WD raptor WD1500AHFD $174.99 @the Egg

[FireChicken]

Linkey

I have one and I love it. You do notice a difference. A tiny bit loud though.

 

[sanzen07]

Sweet! I've been wanting to pick up another one of these. The performance of the drive more than makes up for the loudness.

 

[KenAF]

Be aware that a Raptor 320 based on Western Digital's new 320Gb platter design is coming in the first half of this year. Expect it to improve performance by 20% or more.

I do wish I had picked up a Raptor 150 back when Best Buy had them for $130 last fall.

 

[rivan]

I got one recently, and it's very nice. A little noisy, but I like the aggressive grind - makes me remember the days I had a top-o-the-line SCSI system.

 

[dajeepster]

Originally posted by: KenAF
Be aware that a Raptor 320 based on Western Digital's new 320Gb platter design is coming in the first half of this year. Expect it to improve performance by 20% or more.

Do you have a link for this?
I could always wait on my next build for these to come out. I currently have 4-36Gb (8mb cache), 2-74Gb (8mb cache), 2-74Gb(16mb cache), and 6-150Gb (16mb cache) along with 2 RaptorXs.
All run in raid0 (edited to add this line)


will the new ones have 32mb of cache?

 

[DannyLove]

I ordered this last week for $169.99, i guess they upped it.
So far, I'm enjoying it, its substancially fast, very noisy in sound, but call me crazy, i like that HD searching noise.

 

[Odeen]

Originally posted by: DannyLove
I ordered this last week for $169.99, i guess they upped it.
So far, I'm enjoying it, its substancially fast, very noisy in sound, but call me crazy, i like that HD searching noise.

Call me old-fashioned, but I'm the same way. I like my hard drives inaudible at idle, and distinctly audible when they're working.

Maybe it's just because I want to hear that inevitable virus start to erase my hard drive, and I want to turn the computer off in time

 

[chizow]

Originally posted by: Odeen

Originally posted by: DannyLove
I ordered this last week for $169.99, i guess they upped it.
So far, I'm enjoying it, its substancially fast, very noisy in sound, but call me crazy, i like that HD searching noise.

Call me old-fashioned, but I'm the same way. I like my hard drives inaudible at idle, and distinctly audible when they're working.

Maybe it's just because I want to hear that inevitable virus start to erase my hard drive, and I want to turn the computer off in time

I felt that way at first, but after upgrading to Vista the constant grind started driving me crazy. Between SuperFetch's precaching and constant defrag/system maintenance, the HDD constantly grinding was simply too much to bear. Also, the older Raptor X I got from Newegg was substantially louder than the retail one I bought from BB a month later. Ended up RMA'ing the louder Newegg one and received a normal Raptor which was quieter than even the retail one. Lately I've been having storage problems as well, as games nowadays are @10GB each.

 

[sanzen07]

I do actually kind of like the grinding sound as well.

 

[waxking1]

ChiefValue could be a better deal for some, i guess it depends on sales tax. In my state NE & CV charge tax. Same price but with a $7 off code. Code is on CV website and is good until Feb 8 (CPFBSDETA16). I tried to link it but it didn't work, just go to ChiefValue and search for Raptor X. I just bought the standard Raptor 150 last week for almost the same price. No big deal for me as I could care less for the glass.

 

[bunnyfubbles]

These were great when they were new, but you can get comparable performing 750GB drives for the same price, plus the fact you get 5x the storage capacity...

These Raptors are old enough that new 7200RPM technology has swept them in just about every performance category.

 

[bznotins]

Originally posted by: bunnyfubblesThese Raptors are old enough that new 7200RPM technology has swept them in just about every performance category.

Link to non-synthetic benchmark? I know some drives were getting close but the 150 still got the crown...

 

[Tegeril]

150 is still on top. That said, this is not a hot deal at all. They can nearly always be found at this price.

 

[bunnyfubbles]

Originally posted by: Tegeril
150 is still on top. That said, this is not a hot deal at all. They can nearly always be found at this price.

no it isn't, not unless you're using it as a cheap server drive for highly random, non-localized access by multiple users...

"for those with money to burn and nothing left to upgrade" you're better off buying the much larger density drives that offer similar/faster performance and also have the benefit of much larger capacity and still have much better price/GB ratio despite having a higher price tag.

 

[chizow]

Originally posted by: bunnyfubbles

Originally posted by: Tegeril
150 is still on top. That said, this is not a hot deal at all. They can nearly always be found at this price.

no it isn't, not unless you're using it as a cheap server drive for highly random, non-localized access by multiple users...

"for those with money to burn and nothing left to upgrade" you're better off buying the much larger density drives that offer similar/faster performance and also have the benefit of much larger capacity and still have much better price/GB ratio despite having a higher price tag.

The 750GB parts still fall short but are very close to the 150GB. The 1GB Hitachi beats the Raptor though with STR and burst speeds. But ya other than that the Raptor only really excels over larger 7200RPM drives with random access speeds and high I/O apps. For practical usage you might see some benefit of having your page file and OS on a Raptor and some games that are I/O heavy (most benefit from STR and sequential reads the most if you have sufficient memory to avoid paging). But ya the 150GB limitation of current Raptors is increasingly insufficient given the storage demands of current HD content and games.

 

[nc10]

Originally posted by: bznotins
Link to non-synthetic benchmark? I know some drives were getting close but the 150 still got the crown...

I can share my very non- professional read performance data points. I recently ran some times comparing the Raptor X and the WD 750GB Caviar SE 16 (uses PMR tech) for a review posted on Epinions. MB was an Abit IP35 Pro, running win vista ultimate.

