WD Hard drive help

[Hitch Itch]

I have 2, I7-920 rigs, both are identical except for the hard drives

One has the WD raptor WD1500ADFD 150 gig and the other is
WD Black WD6401AALS 640 gig

The 640 gig black hd is getting 88mb/sec speed but my 150 gig raptor is only geting 52mb/sec speed.

it has always been my understanding that the Raptor hard drives are the Fastest hd's
Both hd's have write-caching enabled
Does it have anything to do with the fact that the raptor drive has 98 gigs of free space and the black 640 gig hd has 556 gigs free

What gives here?
tx
Ken

 

[Billb2]

Change the drives to the other box and see what happens.

 

[Elixer]

Just how are you testing the speed of the drives anyway?
The WD Black WD640 also packs the drive data more tightly than the raptor, however, the raptor will still win some speed tests, like seek time and what not.

 

[Hitch Itch]

Those speeds were from pc pit stop overdrive full test

I just put in HD Tune here is a link to the results, HD tune showed better for my raptor Im testing the black drive now and will post those results

http://farm4.static.flickr.com...73261_768250a0fd_b.jpg

 

[Hitch Itch]

Ok here are the results for the black
http://farm4.static.flickr.com...19365_ae849f4b47_b.jpg

pc pit stop i would assume to be worthless?

using the latest hd tune:
640 gig black
29.7mb/sec minimum
63.2 mb/sec maxium
51.1 mb/sec average
access time 13.9ms
burst rate 160.3 mb/sec
cpu usage 3.5%

150 gig raptor hd
45.6 minimum
84.8 maximum
73.4 average
access time 8.5ms
burst rate 109.7 mb/sec
cpu usage 1.3%


raptors min/max/avg showed better in hd tune but the black had a higher burst rate and higher cpu usage, why did the black have higher cpu usage? and how important is that burst rate?

I would assume that hd tune is a more respectable program the pc pit stop,

thoughts?
tx
Ken

 

[Elixer]

Yes, pc pitstop is worthless. Same goes for most other online testing sites.

 

[BlueAcolyte]

See, the Raptor has a much lower access time and higher read speed, so it will seem faster to you.

 

[Hitch Itch]

I want the best gaming performance, If it means dumping the raptor for another hard drive then so be it, I read from toms hardware that the new velcoraptor is the gaming king hands down, Any thoughts on that?

ken

 

[BonzaiDuck]

Originally posted by: Hitch Itch
I want the best gaming performance, If it means dumping the raptor for another hard drive then so be it, I read from toms hardware that the new velcoraptor is the gaming king hands down, Any thoughts on that?

ken

Looking a little closer (someone can correct me, though . . . ) -- you're comparing an SATA-150 Raptor to the WD Caviar Black? Even given that some tests will show the edge for the Raptor, I'd pick the WD CB over it. As I recall, the older Raptors gave sustained throughput benchies around 72 MB/s. A newer-gen SATA2 Seagate 7200.10 shows about 68 MB/s. The Caviar Black would do much better than either the Seagate or the Raptor.

Access time may be more important for loading programs, and you'll get minimum access time in milliseconds with the Veloci-Raptor. Sustained throughput is more important for video work.

You will pay for the (SATA2) Veloci-Raptor's performance, in both dollars, available capacity, and a need to mitigate drive-generated heat.

If you buy one of them, you might match the performance at lower cost and higher capacity with a RAID0 of two Caviar Blacks. If you want performance at all costs, just sink up to $700 or $800 into buying three or four Veloci-Raptors, and gang them together as RAID0.

Four years ago, I tipped a friend to the first-gen Raptors, and he purchased two of them under a considerable volatile impulse at the Egg. Today, under the strain of fixed retirement income and the long comet-tail of the Bush economy, he regrets it.

But if you have money to burn -- I'll loan you a propane lighter . . . if you don't spend the bucks first. . . .

 

[Hitch Itch]

Not looking to waste money, thats one reason Im trying to figure out If getting another black ed to replace the raptor will be worth it, Will i see a diff on the comp or just the differance out of my pocket

 

[novasatori]

you want lower seek for gaming, it helps the loading

that would be the raptor

 

[taltamir]

the new gen 640GB drives are much faster than the raptors, the raptors WERE the fastest drives on the market, YEARS ago. Today the fastest spindle drives (not SSD) are the veloci-raptors. With the F1 and the 7200.11 and several mainstream WD drives like the 640GB black and blue outperforming the old raptors.

although the raptors should still have better access time (compared to modern regular drives, the velociraptors are obviously much faster), which might help with specific applications.

 

[Itchrelief]

Your maximums for the black seems a little low. Mine maxes at over 100MB/sec. Do you have your block size set very small? I can get my drive to max at under 10MB/sec if I set it to 512bytes.

edit: uh, your picture seems to indicate it's a Hitachi drive?

 

[BonzaiDuck]

Originally posted by: taltamir
the new gen 640GB drives are much faster than the raptors, the raptors WERE the fastest drives on the market, YEARS ago. Today the fastest spindle drives (not SSD) are the veloci-raptors. With the F1 and the 7200.11 and several mainstream WD drives like the 640GB black and blue outperforming the old raptors.

although the raptors should still have better access time (compared to modern regular drives, the velociraptors are obviously much faster), which might help with specific applications.

Ditto, that . . . too.

The Black Caviars -- as far as I can see -- outdo SATA2 Seagate 7200.10's. They seem to be more reliable, per "customer-reviews" -- although some argue that the latter are to be taken with "a grain of salt."

Tonight, I ran HD Tach against a 7200.10 Seagate 320GB I used to replace an old SATA-150 that "went south." There is an HD Tach feature that allows comparing to benchtests of other drives. The 7200.10 pretty much blew away the old SATA-150 Raptor.

Per the matter of seek-time on games: Maybe the reduced access time of Veloci-Raptors will allow loading programs faster, and the VR's are definitely the fastest on the market. On the other hand, the amount of memory you use, and things like L2 cache, are going to make access to program files less bound by the disk bottleneck.

LA Times today featured an op-ed on a presidential appointee who advocates "cost-benefit analysis" for choosing regulatory options and public-spending choices or projects.

I think you need to look at hard-disk selection the same way. The VR's have limited capacity, so you lose something there (fewer GB's per buck spent.) You should then look at the price differential against the performance boost. "Are the extra bucks worth the performance gain? Or how many extra dollars will it cost per millisecond of access-time, or MB/sec in sustained throughput?" The more money you have, and the more dedicated you are to being an "Xtreme Hot-Dawg" at all costs, will push you toward the VR at the margin.

 

[Hitch Itch]

Originally posted by: Itchrelief
Your maximums for the black seems a little low. Mine maxes at over 100MB/sec. Do you have your block size set very small? I can get my drive to max at under 10MB/sec if I set it to 512bytes.

edit: uh, your picture seems to indicate it's a Hitachi drive?

sry posted the wrong pic/link

here is the 640 black drive
http://farm4.static.flickr.com...98772_3d0a078fa7_b.jpg

 

[Hitch Itch]

Maybe Ill buy 2- 640 blacks ($79.00/ea newegg) and put them in raid, Although I know Absolutely nothing about RAID