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WD raptor 74G or SATA II / NCQ HD?

D

DaveDM

Junior Member
Hi,

I am planning my new system and am wondering whether I should go for a WD Raptor 74G or a SATA II with NCQ hard drive (planning to get the new nForce 4 Gigabyte MOBO as soon as it comes out, so yes, it supports SATA II / NCQ). Performance is the only consideration (fast boot, fast read / write, ...), regardless of price and capacity. I know ICQ's benefits will really show only when software is updated to take advantage of it, but at the moment and in the near future, which would be most performant?

Regards,
Dave
 
The NCQ wont be doing anything special for you just yet, but SATA is much nicer than your typical ATA drives. They are hot swappable, the are the new standard, and the cables are tiny.

I would also recommend NOT getting a Western Digital. I've had bad luck with them, and the raptors are NOISEY.

Seagate is what I have found to be the most reliable, and relatively quiet drives out there. Not to mention their 5 year warranty even on OEM drives.

Something like this will do you good:
http://www.newegg.com/app/view...=22-148-033&depa=1

$40 cheaper, and 200gigs. Good for storage drive. Can get a smaller one for your OS / Games with two partitions also:
http://www.newegg.com/app/View...=22-148-019&depa=1
 
I would get the Raptor, they aren't that loud, and the 74GB Raptors do have NCQ built in. You will also see the most immediate speed boost from the Raptors 10K rotational speed.
 
Originally posted by: gate1975mlm
I do not think the 74GB Raptors have NCQ built in!
Click to expand...

They do, but it's actually slower in most cases with it turned on. Most controllers these days don't support it, so you don't have to worry anyway.
 
OK, yes they do have NCQ, and the next Gigabyte MOBO's controllers DO support it. I also know that the benefits are minimal at the moment with the current software (need optimisations for support to NCQ).

Apparently, same goes for the rest of the SATA II features like HotPlug, Staggered Pin Up and asynchronous signal recovery.

So, as jdogg77 was saying above, the most immediate improvement I would see from a HD is its rotational speed, and as such the Raptor seems to be the right choice. I think I'll go for it, get one of these to install my OS's and programs and use a larger, smaller drive to store documents, downloads, etc


 
oops! didn't know it was different. That wasn't very clear on WD website, they were just speaking of "command queuing". Wrongly assumed it was the same as NCQ.
 
Originally posted by: DaveDM
oops! didn't know it was different. That wasn't very clear on WD website, they were just speaking of "command queuing". Wrongly assumed it was the same as NCQ.
Click to expand...

Made the same mistake myself!
 
I was considering buying a WD Raptor 74GB HD until I stumbled across a deal for $25 80GB WD Caviar HDs. Gonna get two, put it in RAID and only be slightly slower and much quieter than the Raptor for about 1/4 of the cost. Big downside is that they are IDE vs. SATA, but I'm way over my budget for my computer right now, so I have to cut costs everywhere.
 
I have the raptor, and I like it immensly. As far as noise, it isn't any louder than my Seagate 200GB HD. The speed improvement is negligible with small files, but for gaming it is very noticeable.
 
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