Last year, when BB had the Raptor X for ~160, I bought it and installed Win Vista Ultimate on it. Recently bought a WD 750GB Caviar SE 16 from Newegg ($150).

Used Acronis True Image to copy the Raptor X to the WD 750 GB drive, then copied the data from the WD 750GB drive back to the Raptor, to make sure everything was as identical as I could make it. Alternately installed each in the PC and then compared a few times. I only have 30 gb worth of stuff installed on the Raptor so far.

1. Compared boot times. Turned PC off, rebooted, timed how long it was before the Windows Sidebar loaded. Repeated 9 times. Took the average of the last 5 for each drive.
Raptor X: 65 seconds
WD 750Gb: 57 seconds

2. Have Norton Internet Security installed on both. Ran an AV scan on each.
Raptor X: 23 minutes
WD 750Gb: 19 minutes

3. Also turned on Windows Defender and let it run spyware scans on each.
Raptor X: 33 minutes
WD 750Gb: 34.75 minutes

HD Tach (Synthetic Read Speed test) Results:

Operating System: Windows Vista Ultimate
CPU: Intel Q6600 Core2 Quad

................................Raptor X????? ?? WD 750 GB
Burst Speed................122 MB/sec...........185 MB/sec.
Random Access........... 8.6 ms..................13.8 ms?
Average read speed.......77 Mb/s.............. 77.5 MB/s
Max/min read speed.......89/58 Mb/s..........90/50 Mb/sec

I'd expect the Raptor to show a little better in write tests, based on other reviews I've read, but if I was making a buying decision today, I'd certainly buy the WD 750Gb drive.

 

[FireChicken]

so each HD is EXACTLY the same with each having the same number of applications loaded and each having the same number of applications in the taskbar and each HD having the same number of files on them??

 

[KenAF]

Originally posted by: nc10
1. Compared boot times. Turned PC off, rebooted, timed how long it was before the Windows Sidebar loaded. Repeated 9 times. Took the average of the last 5 for each drive.
Raptor X: 65 seconds
WD 750Gb: 57 seconds

2. Have Norton Internet Security installed on both. Ran an AV scan on each.
Raptor X: 23 minutes
WD 750Gb: 19 minutes

3. Also turned on Windows Defender and let it run spyware scans on each.
Raptor X: 33 minutes
WD 750Gb: 34.75 minutes

HD Tach (Synthetic Read Speed test) Results:

Operating System: Windows Vista Ultimate
CPU: Intel Q6600 Core2 Quad

................................Raptor X????? ?? WD 750 GB
Burst Speed................122 MB/sec...........185 MB/sec.
Random Access........... 8.6 ms..................13.8 ms?
Average read speed.......77 Mb/s.............. 77.5 MB/s
Max/min read speed.......89/58 Mb/s..........90/50 Mb/sec

I'd expect the Raptor to show a little better in write tests, based on other reviews I've read, but if I was making a buying decision today, I'd certainly buy the WD 750Gb drive.

Nice tests.

Western Digital just put the new WD6400AAKS on their web site. This drive uses their new 320Gb platters. The denser platters increases the average read speed in HD Tach from 77.5 MB/s to around 95 MB/s.

I expect this to become the new enthusiast drive of choice, at least until the Raptor 320/640 is available.

 

[DannyLove]

I've had this HD for about a week now and with Vista Ultimate. The HD grind noise is more frequent then normal. And I'm now encountering a problem where I can hear it stop, it does this noise, not a beep but a low freq thud noise and at times it stalls. It sounds as if its rebooting but not really. Anyone have any similar issue?

Its more noticable when I play games. Least with BF2, it lagged on me and I know its the HD as it made that particular sound and you can hear it come back on like a jet haha.

Temps are fine too. Oh well. still a great HD, probably just Vista, or BF2+Vista

 

[nc10]

Originally posted by: FireChicken
so each HD is EXACTLY the same with each having the same number of applications loaded and each having the same number of applications in the taskbar and each HD having the same number of files on them??

Yes, that was certainly the intent.

Acronis True Image does what Ghost does only better, makes a complete image copy of a drive. I imaged the Raptor to the 750Gb drive, then imaged the 750gb drive back to the Raptor, just to be sure. The total data size on the two drives didn't match perfectly, but they were very very close. I imagine as soon as you turn on a PC, some cache files and other system stuff changes a little, so the match wasn't absolutely 100% perfect.

 

[El Norm]

Originally posted by: nc10

Originally posted by: FireChicken
so each HD is EXACTLY the same with each having the same number of applications loaded and each having the same number of applications in the taskbar and each HD having the same number of files on them??

Yes, that was certainly the intent.

Acronis True Image does what Ghost does only better, makes a complete image copy of a drive. I imaged the Raptor to the 750Gb drive, then imaged the 750gb drive back to the Raptor, just to be sure. The total data size on the two drives didn't match perfectly, but they were very very close. I imagine as soon as you turn on a PC, some cache files and other system stuff changes a little, so the match wasn't absolutely 100% perfect.

I gotta agree and you even proved it, but got a couple of the new maxtor (seagate) 500 gigs that use the perpendicular write method and they have been extremely fast. I also have wo raptor X's raided in my gaming rig and they don't strike me as fast as i expected. Although i do almost always own people on load time lol (but i suspect that it has to do more with the raid then the drives alone).

in fact I had a friend who was building a pc recently and i told him to go with the 500gig maxtor or seagate but he insisted on the raptor which he paid almost double for...