10000 RPM Raptor drives

[Deity]

Please share any experiences with them. I have heard rumors about questionable reliability. I am getting rdy to upgrade to an SATA HD and have been considereing one of these. Is the performance worth the price?

[kur1j]

I love mine. I have not had one problem with it yet. The drive has worked non stop for 5-6 months now and seems to be working just fine. As for the performance StarCraft doesnt even do its little loading thing down at the bottom. Just goes straight into the game :D. Also when im loading a map in ut2k4 i am usually the first one that finishes loading.

[USMC2Hard4U]

I have Dual 36GB Raptors in Raid 0 and I love them. Best money I have spend for a computer part in a long time.

going from 7200rpm , ATA 100, 2MB cache
to
10000rpm, SATA 150, 8MB of cache and in raid, totally rocks

since the HDD is the slowest part of the system, any upgrade to the speed would be bennificial

[kick@ss]

They're OK but the money can definitely be spent better in other ways.

[JSClark]

Actually, the 10K Raptors are not all that expensive (110-120 bucks at newegg). Definitely worth the upgrade. Hopefully soon enough I'll be sporting a new AMD system with a 10K OS drive...

[foenix]

The key with reliability on Raptors is to keep them cool. I've had Raptor drives in my systems since they came out with the 36GB and I love them. I can tell a huge performance difference (as compared to the 7200rpm). IMO, you can't go wrong with them and I would highly recommend giving one a try. Just my 2 cents.

[DruSi3r]

they come with a great warrenty (5yrs?) and have a $20 rebate atm. You can get a raptor2 for ~165 after rebate. I love mine btw and am using and "old" IT7Max2. When I upgrade Im sure Ill see a little more performance out of the drive. But Im very pleaed overall.

[Koslov]

it's money well spent (depending on your current hardware ; CPU , RAM Etc..)
IF you don't have 1GB I would buy this before getting raptors

[djnes]

I'm currently putting together a comparison of my Raptors in RAID0 versus as single standalone drives. The general consensus is that RAID0 on a desktop only gives you high scores in synthetic benchmarks, and not in actual performance. As soon as I finish my comparison this week, I will be posting my results.

[Crokiller187]

I got 2 36GB Raptors for 120 bux from a guy who was upgrading to the larger sized Raptors.
Best money I have spent in a long time.

[cruz610]

Raptor > any other drive on the market :)

[specter554]

I have a 36 gig raptor right now. I was running 2 in raid 0, but the performance couldn't justify the price for my applications. The only raptor that is might be worth it in my opinion is 1 74 gig raptor for $158 at newegg, and this is only if you have some money to burn. Otherwise there are a lot better ways to spend your money.

[Qwestman]

I have 2 36 GB Raptors as well. But I have had my RAID 0 array die on my 2 times. GRRRRR I am not sure if it was the drives or the RAID controller on the motherboard. I am leaning towards the mobo being the problem because when I tired to setup a new RAID array, it would see one drive, and not the other. Sometimes it would see both, so I think it was the mobo at fault.
I will find out next Tuesday wheather it was the drive(s) or not because I will be installing my new mobo with my 2 Raptors in a RAID 0 and see what happens.

[Leadman584]

I have 5 of them running non-stop in Raid 5, and the applications I use, fly with this configuration. And they are barely audible ( over the Window AC unit that keep us both cool). If you stick you're head up next to them you can hear them, but just barely. Benchmark software say they are crawling along @ 80MB/s data throughput. Everything loads instantly, and Runs considerably faster than when I had 4 raptors in Raid 0+1( which benchmarked a litle faster). So much for benchmarks.

[JetUsafMech]

Raptor > any other drive on the market :)

Besides this, you mean....

Average Seek Time: 3.6 ms
Buffer: 8 MB
Rotational Speed: 15000 RPM
Interface: SCSI Ultra320 68 pin
Manufacturer Warranty: 5 years
Max. sustained internal transfer rate - 75MB/s

SATA<SCSI. Unless you mean price/performance, and even that's arguable. But since everyone is on the RAID 0=Teh WiNnAr kick lately....sigh.

Then again, SAS is right around the corner. So I wouldn't get such a warm fuzzy about SATA being the being the end all/be all of hard drive performance.

[kham31]

Last night my 74GB Raptor started clicking and then my system would freeze and reboot randomly. Aside from this, it has performed spectacularly. Called WD today and they are shipping a replacement on Monday. Although it sucks that it failed, at least I'm getting a replacement quickly.

[Qwestman]

Dang that is cool you get a new drive so fast. Good job! :D