Raptors, worth buying?

[Hicks12]

Well novatech are selling the 36gb raptor for £34 and the 74GB raptor for £55 and then cex sell the 150gb for £52. Was wondering if its worth using one of these for a boot drive and if they offer better performance than say a 640gb AAKS?.

[kalniel]

Worth is a question only you can answer!

To you, is it worth giving up hundreds of gb of storage space for a few seconds off the boot time and load time of the applications you can squeeze onto the drive?

[Hicks12]

Hmm suppose that little difference probably isnt worth it .

[TooNice]

I am not one to bash a Raptor but it's hard to argue against this.

[GheeTsar]

They are noisy beasts too. I've got a Raptor and while quick, it's not so much quicker than my 1Tb Caviar Black that I'd consider replacing it with another if it breaks. My current plan is to buy a Vertex SSD early next year as a boot drive, with games installed on the Raptor and all other files on the Caviar!

[Grymdawg]

Theyre worth it but like Gheetsar said, theyre noisey

I have one for my OS drive and i am glad i made the purchase.

[aidanjt]

I am not one to bash a Raptor but it's hard to argue against this.

Not that hard. Comparing 2nd gen raptors to current gen ultra high density drives is guaranteed to skew results in the latter's favour.

[kalniel]

Not that hard. Comparing 2nd gen raptors to current gen ultra high density drives is guaranteed to skew results in the latter's favour.

That's what the OP is asking about though, isn't it?

[gamesaregood]

I think that your prob better off with a single platter samsung F1 or Seagate 7200.12 or saving / waiting for an SSD

[aidanjt]

That's what the OP is asking about though, isn't it?

He didn't specify. But judging from the price he might be. Unless cex struck a stonkingly good deal with WD.

Speaking of which, to the OP, if you do intend on getting a raptor at all, get a current generation 'Velociraptor' drive to make it worth your while. The 300GB disk offers the best £:GB ratio, and performs better than it's 150GB little brother. It's a good deal more money than you're looking at right now, but if you have plenty of apps keeping your HDD busy, it's worth it.

If £160-odd is too much for you, then stick with a large capacity WD Black, or a Samsung F1, which will do almost as good a job with common work loads.

[Sputnik]

I used to have 2x74Gb Raptors (early ones) in a striped array and now use a single WD 250Gb as a boot drive and in real terms there is nothing in it time wise.

If you going to buy an old type Raptor, Don't the new high density drives are almost as fast.

[TooNice]

Not that hard. Comparing 2nd gen raptors to current gen ultra high density drives is guaranteed to skew results in the latter's favour.

The WD1500ADFD is 3rd gen, not 2nd Gen. I assumed the better even though the 74GB Raptor in 2nd and 3rd Gen form. Only the Velociraptor more up to date, and and those do not come in 74GB format, so I doubt it's what he saw on CEX (plus, it would've been called 'Velociraptor' - I've never seen that drive referred to just a Raptor).

[Hicks12]

Nah the one at cex (website) is just listed as 10k drives. Didnt know they were that old in terms of their generation but kinda expected it from the price, i think ill just get a 1tb storage and wait for SSD to come down in price.

[sammorris]

The 37GB drives are damn ancient. They still have excellent response times, but poor MB/s compared to today's 32MB cache 7200s. Loading an OS like XP is still in the Raptor's favour a bit. For a big bloated OS like Vista, there's not so much difference, you'd need a velociraptor to see the benefit.