Is the Samsung F1 still the drive of choice?

[Shooty*]

I'm trying very very hard not to buy an F2 eco 1.5tb at the moment, and wait till Xmas.

it's a backup for my server, and my DVD VIDEO_TS backups. If I lose them... it doesn't bear thinking about. It would be backing up a couple of F1 1tb drives (not full yet).

Must wait till christmas... must wait till christmas...

For the record: Sammys all the way for me. I've got a 74gb raptor as my main c drive, have had for about 4 - 5 years now, and it's starting to grind when the computer gets busy.

Which freaks me out, as surely it should be the CPU that takes the brunt? it's all very confusing.

[aidanjt]

That's the wrong way around - mechanical drives get jammed up with many parrallel disk operations, SSDs on the other hand can cope with many more I/Os at multiple depths.

See JMicron-based SSDs for a shining example of SSDs choking hard under non-trivial loads.

[badass]

See JMicron-based SSDs for a shining example of SSDs choking hard under non-trivial loads.

Straw man argument. Find me a Samsung/Indilinx/Intel based SSD that chokes under less load than a velociraptor.

[TooNice]

I think that Raptors are great drives and I think that in the past, people have been talking about their obsolescence prematurely. But while it's still kicking (if only due to the high cost of SSD), I do think that the people who repeatedly claim obsolescence will get it right.

And I do think that it is SSD that will do it. I think that those drives are largely aimed at enthusiasts looking for a fast response OS. They do not need a huge capacity for that purpose, meaning that a larger (Veloci)Raptor may not be that interesting, and they expect to pay a premium. Only that current SSD command a premium higher than I, and I reckon many, find excessive. But I think that once the price of SSD drop by a certain amount (different for everyone, but lets say 50%), I reckon that a lot more people will consider it even if the Raptor's price drop by an even greater amount (say 75%). Of all the benchmarks that I've seen, once you exclude JMicron, the Velociraptor only seem to have sequential transfers over some of the SSDs.

The only part I am skeptical is how fast the price SSD may drop (a lot of people seem to make far more optimistic predictions than I am).

[aidanjt]

Straw man argument. Find me a Samsung/Indilinx/Intel based SSD that chokes under less load than a velociraptor.

'A' velociraptor?.. Remember, you can get more than 3 300gb velociraptors for the cost of a high-end Samsung or Intel SSD. 3 300gb velociraptors alone working in a stripe exceed SATAII bandwidth limitations. And you get fault tolerance, and you get capacity, and you have a proven mass storage technology and product family which lasts.

I'm not saying SSDs are useless. They have their place. And they do a great job for enthusiast e-peen. But if you care about your data, and look at performance as more than a factor of benchmark fapping, then velociraptors are still very useful.

[kalniel]

'A' velociraptor?.. Remember, you can get more than 3 300gb velociraptors for the cost of a high-end Samsung or Intel SSD.

I thought you were talking about inherent advantages. If you're talking cost then you can get goodness knows how many Sammy F1s for the cost of 3 300gb Velociraptors, giving better performance and storage for the money in the tasks that the raptors would compete with the SSDs.

[aidanjt]

I thought you were talking about inherent advantages. If you're talking cost then you can get goodness knows how many Sammy F1s for the cost of 3 300gb Velociraptors, giving better performance and storage for the money in the tasks that the raptors would compete with the SSDs.

For linear reads, maybe...

[kalniel]

For linear reads, maybe...

Even better for writes.

But if you're worried about small random reads/writes then a single SSD will destroy 3 raptors anyway. That's the point that's being made - if cost is no limit then a raptor is better than a conventional drive - just. But then if cost is no limit then a SSD is even better, by some margin. If cost is a limit then you would do better with conventional drives as well, so the Raptor's place in the market is rapidly disappearing.

[Maccer101]

Fore storage I would go for an F2 1.5tb without a moment's thought

[TooNice]

'A' velociraptor?.. Remember, you can get more than 3 300gb velociraptors for the cost of a high-end Samsung or Intel SSD. 3 300gb velociraptors alone working in a stripe exceed SATAII bandwidth limitations. And you get fault tolerance, and you get capacity, and you have a proven mass storage technology and product family which lasts.

I'm not saying SSDs are useless. They have their place. And they do a great job for enthusiast e-peen.

