WD74GB Raptor not worth the money?

[Promethply]

The WD74Raptor makes a good sense as a boot drive unless you're on a very tight budget, as it is probably the most nimble sata drive currently.

But you wouldn't notice much difference compared to other current SATA drives, such as the Maxtor maxline or the Seagate 7200.8 when transferring very large files.

 

[Michaelbgrant]

Two raptors in raid 0 is a total waste (focus on access times cause it's almost all that matters). One raptor is great for the price. A 15K Cheetah is pure luxury. Think about it this way, in two years from now as it was two years ago, drive performance just doesn't change. With that in mind, you can blow money on sound, case, hard drive, etc. cause you don't need to change it nearly as often. My system is pretty well thought through although I would get the MSI board now that it's out and perhaps that new 24"Samsung LCD =)

 

[imported_oralpain]

Originally posted by: Melchior
The slowest part of EVERY COMPUTER is a Hardrive. If you have the money, yes of course its worth it. Its definately not a waste of money when you consider the performance benefits for everyday usage. You can always "upgrade" your other components. but a Raptor may last you well... for far longer than we'd like to do wait for 15k SATA drivers.

I used to own a pair of RAID 0 (used with 3 different raid controlers) 36.7GB raptors. The performance difference in everyday use compaired to a single 2 meg cache, PATA/100, 7,200 rpm, 7k250 deskstar was nearly non-exisitant.

A single 74GB raptor is faster than a 36GB one, but not two 36GB ones in a raid 0.

Raptors are a waste of money except in a few very specific cases. Recent 7,200 rpm drives are VERY close in overall speed and have about 3-4 times the space per dollar.

Much higher platter densities, larger diameter platters, NCQ, ect, more than close the gap between new 7,200 drives and raptors in everything besides access time.

 

[gsellis]

Making up a number for arguments sake. For those that don't read well and will argue later, I will say it again... I MADE UP THE NUMBER... 😉

Say that a Raptor might improve your performance by (***WARNING*** This is a number used for an example and may have no real relation to reality) 4 (the made up number) percent. Is a 4% (see previous notes) worth it to you? Total cost is cost plus wage*time. So, if you make $4 an hour and a Raptor costs (using Newegg prices) $2.38 per gig while a WD 200GB SATA costs $1.12 / GB. To get 200GB of space with Raptors, it would cost $476. A WD 200GB SATA costs $179 (including the 99 cent shipping until April 4). The difference is $297. At $4/hr, that would take 74 hours + of work to make the difference. If you use the computer for 200 hours time .04, equals 8 hours. 8 hours is not 74 hours, so totally not worth it (Yes, just a rough comparison).

Fark, spent too much time on this anyway... Is a small performance gain worth the price? You have to decide. It was for me, but that is because my computer makes money. It could be argued that 15k SCSI-320s are even a better deal in my case, but I am not the federal government and can not pass a law to allow myself to spend more than I have. 😉 The ultimate decisions is yours and the best we can do is reduce your dissonace over the decision. But, it will give you a bigger e-Peni, so that might influence your choice too (but some will laugh at such over-compenstations behind your back - at Anandtech, they will do it to your face.)

😀

Edit - Did I mention that I made up the 4% number? 😛

 

[Promethply]

Totally agree -- its really up to the person to decide really...

We can also say whether it is worth spending much more money on CAS 2.0 DDR using the popular Samsung TCCD or Winbond CH5 chips over some value DDR RAMs.

The only difference in this case is that current generation 7200rpm SATA drives comes in larger platter densities and larger total capacities, since it would be much harder to produce 10krpm drives utilising high density platters.

 

[imported_michaelpatrick33]

Heck, some people simply like getting a faster hard-drive for different reasons. I don't understand this propensity toward denigrating those who spend some extra money on something they want (even if it is considered a waste of money). Some people will spend no more than 200 dollars for a tv while some people spend 5000 or more for a it. Its all relative. Both tvs give you a picture but the 5000 dollars tv (potentially) gives you a better experience (as well as the store and manufacturer you bought it from, lol).

I personally use the Raptor as a boot drive and I am happy enough with it. Would I put four raptors in my system for XP Raid and Linux Raid. UH, no. Is the Raptor a great storage drive, in my opinion, if you have large files, obviously no.

 

[l Xes l]

aint worth it.. rather invest more in other components... ram, gpu, or cpu..