Is a 10,000RPM hard drive worth the money

keviheit

Member
Jan 25, 2005
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I was looking at some 10,000 RPM hard drives and are they that must better then a 7200RPM hard drive.
 

Matthias99

Diamond Member
Oct 7, 2003
8,808
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Well, that was conclusive. :p

It's 'faster', but for a lot of people it's not going to be worth paying 3-4 times as much per GB. It will make applications load up somewhat more quickly (due to reduced seek times), and will improve STR (which will cut time to save/load/copy really big files). But you can get more of an STR boost by using RAID0 with 7200RPM drives.
 

Mik3y

Banned
Mar 2, 2004
7,089
0
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They are not much faster then the latest 7200rpm hard drives. sure, they may open things a little faster, but is a couple seconds worth the $? surely not.
 

Gunslinger08

Lifer
Nov 18, 2001
13,234
2
81
I'm impressed with the Raptor. My computer feels much more responsive when opening applications and loading Windows. I'd say it's worth it if you are pretty impatient.
 

Luckyboy1

Senior member
Mar 13, 2006
934
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0
Short answer no = correct!

Short answer yes = correct!

Read my response in that thread the guy posting where he didn't like his 150 or so GB new hard drive.
 

aiya24

Senior member
Aug 24, 2005
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if your a power user then you'd want the 10k hdd, for the average user a 7200rpm hdd will do

IMO, its not worth it. i rather have more hdd space.
 

tommo123

Platinum Member
Sep 25, 2005
2,617
48
91
entirely down to the user. i can remember a time when it would have been pointless me having one and wouldnt have appreciated it at all. now i love my raptors tho :)
 

seanp789

Senior member
Oct 17, 2001
374
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Originally posted by: aiya24
if your a power user then you'd want the 10k hdd, for the average user a 7200rpm hdd will do

IMO, its not worth it. i rather have more hdd space.



I concur.


Best combo for power user is 10,000 main drive, 7200 storage drive.
 

foodfightr

Golden Member
Sep 19, 2004
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Originally posted by: aiya24
if your a power user then you'd want the 10k hdd, for the average user a 7200rpm hdd will do

This is the truth. Let me elaborate a little....

If you're building a media center PC, budget or value pc, average user pc you will want the standard 7,200RPM drive because it will cost less and give you more storage.

If you're building a performance PC or an overclocking PC you will want the 10,000RPM drive because when the rest of your PC is screeching fast you want your hard drive to squeeze out every last drop of performance.

I picked up the 150GB raptor because it is leaps and bounds above all other hard drives including the other raptors, for single user performance. Storage review found it to be roughly 60% faster than the original 36GB raptor. Me personally, I'm running a dual core opteron (on stock voltage) 100Mhz faster than the FX-60 with two gigabytes of DDR 540 ram at 3-4-3-5-1T. While the opteron 165 and the G.Skill Extreme are fairly inexpensive, with the right stepping and overclock you can turn a budget PC into a performance PC and see a difference with the raptor.

On the other hand, my girlfriends PC has the WD4000YR hard drive. I see this as the sweet spot hard drive. Its $200, 400GB and it has performance close to a raptor, while still being a 7200RPM drive.

My other PC has two seagate 7200.7 rpm drives in raid 0. I've always been a seagate guy since the beginning but I really have to hand it to western digital for these products.

 

Luckyboy1

Senior member
Mar 13, 2006
934
0
0
Here's the dribble I wrote in the other thread...

It is easy to misunderstand what 0 RAID and faster drives will and won't do for you. You read the specs and see some decrease in read/write times or whatever and this is where the misunderstanding comes in... then the User tries to think this will make the entire system that much faster or close to it and that simply isn't the case for all applications or programs. Your actual results will vary and usually be less dramatic than most hoped for. People who love 0 RAID and faster spinning drives usually love them without considering a few things.

1) There was a period of time where people were doing this sort of upgrade when it took you from one drive format to another. They forgot to consider that part of their perceieved increase in performance was from going from an Ultra drive to a SATA drive. They also forgot that their old drive unit had 2 MB's of cache and the new one has 8 MB's of cache.

