure if you run any games or not but any feedback on game load times would be awesome!
 
Anandtech has posted a few reviews. The difference is very low. People throw sooo much money into this, and they get so little...sigh.
 
Originally posted by: alimoalem
could you by any chance post your "workhorse" specs so we can know what else you could have spent it on?
Click to expand...

OK, here they are. The system is used for office apps, video and photograph editing, music server for Squeezebox 3, internet, and very light gaming. Cost was about $1750 with no monitor (I'm using a 21" Sony Trinitron monitor, it's big but fuzzy, I'd like to eventually get the Samsung 214T).

Board: DFI LanParty UT NF4 Ultra-D (BIOS: 704-2BTA)
CPU: Opteron 165 CCBWE 0551 UPMW (2583MHz @ 1.513v)
CPU Cooling: SI-120/Silverstone FM121
RAM: 2x1GB Mushkin eXtreme Perf DDR500 (3-4-4-8, 258MHz @ 2.6v on 9/10 divider)
Video: MSI Radeon X800 128MB DDR PCI-E x16 (I'm not a gamer)
HDs: WD Raptor 150GB SATA, WD Caviar SE16 400GB SATA, Maxtor DM10 300GB SATA
DVD-RW: NEC 3540A - DVD-ROM: Sony DDU1615
PSU: OCZ Powerstream 520w
Case: Antec P180
OS: Windows XP Pro SP 2

For those suggesting I get another Raptor 150: I might do this if the price really comes down, but I can't now because my budget for this system is maxed out.
 
Originally posted by: johnnyMon
[OK, here they are. The system is used for office apps, video and photograph editing, music server for Squeezebox 3, internet, and very light gaming.
Click to expand...
It seems like you have a good drive for your applications. I'd stop running benchmarks and be happy. 🙂
 
Thanks a lot for the info. I'm going to buy a new PC later this year and was seriously considering a 74GB or 150GB Raptor. However, I've been reading so many posts about how they're just marginally better than the SATA drives. So now I'm pretty sure I'm going to just by a 200GB-400GB SATA drive and use the savings to get a better video card or CPU.

Thanks again for the info and good luck with whatever you end up doing with your Raptor drive.
 
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