Raptor as a boot drive

[johnny02004976]

Would using a raptor as a boot drive really make that much of a difference when booting XP??

Im currently using a 250GB WD Sata drive to boot my system and was wondering if a 36GB Raptor would make much difference. Id only use it for booting as id use my many other drives to handle everything else.

Any thoughts?

Cheers

EDIT: If anyone has a spare 36GB one knocking round with no bad sectors that they wanna sell drop me a PM

[Nacrisa]

I've tried this and it does seem faster, but that could quite possibly be because it's a fresh XP installation!

[rainbow]

when xp is newly installed its fast for a while, try it the seek time is half for a raptoir so it should make a big diff

[dodgybob]

Theoretically I think the raptor should start to shine more over a normal 7200rpm hdd when it becomes more fragmented - quicker response time to nip all over the disc to reassemble files. Not sure how much of a difference it would make though.

[NightshadowUK]

The difference is nice, everything's that little bit nippier so if you're willing to pay the premium then you won't be disappointed...

One thing to note though, is noise. If you're a quiet freak, Raptors aren't for you but maybe you could consider two 80GBs in RAID 0?

EDIT: Boot times seem only slightly faster than my Samsung so getting a Raptor just for the speed of start up isn't really worth it.

[Couger]

Hi johnny02004976

Id say yes to your question as im using a raptor for windows and another for installed games, it helps seek and load times alot

[Taz]

I would say yes. I'm using two separate Raptors: one as a boot drive and the other for data. They are pretty quick drives so I would say you would notice the difference in boot speed.

[8bit]

Another vote in favour of the raptor - my 74GB one is my C drive and all my data (including the user profiles etc) are on my Samsung SP120 250GB.

The Samsung is near silent, the raptor is a bit noisy. When I got the samsung I created a 74GB partition and used Ghost to clone the Raptor's contents onto the Samsung and did a wee bit of testing. Didn't do any serious benchmarking but I still noticed a few areas where the raptor was still snappier than the samsung, despite it's lower areal density. The raptor's extra rpms are worth it IMHO.

EDIT: Now, if WD made a 15krpm Raptor with SATA/300, that would be a cookin' disk

[johnny02004976]

does anyone have a 36GB knockin round they fancy selling??

[turkster]

Keep in mind though that there is a noticeable ramp in speed from 36GB model through different revs of 74GB model up to the new 150GB model.

See anandtech article on 150GB raptor for comparisons here

[TheAnimus]

the performance boost a good fast HDD gives you is amazing.

i use a 15k raid of scsi drives, and i wouldn't change them for the loud sound they make. (all 5 drives in a raid 5, bit of stability boost too!)

now as for if the 36gig raptor will give you a noticeable boost for your buck, well thats a different matter. Going down from my ludicriously scavanged from servers HDD set up, to a first edition raptor, really really didn't impress me, i couldn't see it been noticeably faster than a 120gig JB8 weston digial i had at the time (WHICH DIED thanks WD!). So will there be a performance boost, yes. Would it be as big a one as spending the money on ram and running without a pagefile, no.