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Are WD Raptor's worth the $$??

post #1 of 46
4/2/06 at 11:46pm
Thread Starter 
Hey Everyone, I am going to be upgrading my hard drive very soon and am wondering what everything thinks about the new WD 150gb Raptor?? Is it worth the extra $$ over a regular HD?? I really don't need more than 150gb of storage, so size of the HD is not really an issue. Is there much of a performance increase in going to a 10k rpm Raptor?? Thanks for your opinions everyone.
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post #2 of 46
4/3/06 at 12:00am
I got this one for the games and main drive. Everyone says it rocks!! I'll get it Tuesday
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16822144160
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post #3 of 46
4/3/06 at 1:40am
Raptors are worth every penny.
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post #4 of 46
4/3/06 at 2:11am
Absolutely every penny. 2 74's and 1 150 and counting.
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post #5 of 46
4/3/06 at 2:48am
yes, there is. Either do raid 0 or get a 10k Or better yet, raid 2 10k's
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post #6 of 46
4/3/06 at 3:06am
Thread Starter 
Someone told me that a single new 150 Raptor beats 2 74 Raptors in Raid 0, can anyone tell me if that is true??
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post #7 of 46
4/3/06 at 4:28am
Quote:
Originally Posted by blackpowder
Someone told me that a single new 150 Raptor beats 2 74 Raptors in Raid 0, can anyone tell me if that is true??
Not sure that's quite right, but they're receiving great reviews. This
may help you a bit in making your decision.
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post #8 of 46
4/3/06 at 7:37am
The honest answer is: How much is your money worth to you?
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post #9 of 46
4/3/06 at 4:26pm
Good Lord yes it is worth. Did a RAID 5 config with 4x74gb raptors and it flies.
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post #10 of 46
4/4/06 at 1:57am
Probably decent for a raid 5 setup, but generally raid5 is slower. Only decent perforamnce i ever seen with raid five is in our servers at work. But those are with 15k cheetahs. But of course it is large databases being hammered on the raid systems.
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post #11 of 46
4/4/06 at 1:49pm
i want SSD!!!! come on companies!!!
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post #12 of 46
4/4/06 at 7:52pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by Pharoke
Good Lord yes it is worth. Did a RAID 5 config with 4x74gb raptors and it flies.
Why?

RAID-5 performance is notoriously slow for writes, especially small writes, because of the CPU overhead that each write requires. The overhead is worse if the RAID-5 is software-based. Hardware-based RAID-5 is better, but still not as fast as RAID-1.
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post #13 of 46
4/4/06 at 8:01pm
Nope. They're too loud and expensive. Sold my stripe of 74's a while ago and haven't looked back.
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post #14 of 46
4/4/06 at 8:40pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by huskyfan23
Nope. They're too loud and expensive. Sold my stripe of 74's a while ago and haven't looked back.
Samsung makes the quietest drives IMO. They are called "Spinpoint".
I just installed a 7200RPM 80GB Spinpoint the other day in my parents computer and you can hardly hear it. On the other hand my 100GB WD 7200RPM drives sound like jet engines.
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post #15 of 46
4/4/06 at 9:38pm
I think it'll be unlikely that your raptors will ever really be louder than your CPU fan at max RPMs.

Regardless, they may be a bit loud / hott, (both can be solved with those 5$ hard-drive braces) but they are SUPER fast for their price. Comparable to most SCSI 10k drives, which are more expensive. They are at the 100% top of the SATA spectrum.

I plan to buy 4x150s this summer for some hott raid 0 action (Using a PCI-Express sata controller too :-) )
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post #16 of 46
4/4/06 at 11:58pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by ZGold550
I think it'll be unlikely that your raptors will ever really be louder than your CPU fan at max RPMs.
I know WD Raptors are louder than my 7200 rpm WD Caviar drives. And my Caviar drives are louder than my AMD64 stock CPU fan which runs at ~3200 RPM. Unless you have a Tt Volcano or some other ungoldy fast CPU fan you will notice the Raptors above everything else in the case. Raptors are not quiet. They give off a high pitched freqency that makes you feel kinda queasy.
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post #17 of 46
4/5/06 at 12:11am
Quote:
Originally Posted by Mobile_Hackbox
I know WD Raptors are louder than my 7200 rpm WD Caviar drives. And my Caviar drives are louder than my AMD64 stock CPU fan which runs at ~3200 RPM. Unless you have a Tt Volcano or some other ungoldy fast CPU fan you will notice the Raptors above everything else in the case. Raptors are not quiet. They give off a high pitched freqency that makes you feel kinda queasy.
Very true.

I replaced my 2 Raptors with 3 Hitachi drives. I paid what 1 Raptor cost me used and I noticed a performance increase
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post #18 of 46
4/5/06 at 1:09am
i have 2 74gb raptors running raid 0 and i know i will never go back to regular drive
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post #19 of 46
4/5/06 at 1:15am
There are many ways to deal with noise without giving up the performance a raptor gives you. However, I find that they are not noise inside a proper case.

However, there is an article here to give you an idea of what they do for games:

http://www.storagereview.com/article...500ADFD_5.html

From there you can decide if the cost and supposed "noise" are worth what they give to you. Do remember that hardrives are the slowest point in the performance of a pc. Swapping, loading large levels and more are all things that rely on that hardrive to deliver. There are VASTLY more people who have used raptors and will never touch another drive than those that have used them and left them. WD names this drive as one of the single largest successes in its history.

If still in doubt, and that's ok, give one a try from a reputable vendor with a reasonable return policy. I'm fairly confident once you've tried one you'll be very happy.
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post #20 of 46
4/5/06 at 1:19am
Putting a raptor in your system will increase load times. I am always the first person in a map of cod2 and half way to enemy spawn point before anyone else makes it in to the server. This gives me 2-3 frags usually before anyone else scores.
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