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Thread: Hard drive choice, confused :-) Advice needed!

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    Hard drive choice, confused :-) Advice needed!

    Thought I'd post this seperately to my 'new build' thread... I was going to go for a Velociraptor to use as a system drive and also as a scratch drive for CS3... my reasoning being that it's the fastest drive out there, so it has to make a difference right??? Apparently not...

    Hermeticist kindly posted a link to a review of the VelociRaptor vs a tonne of other drives: http://www.techreport.com/articles.x/14583/1

    Now, I don't understand a lot of this (I ain't an IT person, just an interested amateur!), but it certainly appears that spending £185 on the VelociRaptor is probably not going to get me that much of a noticable gain in performance? Is this the conclusion I should draw?

    So what should I do? I want my new PC to boot Vista quickly, load programs quickly, load my large image files quickly... in short, I want it to be QUICK!! What hard drive setup do you all suggest I should I go for??

    I'll be honest and admit that my VelociRaptor choice is not just about performance, but also about ego (wanting the best, hang the expense... epeen and all that ) But I am realistic, I won't just spend cash for no real performance gain, honestly!

    Thanks very much for all your advice, I really do appreciate it

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    Re: Hard drive choice, confused :-) Advice needed!

    the best feature of the raptors/velociraptors is the access time, this means that laoding up a game etc will be quicker. if you're doing video editing it does make a difference, but there are many drives out that are close to the performance of a velociraptor but offer better value for money. these drives have never really been about the best value drives, they're made for people who want the best no matter what.

    my raptor costs more than my 1tb samsung, but isn't much faster overall. i suppose i'm like you in respect of the epeen comment if you can afford and want it then i say buy it!

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    Re: Hard drive choice, confused :-) Advice needed!

    Disk performance is all about trade-offs. You just need to decide whats the most important to you and then you can compromise in the other areas.

    Personally, unless you have a lot of money to spend and need the absolute best, I think the VelociRaptors are really over-priced for what you are gaining.

    Do you have a budget? Do you have an idea of what storage space you want/need?

    For the vast majority of people, one of the new 750GB/1TB drives will perform more then adequately.
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    Re: Hard drive choice, confused :-) Advice needed!

    Well, im not that much of an expert, but Id suggest having alook at the Samsung Spinpoint F1's, the larger drives have some very fast access times I *believe*, especially the larger terrabyte model. I could be wrong here though.

    Still regardless or not if what I have just stated is correct, RAID has the be the way to go. If your not bothered about fault tollerance, RAID 0 is what you want, you can do it with 2 drives (I think), this will surely be faster than a single disk.

    Sorry I Couldnt be of more help, hope my advice is correct

    Wills

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    Re: Hard drive choice, confused :-) Advice needed!

    RAID will be better, but the chances of failure are doubled.... the name raid itself, if you take the lsat two letters, is all about 'inexpensive disks' ie. turning the performance of 2 lesser drives to match more expensive ones.

    access times are still dominated by the raptors, the velociraptors are even quicker than the original raptors....

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    Re: Hard drive choice, confused :-) Advice needed!

    Quote Originally Posted by shaithis View Post
    Do you have a budget? Do you have an idea of what storage space you want/need?
    Well, I'm fine to spend the £185 for a VelociRaptor, it's just that I'm wondering if I'm going to see an appreciable performance difference for the large amount of extra cash... I mean, I'm not going to notice a few seconds quicker (especially if I've never experienced the quicker performance in the first place ) 10-20+ seconds better, well than I'm happy to pay the cash for that...

    Storage wise... I currently have a laptop with 150GB hard drive, plus an external 250GB drive... the laptop drive just has system files and programs on it, it's about half full... the 250GB drive is where I store all my images, it's almost full.

    I do want to start playing around with video etc, so the more storage I have the better really

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    Re: Hard drive choice, confused :-) Advice needed!

    well it should be definitely a lot quicker than your laptop's hdd, but noticeable quicker than one of the new 750gb/1tb drives is asking a bit too much esp. at 10-20 secs faster! messing around with adobe premier will see a benefit with the raptors, but other than that a less than 10 secs less on loading times for games there isn't much more you'll see in terms of benefit over a normal hdd. apart from the huge epeen

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    Re: Hard drive choice, confused :-) Advice needed!

    I wonder if the extra cash I'm spending on the raptor would be better spent on a Q9450? Which would give a more appreciable performance boost?

    Or put towards watercooling the Q6600...

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    Re: Hard drive choice, confused :-) Advice needed!

    I don't think the Q9450 is worth the premium tbh. You already justified the velociraptor for image processing which it a decent enough reason I think. Never done that myself but I beleive other people have justified them for this reason and video editting etc..

    I presonally wouldn't get one but I have no use for super fast drives.

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    Re: Hard drive choice, confused :-) Advice needed!

    If you want to play with video (especially if its High Def), then stay away from the raptors or buy a raptor as a system disk and get a 7200rpm high capacity drive for your other files. The price per MB is a tad exuberant for storing video, unless its your job

    A good trade-off may be to buy one of the new Western Digital Caviar Black drives (1TB). Not a lot of people seem to have them in stock yet though.
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    Re: Hard drive choice, confused :-) Advice needed!

    That was my original plan... 300GB VelociRaptor combined with a 750MB Caviar Black.

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    Re: Hard drive choice, confused :-) Advice needed!

    Quote Originally Posted by staffsMike View Post
    You already justified the velociraptor for image processing which it a decent enough reason I think.
    That's just the thing though, looking at that review it doesn't seem that the Raptor will give me any appreciable difference in photoediting (http://www.techreport.com/articles.x/14583/5)...

    If I don't go for a Raptor, what's the best hard drive solution I should go for?

    thanks all

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    Re: Hard drive choice, confused :-) Advice needed!

    I'd be looking at 640GB AAKS or the 750GB Black's as you have already mentioned. Speed has never really been my main concern in drives though so my opinion probably counts less in that respect

    low noise and reliablity is what I go for and I havn't been let down yet

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    Re: Hard drive choice, confused :-) Advice needed!

    The Samsung F1 & WD640AAKS are consistently the fastest 7200rpm drives. This seems to be mostly because of their high density platters (both using 320/330GB per platter). I`ve not seen a review of the WD black edition yet (not sure how many platters these use?). There have been reports of reliability issues with the F1 (not sure if these have been confirmed). I personally would go with the WD640AAKS, which are around £56 from Scan. But that`s not to say that the VelociRaptor isn`t very nice & that was only one review..........

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    Re: Hard drive choice, confused :-) Advice needed!

    The WD Blacks have 3 platters on the 1TB model. So they use the 330GB platters.

    They have a few other enhancements though.
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    Re: Hard drive choice, confused :-) Advice needed!

    One thing that's bothering me with the 640AAKS... I remember reading somewhere that there are two models with the same serial number (the old SE16 & the new faster 2-platter version)? Is this still the case?

    If I buy this hard drive: http://www.scan.co.uk/Product.aspx?WebProductId=798906 will it be the fast SE16, 2-platter drive?

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