I find it ironic that you talk about stripping Velociraptors before attaching 'e-peens' to SSD. I've tried Velociraptor in RAID-0 just because I had the chance to do so (not my money). I thought that was pointless beyond the few benchmarks. I would be disappointed if for the same cost (excluding the controller), the 160GB Intel X-25M G2 would not be an all-round faster drive. Yeah, it's no secret that it'll lose in sequential transfer, but where else? Can two, or even three Velociraptor make up the fact that they are much, much slower at small random read/write, beneficial in an OS drive? And granted, it has 3.75x the capacity, but in a competition for capacity the Velociraptor will lose to 7.2k drives. You basically need an application that needs higher capacity than SSD will provide, yet higher performance than 7.2k drives will (not an OS drive, nor a mass storage drive). Perhaps some server applications, where it faces off SCSI/SAS drives.

But if you care about your data, and look at performance as more than a factor of benchmark fapping, then velociraptors are still very useful.

I care about my data. I backup. So should anyone who care about their data no matter if they are using SSD, 7200RPM drives, Raptor, SCSI drives and so on.

[switchmode]

I'm going to add my 10 cents here just to add confusion

I have used a 74 Gb raptor as a boot drive on my home tower system, it's cool quiet running, seek noise is a bit more than a standard drive but its not loud I admire its engineering it really is a great product.

I have two ssd drives (One a birthday present from her who must be..) and the other I just had to have as the first one was so good.

In my Advent netbook it was just such a great upgrade low noise and heat, the WD 80Gb drive it came with would park the heads so much it drove me mad I'm not joking thats not the point here though.

The netbook runs much cooler with the 64 GB G.Skill Falcon and its much faster to boot up, better battery life, so its win win in this application.

I had to have one in my other notebook so I splashed out on a crucial 64 Gb I ran this on a desktop just to see how it did, well it was fine very fast as I expected.

Would I replace my main systems raptor ? Yes if the price was the same otherwise no.

I think they are the future even now they are fast, applications load is faster (Subjectively) but thats only a small time difference unless you launch everything at once. In my limited use so far SSD for the win.

[switchmode]

I forgot to say I did some optimizing for the SSD I used a RAM Drive cache for my internet cache folder and stopped auto defrag in vista. This is because SSD has limited writes as I understand. It was just in case I'm not sure if its needed.

[TooNice]

Do you mean 'same price you paid for your Raptor' at the time, or 'same price per GB as a Raptor at the time of the future purpose'. It's your criteria of course, I suspect that the Raptor series will remain cheaper than SSD for as long as they are still being made at any same date (assuming that they do not use that name for their own SSD - as far as I know, WD is also investing in SSD now - well, they already have via a recent acquisition).

[switchmode]

Do you mean 'same price you paid for your Raptor' at the time, or 'same price per GB as a Raptor at the time of the future purpose'. It's your criteria of course, I suspect that the Raptor series will remain cheaper than SSD for as long as they are still being made at any same date (assuming that they do not use that name for their own SSD - as far as I know, WD is also investing in SSD now - well, they already have via a recent acquisition).

TooNice I'm not sure what you are asking but if an SSD is a lot more cost, I would be happy with a Raptor. ( did I say that....(Happy) its not long ago I was thrilled to have a Raptor 10,000 Rpm Dogs do dar) (E Peen)

For me on a day to day machine with a raptor is fine speed wise.

The SSD are nice

[TooNice]

Sorry, maybe I wasn't very clear. How much was the 74GB Raptor when you bought it?

Let's say it costed £120 at the time, will you then swap it for SSD when a (good) 80GB SSD costs £120?

Or, will you only consider once the price per GB is similar on any given date. For instance, today, some of the most recommended SSD drive cost just over £2-2.50/GB, whereas a Velociraptor cost about £0.50/GB. But if price for SSD drop to about 0.60/GB while the Raptor is at £0.50, then you would consider it. The point I was making is I suspect it would take a few years for SSD to drop to the price of a Raptor now, and by then, the Raptor that is being made, even if it is a newer model, will cost still quite a bit less.

[switchmode]

Sorry, maybe I wasn't very clear. How much was the 74GB Raptor when you bought it?

Let's say it costed £120 at the time, will you then swap it for SSD when a (good) 80GB SSD costs £120?

Or, will you only consider once the price per GB is similar on any given date. For instance, today, some of the most recommended SSD drive cost just over £2-2.50/GB, whereas a Velociraptor cost about £0.50/GB. But if price for SSD drop to about 0.60/GB while the Raptor is at £0.50, then you would consider it. The point I was making is I suspect it would take a few years for SSD to drop to the price of a Raptor now, and by then, the Raptor that is being made, even if it is a newer model, will cost still quite a bit less.

Raptors are good, SSD's are good, Normal "Eco what ever" are good you need to look at your needs and lusts (speed) v price SSD's are fast if cost was no factor I would have 10 and 10 for backup SSD's that is ten year data retention I hope. good as a general term they can all be bad when they fail as they will.