2) They forgot to consider that their new build also included more system RAM and a faster CPU.

3) The programs and applications they use hit the hard drive like a crack pipe. This scenario, believe it or not is very rare.

4) See part 6) below.

then on the other side of life, those who ended up hating it forgot to consider such factors as...

1) Did I load the correct RAID drivers? This isn't always as clear as you might think. Load the wrong driver and quite often, it will work so to speak, but not at capaciity.

2) Are they managing the hard drive system correctly now? There are many factors that will affect the final outcome beyond just the physical drives and drivers for same. I purchased a copy of Diskeeper 9.0 Pro and got a full 300 more 3VDMark05 points for the effort. It also defrags much faster. Now, people complain about it actively watching everything in the background slowing things down, but that mode is for the first 24 hours of heavy use of your PC after the program has been installed or for multiple server management. You want to disable that feature for long term use in most cases after giving it a short term ability to see how you generally run your PC.

3) They didn't go from Ultra to a SATA drive or to a faster, more capable overall build while they were at it. This will make the results less impressive.

4) Their particular applications don't hit the hard drive much after loading, so the results again are less than impressive and this is the case most of the time. Few programs or applications use continued referrence to the hard drive simply because as fast as you can make a hard drive, it is dirt slow compared to system RAM.

5) They don't use the computer as a commercial server. they confuse using it as a server for one game with commercial applications and while they do have things in common, it is a matter of degree affecting total performance change over the older technology.

6) System RAM size feeds back on how well your new drive configuration will perform. Hey, wait a minute! I thought you said access time on hard drives was comparatively dirt slow when compared with system RAM?! Yes, but remember, your system as a whole and the system RAM is going to be busy running cousin Billy's programming as well as security programming and whatever other bloat you have running. this is yet another reason why having the magic Gig of RAM or better, all on two sticks is so vital these days.

So, what will a combination of correctly installed and managed 0 RAID and faster drives do for the average user?

1) It will decrease the time from pressing the on buttion for the PC to Cousin Billy's Welcome screen by 2 seconds, yeppers, just like 2 seconds or so! While it will load Cousin Billy's programming faster, it goes through this stage in the bios which is an extra step where it is dealing with setting up the RAID to begin with and that adds time back on. If you are judging by this measure, you will cry in your Cherrios every time!

2) It dramatically reduces format time of the 0 RAID drive and anything loaded the 0 RAID array as far as programs go. Got from a single 2 MB cached 7,200 Ultra drive to a 0 RAID array of 36 GB 10,000 rpm Raptors and you can easily expect to take 1/3 less time loading programs or formatting the drive when compared to how much space you get in the end. Remember, with 0 RAID, not 1 RAID, you get more hard drive space in the end, so take that into consideration as well. With a 1 RAID of two 36 GB Raptors, you end up with 36 or so GB of usable space. with a 0 RAID of two 36 BG Raptors, you end up with like 70 Gigs of usable space.

3) Reduces the loading time of games. Most find this a compelling reason to buy, but in the end, are dissapointed due to the fact that their games weren't all that big to begin with. In general, and this again varies from game to game depending on how it gets loaded, if the game is less than 1 Gig in size fully loaded, you've wasted the capacity of the new hard drive system. Fo bigger games like my combined install of Forgotten Battles/Ace Expansion Pack/Pacific Fighters all loaded up to the 4.04 Patch loads in about 8 seconds. This compares to 32 seconds with the older, single drive.

4) At this point, things start becoming more conditional and obscure. One of about a billion causes of stutter is hard drive performance. Have a game where online play of downloadable skins is enabled and you will have the custom skins show up faster on your PC by having the faster drives. Also, anything that requires even a single look at the hard drive while playing more demanding games will cause a corresponding, sigle bump in stutter, so this is a varialble not just with how demanding a particular game or program is, but how you use it as well.
 

