WD Raptor Question

[cotswoldcs]

I've just purchased Western Digital's latest 150Gb Raptor. It will replace my WD1200JB (120Gb PATA) hard disk. I've a couple of questions:

Will I notice a difference in performance - leading question I know but I want to feel this was a good decision!!!!

My old WD drive was enclosed in a SilentDrive hard disk enclosure. This kept the noise down which is very important in my v quiet water cooled PC (Zalman Reserator 1 Plus). I'm assuming that putting my 10,000rpm Raptor into the SilentDrive would be A VERY BAD IDEA. Assuming I DON't use the SilentDrive do you think I will find the Raptor noisier than my old WD drive????

My Antec Sonata case does have rubber grommets on the HDD cage which I hope will reduce vibrations and noise a little.

[aidanjt]

Your new Raptor will grind your old PATA drive into dust, expect a 2x performance increase.

You wont really need the SilentDrive, the only time you'll notice the Raptor is during heavy sustained disk i/o.. which tends to happen when you unzip/rar multi-gigabyte archives.

[Butcher]

Your new Raptor will grind your old PATA drive into dust, expect a 2x performance increase.

Caveat, you'll only notice that on disk intensive things (i.e. not often).

[aidanjt]

Oh please, even windows is far more responsive with a Raptor as a system disk.

[Butcher]

Negligably, unless you're paging a lot. In which case the better response is to buy more RAM. ;p

NB: My main disk makes a raptor look slow, and the difference for general usage over a 7200 RPM sata disk? Pretty small.

[Nox]

Raptors are nice - I think how noticable these sort of changes are comes down to the individual, and exactly what he does with his computer. I spend an hour or two a night playing games, don't notice a lot of change there. I also spend 3-4 hours a night just messing around with the pile of computers at home, 5+ a laptop & a mac. Call it work also being a hobby...

Nox

[cotswoldcs]

Thanks guys. Bit of a mixed response. I'm really hoping that I will see a noticable difference in performance for my hard earnt money that I spent on the Raptor.

There are also mixed reports about the noise of the drive. Some users and indeed respected reviews state that the 10,000rpm is less noisy (or better) than standard 7,200rpm drives. Other users and reviews (latest PC Pro) suggest that it is much noisier.

I guess I will have to install it and see what I think for myself. Can't wait...

[Butcher]

Depends how noisy your 7200 was. There's a lot of variance between drives even in the same speed category, let alone between them. Typically faster is noisier, but with most drives coming with FDBs these days, noise is much less of a concern than previously.

[TooNice]

I think you will be pleased. The Raptor make good system drives, and I doubt that you won't notice it.

As for the noise, it is pretty average: there are louder 7200 RPM drives, but it won't win any award for quietness. According to Storagereview, it should be quieter than the 1200JB though.

[Zak33]

In my experience the faster the HDD the faster XP boots.

And games

and reloads of levels

and music....

in fact....it all gets better
I have 2 10k SCSI drives and 2 7200 rpm SCSI drives and you can tell whats loads of what just on the time it take!

Raptor will make you smile. Have no doubt!

[TooNice]

and music....

How long does music take you to load?

[Jonny]

My Raptor is definately audible, which my Seagate isn't.
Try to get some rubber grommits for it, should help a bit.

[Zak33]

How long does music take you to load?

well I have a seprate HDD for music and have had a different one in the past, and as soon as the faster one went in I could access music faster!

[funnelhead]

well i noticed windows being slightly more responsive and games defo do load quicker on my raptor....and windows went from taking 7 "things" to 3 "things" (knight rider pass things) to load up...


as for noise levels... i find the idle noise isnt bad at all... it's the access noise thats a killer. You can at least minimise that by isolating it from the rest of the case... eg string it up in elastic in an optical bay...(total cost 99p)

hth


f

[DaBeeeenster]

well i noticed windows being slightly more responsive and games defo do load quicker on my raptor....and windows went from taking 7 "things" to 3 "things" (knight rider pass things) to load up...


as for noise levels... i find the idle noise isnt bad at all... it's the access noise thats a killer. You can at least minimise that by isolating it from the rest of the case... eg string it up in elastic in an optical bay...(total cost 99p)

hth


f

LOL - the new definition of time - the "knight rider pass things" count

[Couger]

I'd like to say that I have had quite a few RAID 0 arrays over the years and I am now officially done with it.
I bought my current Deskstars after reading a few reviews and articles about them spanking a single Raptor, with them in RAID 0.
The benchmarks and comparison scores were very impressive. Supposedly, enabling 3GB/s with ftool and configuring a striped set with these drives was what you
needed to do for a blazing, Raptor-crushing half-terrabyte. I had a few PATA RAIDs in the past and was always disappointed with the lack of performance boost,
but I figured this was newer SATA II technology, and the bursts of 300+ MB/s must make a huge impact on performance.
How wrong I was for listening.
It seems that a 7200RPM drive, even 2 of them in RAID 0 just can't compete with the Raptor and the responsiveness it gives.
The RAID array I have benchmarks unbelievable numbers, and the bursts are awesome.....

but that doesnt change the fact that it's still slower than the Raptor in real-world performance.