Just bought a Raptor

[unhappy_mage]

A disk I was working on died (and took all my work with it :() and I needed a new one. So, since Best Buy had the special for $120 for a 740ADFD, and I had some gift cards, I went out and bought one. HDTach shows it's working as expected:
http://will.incorrige.us/hdtach-raptor.PNG
and IOMeter agrees, as far as I can tell. Fast transfers, low latencies. It's on an ICH7 in IDE mode (I couldn't find a floppy and didn't want to take the time to slipstream) with a core duo T2300 and 512 megs of ram.

So, how's my user experience? Remarkably... normal. Windows takes 29 seconds from power button until desktop, but then, with a 2.5" laptop drive in it, this machine only took 33. I'm running VMware quite a bit; it is a bit snappier than it usually is on my other machine, but then this machine is a great deal faster. Nothing else is noticeably faster on the desktop. It's not disappointingly slow or anything, but I'm realizing more and more that my workload isn't disk-speed limited.

So, in summary, for desktop- or development-type work, a Raptor's probably not worth the money. I plan to do some game testing later, but I've got work I should be getting done.

Thoughts? What apps will make me glad I bought a Raptor?

[tuskenraider]

Thoughts? What apps will make me glad I bought a Raptor?I don't think there is just one type of app that's gonna change your mind, but the more you use at once, the more the advantage may show. You either feel the quickness of the drive in your normal desktop use or you don't, and deternine its value to you from there.

[AliP]

Get urself a good vid game, when i first tryed bf2 with my raptor i amost had a heart attack it was so fast.

[Pretzel]

I have 2 x WD 250GB SATA II in Raid 0. I was considering getting the 150GB Raptor and using it for my OS & applications. Then using 1 x WD 250GB for storage. I mainly use my PC for gaming. Am I wasting my money or will I see an improvement?

[tuskenraider]

I'd keep the RAID0 setup.