150gb raptor really that loud ???

G

game14

[H]ard|Gawd
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Nov 8, 2006
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I have 2 80gb seagates sata 2 in raid 0 and one of them is going about to die . So i was thinking about to replace them with a 150gb raptor (with window :D ) . On the other hand i heard that they r really loud ....is that true ???
How about the speed ??? Is there some performance improve compared to two regular drives in raid 0 ???
Or am i better off with two sata 2 WD 160gb in raid 0 ???
(about seagate : im definitly done with those drives :mad: )
thx for any recommendations
 
If you have a fanless pc, then yes these are going to bother you. If you have a normal pc, then you should have no problems with the noise.

IMO it's not loud, but to others it is. It's all just opinion.
 
Mount it hanging from rubber bands or elastic and you won't hear it. :)

If you have just a cheap chassis that is all metal mounted, you'll hear it loud and clear.
 
w1retap said:
Mount it hanging from rubber bands or elastic and you won't hear it. :)

If you have just a cheap chassis that is all metal mounted, you'll hear it loud and clear.
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Doesn't this cause the drive heads to miss their target due to the drive movement?
 
The original 35GB raptor was horrific and I had to stop using mine because I couldn't stand the whining noise it made. I have no problem with the current 150's (2 in my current PC), in terms of 10krpm whine or access chatter. They're not silent, but I don't notice them over then fan noise unless I listen for them. But like Ockie said, it's all opinion.
 
is there a difference in sound between the raptor X and the regular raptor 150??
 
Ockie said:
If you have a fanless pc, then yes these are going to bother you. If you have a normal pc, then you should have no problems with the noise.

IMO it's not loud, but to others it is. It's all just opinion.
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I couldn't agree more. I have 2 that sit right next to me on a bench (I don't believe in cases) and I don't hear them at all most of the time. Some think they sound like a can full of bumblebees. From a lot of the comments I read before buying them I expected just that....well it turns out they are not "loud" at all. The rare occasion I do hear them, I just smile and remember what a performance gain I got from those little bumblebees!
 
so the "noise" from the raptors is because of the high rpm , not from seeking and writing !? :confused:
(what most bothers me from my seagates is the really loud seeking noise that i can hear over my TT leafblower )
 
No, the noise is from the seeking. It transfers the vibration through into the chassis which makes it audible.
 
I have an aluminum Lian-Li, with quiet, low rpm 120mm fans and the seek chatter from the 150GB raptor is deafening.

I have some thick, padded tape stuff, I keep meaning to try and squeeze in on the sides of the drives to see if it makes a difference but have not gotten around to it yet.
 
so definitly chattering seeking noise again ....and what i have read during the day in reviews ,only about a 1-2 sec gain in loading games ,thats almost nothing .
I guess i really should think it over before spending a $ 179 on a new drive :(
 
lol? 1-2 second gain in load times? If you are a gamer, its well worth it. But, from my experiences, I've had load times much quicker vs a standard SATA hard drive. In games like quake 4, I've had 7 seconds faster load times. If you think a raptor is not worth it, you don't need the drive, you aren't [H]. Like I said, if you suspend the hard drive with elastic, you won't hear it.
 
2 pencils, 2 rubber bands, dead silent.

I really wish I could figure out where the hell that completely fuckin' ridiculous rumor about the "heads missing their target" crap started. My god, it's right up there with the classic "Coffee holder broke" stuff - which is true because I got several calls about in my 3 decades of PC support.

It's like people make this stuff up just to have a way to express fears of the unknown, good lord.

Suspending a hard drive in rubber bands or a shock-proof mount will not have a negative impact on performance. The heads inside the drive don't work that way; there's no tolerances that would be affected by such a mounting scheme... geez. :p
 
bbz_Ghost said:
2 pencils, 2 rubber bands, dead silent.

I really wish I could figure out where the hell that completely fuckin' ridiculous rumor about the "heads missing their target" crap started. My god, it's right up there with the classic "Coffee holder broke" stuff - which is true because I got several calls about in my 3 decades of PC support.

It's like people make this stuff up just to have a way to express fears of the unknown, good lord.

Suspending a hard drive in rubber bands or a shock-proof mount will not have a negative impact on performance. The heads inside the drive don't work that way; there's no tolerances that would be affected by such a mounting scheme... geez. :p
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The rubberbands will allow the drive to move around a bit, won't they? Won't this moving about have some effect on the internals of the drive?
 
game14 said:
so definitly chattering seeking noise again ....and what i have read during the day in reviews ,only about a 1-2 sec gain in loading games ,thats almost nothing .
I guess i really should think it over before spending a $ 179 on a new drive :(
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Its MUCH MUCH more noticeable than you think. I have one of the original 74gb 8meg cache raptors and its a LOT faster for load times in games. Windows also boots faster, programs load faster.
 
You know, I've listened to all the talk about "OMG it's the loudest thing in my system" and "it's just so loud" and I was concerned. Then I got one and I thought, "You guys are full of shit, it's not loud at all."

At 10000rpm, it is definately going to make a difference how you mount this drive. I can see it being a bit of a problem in a case with no isolation of drive from the case, especially aluminum cases that tend to amplify drive noise (like my Praetorian does). In my Antec P180, with rubber grommets isolating the drives from the case, and thick side panels, I don't even hear it... well, maybe a muffled, barely audible "I might have heard something" and even then only when it's doing heavy seeking. I had it sitting outside the case today while I was Ghosting it, and even then it didn't seem loud. In fact, I feel anyone who complains about the seek noise is nit-picking.

So, I can only guess that it's mostly the case vibrating and acting as a megaphone and not the drive that is causing most people grief.

There's no motor whine at all, which was my main concern. (motor noise drives me insane, seek noise I kind of like... it tells me when Windows is doing something it shouldn't be)
 
Astral Abyss said:
You know, I've listened to all the talk about "OMG it's the loudest thing in my system" and "it's just so loud" and I was concerned. Then I got one and I thought, "You guys are full of shit, it's not loud at all."

At 10000rpm, it is definately going to make a difference how you mount this drive. I can see it being a bit of a problem in a case with no isolation of drive from the case, especially aluminum cases that tend to amplify drive noise (like my Praetorian does). In my Antec P180, with rubber grommets isolating the drives from the case, and thick side panels, I don't even hear it... well, maybe a muffled, barely audible "I might have heard something" and even then only when it's doing heavy seeking. I had it sitting outside the case today while I was Ghosting it, and even then it didn't seem loud. In fact, I feel anyone who complains about the seek noise is nit-picking.

So, I can only guess that it's mostly the case vibrating and acting as a megaphone and not the drive that is causing most people grief.

There's no motor whine at all, which was my main concern. (motor noise drives me insane, seek noise I kind of like... it tells me when Windows is doing something it shouldn't be)
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Agreed, no motor whine at all. Can't hear it when the computer sitting there, it's when it starts seeking. When Vista is indexing, or your searching, or it's going out to find things, the head chatter is OMG ears bleeding.

With that said, I have a light weight Lian Li, all aluminum case, so it may be more prone to vibrations than a heavy steel case would be..*shrug*. I have a stretch of really thick squishy tape I ganked from work. I keep meaning to put it on the sides of the drive.... Just haven't gotten to it yet.
 
Menelmarar said:
Agreed, no motor whine at all. Can't hear it when the computer sitting there, it's when it starts seeking. When Vista is indexing, or your searching, or it's going out to find things, the head chatter is OMG ears bleeding.

With that said, I have a light weight Lian Li, all aluminum case, so it may be more prone to vibrations than a heavy steel case would be..*shrug*. I have a stretch of really thick squishy tape I ganked from work. I keep meaning to put it on the sides of the drive.... Just haven't gotten to it yet.
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Yeah I listened a bit more attentively after I wrote my last post and I can see where the seeking chatter could be a bit annoying if you have a really quiet room or are just surfing the web and Windows starts its indexing.
 
drizzt81 said:
You could get one or two of these:
http://www.frostytech.com/articleview.cfm?articleID=1588
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I was just about to comment on this HDD cooler. I've had my original 74GB Raptor in one of these since I put this machine together. Having not heard the Raptor without it, but being very concerned with PC silence (my current machine is somewhat bad), I would say that even under the stress of a virus scan or the likes, the drive is dampened to a series of faint clicks. Nothing too severe, but just the same, somewhat annoying. Be warned that the cooler realistically eats into the space of two 5.25" bays.
 
Pixel Eater said:
Be warned that the cooler realistically eats into the space of two 5.25" bays.
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Yeah it is somewhat ridiculous in that respect. I managed to fit three of them in three 5.25" bays by flipping one upside down and generally messing around with screw hole positioning.
 
I thought i had to find it out by myself if the raptor is loud or not ,so ...got my 150gb raptor x today and its not loud at all . Ok you can hear it seeking but absolutly no spinning noise . Its much more quiet than my 250 gb 7200.10 seagate . Runs cooler too.
But one thing i dont understand ......the raptor runs SLOWER than my 2x80gb raid 0 , way slower . Boot and game loading times are pretty much the same . The results with HDTach 80gb raid 0 ( 281mb/s , 10,2 ms) vs. raptor ( 75mb/s , 8,9 ms) :confused:
Is there something wrong ???
 
game14 said:
I thought i had to find it out by myself if the raptor is loud or not ,so ...got my 150gb raptor x today and its not loud at all . Ok you can hear it seeking but absolutly no spinning noise . Its much more quiet than my 250 gb 7200.10 seagate . Runs cooler too.
But one thing i dont understand ......the raptor runs SLOWER than my 2x80gb raid 0 , way slower . Boot and game loading times are pretty much the same . The results with HDTach 80gb raid 0 ( 281mb/s , 10,2 ms) vs. raptor ( 75mb/s , 8,9 ms) :confused:
Is there something wrong ???
Click to expand...

Nothing wrong: "Boot and game loading times are pretty much the same"

Tada.. the truth comes out. RAID 0 will ALWAYS be faster in synthetic non real world tests. But real world results = a few seconds difference here and there.

See the newest drive review at anandtech for example of this: http://www.anandtech.com/storage/showdoc.aspx?i=2969

Different drive, but conclusions apply.
 
game14 said:
the raptor runs SLOWER than my 2x80gb raid 0 , way slower . Boot and game loading times are pretty much the same . The results with HDTach 80gb raid 0 ( 281mb/s , 10,2 ms) vs. raptor ( 75mb/s , 8,9 ms) :confused:
Is there something wrong ???
Click to expand...
I always thought that lower access times imply a faster drive.
 
Personally, I don't feel the raptor was worth it for me. In my experience, the drive IS loud and the performance improvements overstated. Everyone's opinion will be different. If you don't know someone who has one, check silentpcreview.com for noise benchmarks and i'm sure performance benchmarks wouldn't be hard to come by.
 
Lazn_Work said:
Nothing wrong: "Boot and game loading times are pretty much the same"

Tada.. the truth comes out. RAID 0 will ALWAYS be faster in synthetic non real world tests. But real world results = a few seconds difference here and there.

See the newest drive review at anandtech for example of this: http://www.anandtech.com/storage/showdoc.aspx?i=2969

Different drive, but conclusions apply.
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Agreed. I've had the same experiences. I see the benchmarks all the time doing motherboard reviews, however in real world application I've seen little to no improvement.
 
alexik01 said:
Personally, I don't feel the raptor was worth it for me. In my experience, the drive IS loud and the performance improvements overstated. Everyone's opinion will be different. If you don't know someone who has one, check silentpcreview.com for noise benchmarks and i'm sure performance benchmarks wouldn't be hard to come by.
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nop ...the raptor is definitly not worth it !!!
I have the same or better performance with two 80 gb seagate 7200.9 sata 2 in raid 0 with way less noise and much cheaper . Too bad that one of them is going to die .
But getting a real usefull recommendation here or at testing sites doesnt seem to be that easy either :( .... well ,now that i spend a $179 for a raptor , i have to live with it .... at least it got a window :rolleyes:
 
I just got a 150GB Raptor and, wow, things load faster. I have yet to try games yet, which I'm sure there will be a big boost in loading times. I have a couple of "quieter" drives - Spinpoint from Samsung and a 7200.10 Seagate. The Raptor is definitely a bit louder, but its nothing unbearable. I can't hear it unless it's being accessed.
 
game14 said:
thats what i thought ....guess i was wrong. Even the 8,9 ms readtime is dobble of whats stated by WD !!!:eek:
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You're interpreting that wrong. They mention a 4.6ms seek, yes, but there's also rotational latency to take into account. It's spinning at 10,000 rpm, so it takes 6ms to spin around once. That's an average of 3ms added latency, since on average it has to spin halfway around so that the data is under the head. When you add that in and add 10% for marketing, you get 8.36ms. Not too far from the tested result.
game14 said:
nop ...the raptor is definitly not worth it !!!
I have the same or better performance with two 80 gb seagate 7200.9 sata 2 in raid 0 with way less noise and much cheaper .
Click to expand...
In what application? How did you test? Did you use a stopwatch? Where was the OS installed?
 
Jordan1 said:
I just got a 150GB Raptor and, wow, things load faster. I have yet to try games yet, which I'm sure there will be a big boost in loading times. I have a couple of "quieter" drives - Spinpoint from Samsung and a 7200.10 Seagate. The Raptor is definitely a bit louder, but its nothing unbearable. I can't hear it unless it's being accessed.
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Raptor's are not really for games.

I like the low seek speed, if your system has to cache, it will be faster.

I also like the high transfer speeds, when I am doing encodings, the software maxes out both cores, and appears to only be limited by harddrive speed. I have been considering more raptors either in raid, or to have one for source and one as a destination drive for video encodings.
 
I've got the 150GB RaptorX in my SilverStone TJ-07, and I'll say you can definitely hear it when it seeks. When it's not seeking there is absolutely no sound and you won't hear a thing. But I actually like how it sounds when it seeks. It does it in a bad ass kind of way, reminds me that I've got a little beast in my system :D
 
I have a Raptor 150GB in my Antec Super Lanboy and the loudest thing in my computer is my CPU fan. Even my Antec 500W modular PSU is more quite than my stock AMD CPU fan. If you hear lots of seeking, turn up the volume for your games, you won't hear it then :p
 
unhappy_mage said:
You're interpreting that wrong. They mention a 4.6ms seek, yes, but there's also rotational latency to take into account. It's spinning at 10,000 rpm, so it takes 6ms to spin around once. That's an average of 3ms added latency, since on average it has to spin halfway around so that the data is under the head. When you add that in and add 10% for marketing, you get 8.36ms. Not too far from the tested result.

In what application? How did you test? Did you use a stopwatch? Where was the OS installed?
Click to expand...

so there is nothing wrong with my setup or my raptor ...what i have in speed is what im supposed to get , right ?!

application i testet is windows xp pro loading time , trainz and ms flight simulator x , those are the two games i have with the longest loading times . Yes i used a stopwatch .
OS was installed on 2x80gb 7200.9 seagates in raid 0 before and i cloned it to my new raptor . OS now on raptor . Raid 0 disconnected .
I dont really care about a second or two , cant measure that anyways that exactly with a stopwatch .... but i really expected a noticable 30-50% speed improvement as stated by many people here and on other review sites , especially for gaming .Thats what i got it for and thats what it is recommended for .
Now i think it would have been better to get 2 new silent 80gb for raid 0 ....at least i would not have to stand the noise for no real world improvement :(
 
game14 said:
The results with HDTach 80gb raid 0 ( 281mb/s , 10,2 ms) vs. raptor ( 75mb/s , 8,9 ms) :confused:
Is there something wrong ???
Click to expand...

That's way out of spec, no way are you able to get 281MB/s from those striped 80gig.

75MB from the Raptor is accurate.

But you are comparing wrong, you should be comparing a single 7200rpm drive to a single 10,0000 rpm raptor.

OR

A pair of striped 80gig drives to a pair of striped raptors.
 
I have a Raptor 150 in my Stacker 810.

It is barely audible. I can rull a full disk index right before I go to bed and I won't be bothered at all. I can't hear it over my ceiling fan, that's for sure.
Definitely a far cry from my IBM Z15 RAID array that I used to have. That thing sounded like a garbage disposal.

The Stacker has a rubber isolated mounting system for the hard disks, though. I'm sure it would be much louder if it were attached rigidly to a chassis.
 
I don't mind the noise of my 150gb Raptor, a tad bit more than a 7200rpm drive but well worth it. In terms of performance the Raptors tend to be better when you click on multiple things to open at one time compared to 7200rpm drives. I've also got 320gb 7200.10's in my system and they are noticeably slower than the Raptor at everything.
 
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