Standard 7200rpm vs Raptor - is it really worth it for RAID?

[Robbie G]

Wherever I look (on another forum) I find people saying that the Raptors are noisy, expensive, and not even that much faster.

Is there anyone out there that has gone from 7200rpm to the 10000rpm variants and thought "Oh yes, that was really worth my money". Considering how very cheap the 7200 drives are per Gb there would have to be one hell of a speed boost - is there?

[aidanjt]

Raptors are faster, especially with access times, in RAID arrays they become ridiculously fast. It really depends on what you want, if you need capacity, obviously 7,200rpm drives are your only option without filling a room with NAS boxes, if you need raw performance, Raptors are what you need. As for the noise, I never notice my pair unless I'm doing heavily sustained I/O over multiple files (with rapid seeks), and that's assuming I'm not listening to music/playing games/headphones/etc.

[doddsy]

I went from 2x200gb samsung spinpoints Raid 0 to 2x74gb raptors raid 0 and although it wasn't a huge boost, I was happy with it.

[chuckskull]

I'd max out the rest of your system first. If you still have money left, it's worth it. If you are going for RAID0. Don't bother getting the big expensive 150gig versions, just get 2 36gig drives and a large 7200rpm drive for storage.

People usually feel let down, because they expect to much. All RAID0 allows is more data to come of the HD at a higher speed, so the only things that will noticeably improve is loading times. Be it OS, game, whatever. It wont magically make your PC twice as fast.

[this_is_gav]

Yeah, if it's just for general system use, then don't bother - spend the money elsewhere. If you do a lot of work with the hard drives (loading large maps in games, editing uncompressed video and so on), then you'll notice a very measurable increase in speed.

In general use it's not noticeable until you go away and use another system without Raptors. They're really not that noisy though, in my experience. The seeks can be loud, though I only notice mine if I'm downstairs in the kitchen, under my PC when it's loading. Can be rather loud at night.

It's all dependant on use.