Raptors worth it? or SATA HD?

[frankyk]

Are raptors worth it?

I heard that they help with file transfer speeds but they don't really help that much in terms of overall gaming or just computer performance?

I heard actually the best bang for the buck is the Seagate 320 GB SATA 7200.10+ HD, is this true?

I just surf, play the occasional computer game and browse and transfer files occasionally. Nothing hardcore or anything. I just like good performance, but don't want to spend ridiculous amounts of money for nothing big.

[Stupac]

Get the Seagate. I had raptors (sold them) but storage is more important. Plus the new HD's are pretty darn fast right. Prices have dropped recently on raptors because of the need for bigger harddrives. Untill WD can come out with a 300gb or bigger raptor, stay away for now.

[skeeder]

I love my raptor, but I just use it as a boot drive, I'd sell it in a heart beat but I love it for windows. My storage drives are pretty fast too, I would never recommend a raptor to someone as something of importance at all.

[drizzt81]

Are raptors worth it? that depends.

I heard that they help with file transfer speeds but they don't really help that much in terms of overall gaming or just computer performance?
Usually, harddrive performance has no impact on "overall gaming performance". After all if we are swapping to harrdrive and that is reducing the FPS of the game, adding more RAM is likely a cheaper way to get drastic improvements rather than spending $4k on a solid-state disk solution.

However, the raptor may reduce the game's loading time.

I heard actually the best bang for the buck is the Seagate 320 GB SATA 7200.10+ HD, is this true? It depends, is it the cheapest 320GiB drive you can buy? How much of a premium would you pay for 2 extra years of warranty?

[bigdavethehorn]

I heard actually the best bang for the buck is the Seagate 320 GB SATA 7200.10+ HD

I can't comment on Raptors I'm afraid, but I went from a Maxtor Diamondmax 10 160GB ATA drive to a Seagate 7200.10 320GB SATA drive and there is a noticeable difference in;

reduced noise
reduced loading in Battlefield 2 (I'm now one of the first into a map!)
reduced Windows boot time
and obviously, increased storage!

[bigdavethehorn]

This page demonstrates the difference between the very latest 74 & 150GB Raptors and a few other drives;

http://www.anandtech.com/storage/showdoc.aspx?i=2922&p=9

The Seagate doesn't do too badly at all.

[protias]

Well, I often (between 50-60% of the time) face the TLER bug on boot up where it boots for several minutes, other times, its less than 20 seconds. I have the 150GB model and would not give it up for the world....well, maybe :p But anyway, if you do not play a whole lot of games or do any type of editing, it probably is not worth your time and hard earned money for one. Either the Seagate 7200.10 (doesn't matter if it is AS or NS really) or WD 320KS disks. Both are great drives.