Last Gen Velociraptor

[TC91]

Newegg has the last gen Velociraptor 150GB on sale for $139 CDN, is it even worth considering? Seems like a relatively low price for the amount of relatively quick storage.

 

[Zap]

It probably isn't worth considering. The latest 7200RPM drives can probably match it in STR and only lose in access times, which can be lowered by short stroking a drive. You can probably buy a cheaper Samsung F3 and short stroke it to 200GB for a cheaper, larger drive that is around the same performance.

 

[Hacp]

Newegg has the last gen Velociraptor 150GB on sale for $139 CDN, is it even worth considering? Seems like a relatively low price for the amount of relatively quick storage.

You can get the 600gb raptor for 280.

 

[Zap]

The 600GB VelociRaptor is somewhat worth getting, because at least it is for sure faster than any 7200RPM drive at this time.

 

[TC91]

What about two of those older raptors in RAID 0 vs. a single 600GB current gen one? I'm basically looking for quicker game/level load times and ~250-300GB would be sufficient for a games drive/array. I'd go SSD but the ones with 250GB or more are a lot more than what I'd like to spend.

 

[Voo]

Most games do not benefit much from fast access times, because most of their r/w is sequential so those older raptors will probably end up being slower than modern 7.2k rpm drives..

 

[Kantastic]

I bought a used 300GB drive with 4 years of warranty left so that I can claim the warranty when it dies on me and get a newer drive.

 

[Ben90]

What about two of those older raptors in RAID 0 vs. a single 600GB current gen one? I'm basically looking for quicker game/level load times and ~250-300GB would be sufficient for a games drive/array. I'd go SSD but the ones with 250GB or more are a lot more than what I'd like to spend.

The only drive that makes any amount of sense as a performance drive is the new Raptor (in very very niche situations).

If your willing to go through the trouble of RAID for faster game loads the best solution IMO would be to RAID 5 (0 if your data isn't important) a few of the less expensive ~1TB non-green drives. The performance gain wont be insane, but it may shave a few seconds off the load.