Synomenon

Lifer
Dec 25, 2004
10,547
6
81
I remember when they started releasing hard drives with 16MB buffers and how they were all getting rave reviews on how much faster they were because of their bigger buffers. The new 150GB Raptor is of course 10,000rpm just like the other Raptors so they are a little faster than your average 7,200rpm hard drives. BUT with the 150GB Raptor also having a 16MB buffer (you know, like the ones that reviewers were raving about since they made hard drives oh so much faster) you should see some noticeable performance increases if you're moving to it from a plain-jane 7,200rpm 8MB buffer hard drive.
 

Googer

Lifer
Nov 11, 2004
12,576
7
81
Originally posted by: keviheit
I was looking at some 10,000 RPM hard drives and are they that must better then a 7200RPM hard drive.

If you have the money and can afford it, yes it is. But if you cannot find enough pennies in your sofa then It is not worth it.
 

Googer

Lifer
Nov 11, 2004
12,576
7
81
Originally posted by: Matthias99
Well, that was conclusive. :p

It's 'faster', but for a lot of people it's not going to be worth paying 3-4 times as much per GB. It will make applications load up somewhat more quickly (due to reduced seek times), and will improve STR (which will cut time to save/load/copy really big files). But you can get more of an STR boost by using RAID0 with 7200RPM drives.

You give up a lot of reliability when you go with RAID 0 and data corruption is always a serious threat when running a striped array.
 

jdkick

Senior member
Feb 8, 2006
601
1
81
IMO, the performance difference between a single 7200RPM and 10000RPM does not warranty the price difference. My advice, stick with 7200RPM drives, unless you're serious about squeezing every last bit of performance out of your rig and willing to pay through the nose for it.
 

Synomenon

Lifer
Dec 25, 2004
10,547
6
81
Originally posted by: jdkick
IMO, the performance difference between a single 7200RPM and 10000RPM does not warranty the price difference. My advice, stick with 7200RPM drives, unless you're serious about squeezing every last bit of performance out of your rig and willing to pay through the nose for it.

A 10000RPM drive with a larger 16MB buffer (150GB Raptor) is noticeably faster than my 7200RPM SATA Seagate hard drive:

http://www.seagate.com/support/disc/specs/sata/st3250823as.html
 

Googer

Lifer
Nov 11, 2004
12,576
7
81
Originally posted by: IsLNdbOi
Originally posted by: jdkick
IMO, the performance difference between a single 7200RPM and 10000RPM does not warranty the price difference. My advice, stick with 7200RPM drives, unless you're serious about squeezing every last bit of performance out of your rig and willing to pay through the nose for it.

A 10000RPM drive with a larger 16MB buffer (150GB Raptor) is noticeably faster than my 7200RPM SATA Seagate hard drive:

http://www.seagate.com/support/disc/specs/sata/st3250823as.html

A better review can be found here.
 

Mem

Lifer
Apr 23, 2000
21,476
13
81
A 10000RPM drive with a larger 16MB buffer (150GB Raptor) is noticeably faster than my 7200RPM SATA Seagate hard drive:

Personally I woulld rather have a bigger 7200rpm HD for the same price,or use the money you save and put it towards more ram,7200 rpm HD with more ram as well is never a bad buy.
 

Luckyboy1

Senior member
Mar 13, 2006
934
0
0
Originally posted by: Googer
Originally posted by: Matthias99
Well, that was conclusive. :p

It's 'faster', but for a lot of people it's not going to be worth paying 3-4 times as much per GB. It will make applications load up somewhat more quickly (due to reduced seek times), and will improve STR (which will cut time to save/load/copy really big files). But you can get more of an STR boost by using RAID0 with 7200RPM drives.

You give up a lot of reliability when you go with RAID 0 and data corruption is always a serious threat when running a striped array.


Complete crap and not even all warm on toast either! I've had a 0 RAID array of two 36 GB Raptors for 2 years now and not a single drive related failure have I come across. The nonsense about 0 RAID being such a risk pings around mostly in the minds of those stuck in the 478 series of computers days or ealier. They are just so much more reliable now that the risks are insignificant at best.