opinions on faster hard drives, raptor performance?

[mentalcrisis00]

Hi all

I've been running a WD 250GB SE 16 Cavier 16mb for 4 years or so now and it's starting to show it's age. I think it might be the cause of some of my slow downs in gaming, desktop, and HDD maintenance. I'm wondering if I'd see a big performance boost with the 150GB raptor X or Velociraptor drives, if it'd justify the $130-$160 for them. The rest of my build is in my sig below.

I also do a lot of video stuff with my computer so I'm trying to decide whether I want a better performance main drive OR a 1TB drive for more storage. I guess that's something I have to make my mind up about.

I've looked at benchmarks but they aren't as cut and dry as cpu/gpu benchmarks and I dunno what to make of them. Would just like some opinions.

 

[California Roll]

IMO, the extra performance gained by Raptor drives do not outweigh their cost. I'd go for a WD Black drive as my OS drive over a Raptor any day. Until SSD drives come down in price.

 

[elconejito]

For the price of one raptor you can get 2 of the WD 640GB drives (regular, Black is a little bit more), which are *very* fast (approx $70/each @ newegg right now). Or one WD 640GB, and a WD 1TB for just a little bit more. The new WD Green 1TB WD10EADS (~$100 @ newegg) is pretty quick, although not as quick as the 640GB. It uses a whole heck of a lot less power though. And considering how efficient the 640GB is, that's saying a lot...

I did a really down and dirty benchmark last year on my blog here (mods, is it OK to link?) with HD Tach. The last image on that page shows a direct comparison between the WD2500KS and the WD6400AAKS. It is almost twice as fast in sustained transfers, and a few ticks faster in seek times. If you have the WD2500AAKS, that's a little faster than the WD2500KS.

 

[taltamir]

vertex ssd

 

[mentalcrisis00]

The primary drive I use to run my OS is a WD2500KS, WD5000AAKS for video storage, and an old WD1200JB IDE drive for music storage. The WD1200 used to be my primary drive and it runs fast enough to stream music to itunes. I imagine if I added another drive I'd can the IDE.

How would the performance be on the WD1001FALS 1TB Black? About the same as the 640 black? Are the only differences between the green and black performance or power usage?

Thanks for the help, I checked out your graphs elconejito and it's enlightening. I have one more question, does the cache have anything to do with speed or performance? I see now that all the high cap drives have 32MB cache, all mine are 16MB, I never got the low down on that.

 

[taltamir]

theoretically, an identical drive with more cache is faster... under certain conditions... realistically though, it doesn't really matter.

 

[elconejito]

I don't remember where I saw this, but I think that 8MB to 16MB is a HUGE difference, 16MB to 32MB is small difference.

[Usual disclaimer about making sure you always backup your files]
No need to worry about the large disks being more prone to errors or anything like that. I do recommend keeping OS/Programs separate from your data. Makes it easy to restore/reformat your OS drive in case of trouble without worrying about your data.

Just because I like to throw a wrench into everything, here's another idea... You could use your WD500AAKS (faster than WD2500KS) as your new OS drive, then just pick up the Green WD10EADS (or some other new larger drive) for video, music, etc storage. your 120GB and 250GB could be relegated to an external backup solution, or used in another machine, or just really cool paperweights 🙂

 

[mentalcrisis00]

ROFL, i was just about to send you a message elconjito asking if I should run windows on my WD500AAKS as the OS drive, buy a higher cap for files, and retire the WD2500KS for backup or paperweight. I actually always wanted to see what a wood chipper would do to a hard drive 😀

 

[Blain]

Originally posted by: mentalcrisis00
I actually always wanted to see what a wood chipper would do to a hard drive 😀

What you'll end up seeing is what a HD would do to a wood chipper.
Make sure you've got $$$ in reserve for the repairs.

 

[taltamir]

let me clarify, realistically it does not matter becuase it is just one of many design decisions influencing the drive speed and you should go by benchmarks... there are plenty of 16mb cache drives that outperform 32mb ones... because even though more cache is better, so is better spin rate, faster heads, faster processors, and lower amount of plates. It is better to just get benchmarks to see how the overall drive works rather then getting hung up on design decisions.

 

[Blain]

I find the 32MB "Black" version to be fantastic for a HTPC situation.
Because many times I'll be recording one show while watching another. The extra buffer really helps.
That's a lots of data being written onto and read off a HD at the same time.

 

[mentalcrisis00]

thanks for all the great feedback guys, I think it's probably time for me to get a 1TB drive so I can put all my videos, music, and pictures on 1 disc. Right now I'm running pictures off an external drive, videos from my 500GB, and music from my 120GB IDE. Would be nice consolidate everything.

 

[The Keeper]

I wonder why it has been so long since Western Digital released their VelociRaptors, there has not been any new 10k RPM products since then. Or hasn't VelociRaptors made WD any profit?

 

[alcoholbob]

The original Raptors have been around since 2003...the 300GB Velociraptor came out like 10 months ago.

 

[Blain]

Originally posted by: The Keeper
I wonder why it has been so long since Western Digital released their VelociRaptors, there has not been any new 10k RPM products since then. Or hasn't VelociRaptors made WD any profit?

With Seagate dropping dividend payments to shareholders, why would WD have to do anything but sit back and watch one of their biggest competitors squirm?
When a company does harm to their owners, times are tough. :roll: