450GB velociraptor for $160 shipped

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[H]F Junkie
Joined
Mar 31, 2001
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$150 shipped!!!...EDIT: Back to $160

Let the "SSD's are better for speed, 7200 rpm drives are better for storage!" flames begin!

EDIT: $129.99 @ Newegg
Thanks llamastyle!
 
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I'd rather buy a $100 Crucial 64GB SSD and 1TB WD Black. Faster and more storage.... PASS!

BTW is it me or is Newegg operating at DOS speed?
 
Wasn't there a sale a few months ago for the 600gb version at ~$150? Then again, it was a macmall.
 
Slow as hell for me right now trying to pick out a Bluray drive since the wife wants to buy Transformers 3 on release day, and I told her I refuse to buy DVDs anymore.

I was just thinking the other day I'd like to replace my 4x250GB RE drives with 2x or 3x 450GB VR's in a mirror.. hmm..
 
I'm starting to get really pissed off at my Vertex3. I have a rather large and elaborate Flash file that I work on all the time.. it's a game. I was going nuts as it started to lag every time I clicked an object in Flash CS5.5. Had to wait like half a second to 2 full seconds for the actionscript on a given object to come up. At first I wrote it off to file bloat.. but yesterday out of curiosity I moved the file from the Vertex3 to the Caviar Black. Performance immediately went back to what you would expect in Flash from a 2600K with 16GB of RAM (you would expect it not to lag in calling up 30 lines of actionscript).

I'm not sure what the point of this $600 drive is really supposed to be for a user like me. Then again, I know you're not supposed to keep your working files on your system drive. But seriously... SSD has been more trouble than it's worth so far.
 
ballpoint said:
I'm starting to get really pissed off at my Vertex3. I have a rather large and elaborate Flash file that I work on all the time.. it's a game. I was going nuts as it started to lag every time I clicked an object in Flash CS5.5. Had to wait like half a second to 2 full seconds for the actionscript on a given object to come up. At first I wrote it off to file bloat.. but yesterday out of curiosity I moved the file from the Vertex3 to the Caviar Black. Performance immediately went back to what you would expect in Flash from a 2600K with 16GB of RAM (you would expect it not to lag in calling up 30 lines of actionscript).

I'm not sure what the point of this $600 drive is really supposed to be for a user like me. Then again, I know you're not supposed to keep your working files on your system drive. But seriously... SSD has been more trouble than it's worth so far.
Click to expand...

You learned the hard way, don't buy OCZ garbage. I had a Vertex 1 and it was nothing but problems. Drives from reliable manufaturers like Intel, Micron (Crucial), and Samsung are far more reliable.
 
BababooeyHTJ said:
Drives from reliable manufacturers like Intel, Micron (Crucial), and Samsung are far more reliable.
Click to expand...

+1

I would buy a SSD in the following order for reliability/performance:

1) Intel
2) Crucial
3) Samsung
 
A good VR RAID will still perform admirably. I think many mobos will still need a proper RAID controller for optimum setup, though.
 
LeninGHOLA said:
A good VR RAID will still perform admirably. I think many mobos will still need a proper RAID controller for optimum setup, though.
Click to expand...

RAID controllers are expensive...

I think the onaord raid controllers on high end moterhbaords are sufficent unless your willing to fork out $100 for a good raid controller.
 
finny76 said:
RAID controllers are expensive...

I think the onaord raid controllers on high end moterhbaords are sufficent unless your willing to fork out $100 for a good raid controller.
Click to expand...

mdadm with a good cpu is better than quite a few raid controllers.
 
ballpoint said:
I'm starting to get really pissed off at my Vertex3. I have a rather large and elaborate Flash file that I work on all the time.. it's a game. I was going nuts as it started to lag every time I clicked an object in Flash CS5.5. Had to wait like half a second to 2 full seconds for the actionscript on a given object to come up. At first I wrote it off to file bloat.. but yesterday out of curiosity I moved the file from the Vertex3 to the Caviar Black. Performance immediately went back to what you would expect in Flash from a 2600K with 16GB of RAM (you would expect it not to lag in calling up 30 lines of actionscript).

I'm not sure what the point of this $600 drive is really supposed to be for a user like me. Then again, I know you're not supposed to keep your working files on your system drive. But seriously... SSD has been more trouble than it's worth so far.
Click to expand...


I have a vertex 1 at 30gb in my laptop (which has been in pieces for months) as boot drive with 250+ gig for storage. I also have a vertex LE 50gb (same controller as a vertex 2 I think). Anyway, my first vertex LE actually crapped out on me when I was using as a boot drive at home on my desktop within 2 months. I get a replacement under warranty from OCZ. I didn't feel like using it as boot drive on my desktop at home - I spent enough time mucking around with os install, drivers etc. after work (turns out there is only so much time in a day!). So instead, I brought the vertex LE to work and have been using it for benchmarking builds (mix of native C++, managed, c#, python). Source tree is couple gigs, output can be 6+ gigs. Build times were not getting much faster (maybe 2-10 minutes off of 1.5 hours.). I also had issues where the drive would just hang for a bit - I use gvim for 99% of my editing and it would just hang sometimes when switching between files. Eventually, I stopped using the drive for development and it's just sitting in the box not doing much. I might try one of the other ones some day. But for now, I would research the crap out of any ssds before I buy. It's frustrating when all the reviews are "this thing is amazing!" - yea works great for the first month, after that it's up to forums to find out the real deal.

For now, my favorite drives are the Samsung f3 500gb versions which I have in my boxes at home.
 
It seems as if some higher capacity WD Black drives are very close in performance so will have to decide if the speed advantage the WD4500HLHX does have is worth losing a bunch of storage space.

Using the PassMark Hard Drive benchmark page and just sticking with WD shows the Western Digital Caviar Black WD1502FAEX 1.5TB 7200 RPM 64MB Cache SATA 6.0Gb/s ($100 with FS at Newegg) and the Western Digital Caviar Black WD2002FAEX 2TB 7200 RPM 64MB Cache SATA 6.0Gb/s[/URL] ($150 with FS at Newegg) as having a slightly higher "average disk rating" than the WD4500HLHX.

Using another benchmark, here are screen shots of the WD2001FASS, WD4500HLHX and WD1502FAEX using HD Tune (2 different versions if that makes any difference)

WD2001FASS.png
WD4500HLHX-01JJPV0.png
WD1502FAEX.png
 
I just moved all my production files over to the caviar black storage drive. I'm going to write off the extra $300 I spent on the system drive to my constant, ever-growing churn of bad purchasing decisions.

The supposed faster boot time of the SSD is also offset by the fact that loading AHCI drivers adds about 3-5 seconds to this system's POST routine. I think it might actually boot faster with a velociraptor.
 
aintz said:
if raptors werent so loud i would use it for storage.
Click to expand...
The last VR's I had were nothing like the origional Raptors in the noise department. They were no louder than a 7200rpm drive.

To me, this drive is too big for the OS & programs drive and too small for serious storage needs.
 
I thought about it but then looked at some benchmarks. This is still more than three times the price that a 1TB or 500GB F3 spinpoint can be found for and in most benchmarks like like Anandtech's storage bench or pcmark's HDD suite they don't perform all that much better.
 
The big deal about Raptors and all their offspring is the access times.

That's where it shines over other consumer HDs.
 
BababooeyHTJ said:
I thought about it but then looked at some benchmarks. This is still more than three times the price that a 1TB or 500GB F3 spinpoint can be found for and in most benchmarks like like Anandtech's storage bench or pcmark's HDD suite they don't perform all that much better.
Click to expand...

The areas where the velociraptors perform really well (and what they're sold for) is the low seek times, which help with low load times. That is the entire purpose of the velociraptors.

As for it being too large, I've started needing to uninstall programs because I can't fit them all on my velociraptor. If there was a really good deal on a 600gb raptor, I would probably get it instantly. And I know raptors to be extremely reliable, whereas cheap SSD's, not so much, I don't have the money to blow on an Intel or Crucial drive.
 
I don't have the money to blow on an Intel or Crucial drive.
Click to expand...
I understand where you're coming from but do yourself a favor and at least get an Intel from the G2 series drives.

I see the 80GB units going for @ 100.00 USD on Ebay and if you have less than 50GBs for your OS and programs, it'd be perfect for ya.
 
Tsumi said:
The areas where the velociraptors perform really well (and what they're sold for) is the low seek times, which help with low load times. That is the entire purpose of the velociraptors.
Click to expand...

But that doesn't necessarily translate to that much of an improvement in real world usage. Not enough to justify triple the price of a larger high end 7200rpm drive imo.
 
hi guys, my computer that i never turn off boots up 20 seconds quicker than my rapter now that i put an SSD in it.

arent i so smart for buying an SSD and getting this great performance price ratio vs a VR even though my photoshop/premier scratch disks and all my software runs on 7200 RPM drives!

arent I ?

non sarcastic version:
if you need speed, and not just want to grow your e-peen with your boot times, VRs still rock for the price. everybody else should buy 7200rpm drives or buy enough SSD storage to host their software.
 
I have had much better luck with raptors than SSD's.

I still have 74G raptors in my zfs server (14, raid10) that haven't failed with 32-45k power on hours...
 
Tsumi said:
The areas where the velociraptors perform really well (and what they're sold for) is the low seek times, which help with low load times. That is the entire purpose of the velociraptors.
Click to expand...


Theoretically you are right but practically there is no difference between my Vraptors (random access time 7) and WD Blacks 640GB (random access time 12.2) in load times. Windows 7 boots the same, files load the same etc. There is a palpable difference between my SSD drives and Vraptors on the other hand.
 
BababooeyHTJ said:
But that doesn't necessarily translate to that much of an improvement in real world usage. Not enough to justify triple the price of a larger high end 7200rpm drive imo.
Click to expand...
This is where the price/improvement comes into to play.

I've had Raptors and VRs since their release and IMHO, always thought they were a major improvement over other mechanical drives.

Of course opinions are like @ssholes.....everybody has one but they're all different. :)......At least in my humble opinion. :)
 
Old Hippie said:
This is where the price/improvement comes into to play.

I've had Raptors and VRs since their release and IMHO, always thought they were a major improvement over other mechanical drives.

Of course opinions are like @ssholes.....everybody has one but they're all different. :)......At least in my humble opinion. :)
Click to expand...

Thanks for your opinion. The only raptor that I have tried was a 74GB with 16MB cache and coming from a 250GB AAKS I wasn't impressed. Thats kind of what put me off to the newer drives.
 
The only raptor that I have tried was a 74GB with 16MB cache and coming from a 250GB AAKS I wasn't impressed.
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I'm suprised.

That was probably a Gen1 Raptor but you should have seem a pretty big difference against a 250GB anything.

At that time there was nothing that beat a Raptor so if you weren't impressed then.....maybe you're dead? :D
 
Old Hippie said:
I'm suprised.

That was probably a Gen1 Raptor but you should have seem a pretty big difference against a 250GB anything.

At that time there was nothing that beat a Raptor so if you weren't impressed then.....maybe you're dead? :D
Click to expand...

The 74Gb had pretty poor sequential reads so that was probably what did it. My OS was far more responsive on the two AAKS drives in raid 0 even with the 16ms or so access time. They were single platter drives and pretty quick ones at that.
 
BababooeyHTJ said:
The 74Gb had pretty poor sequential reads so that was probably what did it.
Click to expand...
Could be, and I'm not gonna bother with looking-up stats, but the 10,000 rpm should have been above 7200rpm drives in just about everything.

Whatever, it's a moot point. :)
 
Robstar said:
I have had much better luck with raptors than SSD's.

I still have 74G raptors in my zfs server (14, raid10) that haven't failed with 32-45k power on hours...
Click to expand...

thats alonggggg time lol. 2/4 of mine raptor 74gb died after 1 year. the other 2 however are still working today after 4 years.
 
Old Hippie said:
I understand where you're coming from but do yourself a favor and at least get an Intel from the G2 series drives.

I see the 80GB units going for @ 100.00 USD on Ebay and if you have less than 50GBs for your OS and programs, it'd be perfect for ya.
Click to expand...

I don't know if you read my earlier posts, but I've practically filled up my 300gb Velociraptor with programs.

As for not seeing a difference, the current generation Velociraptors are much better than those first gens. I don't see how you can make a generalization like Velociraptors aren't any better than regular hard drives if you've only had one. My OS loads noticeably faster than any of my family's other systems.
 
As for not seeing a difference, the current generation Velociraptors are much better than those first gens. I don't see how you can make a generalization like Velociraptors aren't any better than regular hard drives if you've only had one.
Click to expand...
:confused:

You must be thinking about somebody else or misinterpreted something I said.

I bought my first 74GB Raptor the day they were avaliable and have purchased at least one model of every generation.

I still have a 74GB version2 and one of those screaming 80GB Dell units.

I think the drives are great.
 
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