Best OS/apps hard drive?

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goosecat

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I'm building a new computer and plan on having a HD for OS/apps only with other drives handling data, media, and backup.

What would be the best hard drive for OS/apps? I searched around and couldn't find a direct answer to my question. The most important factors for me are performance and quietness.

I'm thinking that a simple 160gb from WD or Seagate might be the best option. But would say the new WD 640gb provide significantly better performance? I know that the size is overkill for a simple OS/apps drive.

Thanks for your thoughts.
 
raptor if you want to spend the $$ otherwise a nice single platter 160 or 320 gb, like the wd1600ys or the new wd3200aaks
 
axan said:
raptor if you want to spend the $$ otherwise a nice single platter 160 or 320 gb, like the wd1600ys or the new wd3200aaks
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Raptors are loud, expensive, and not much faster than modern 7200RPM drives.

There's a single platter 320GB version of the 640GB drive you were considering, OP, which is just as fast. That, or the Samsung F1 series and Seagate Barracuda 7200.11 series drives are pretty much just as fast. A couple MB/s transfer either way isn't going to matter.
 
Raptors aren't that loud, actually. Seems to be a myth that keeps being perpetrated everywhere anyone can post it, oh well. As for performance, while it's true that today's big cap drives like 500s, 700s, and now full on terabyte drives can match the Raptors with pure read performance in sequential stuff, the Raptors still stomp the crap out of all of them in pure access time. So, as an operating system drive, a Raptor is still the king when it comes to all out straight-forward no BS application/OS performance - as far as SATA/IDE drives are concerned.

A Raptor 150 as an operating system drive and some other big drive(s) for media storage would create a kickass high perf system that will do well for a long time to come.
 
what ^ said, access time is important for os etc, now whether it's worth the extra $$$ that's a diff story.
As for the noise, if you use rubber mounts or suspend the raptor you won't hear a peap from it. They are loud when they are mounted improperly to a flimsy case, then when they spin up the 10k rpms vibrate/resonate the whole case and that's why ppl think they are loud. If you mount them properly noise is not an issue
 
axan said:
raptor if you want to spend the $$ otherwise a nice single platter 160 or 320 gb, like the wd1600ys or the new wd3200aaks
Click to expand...

Many people like the raptor but I'm still wary about the noise having never heard it for myself. I've read that the new 7200 drives like the WD 640gb come close to the raptor in performance. So how do the 160 or 320gb drives compare to the 640gb or raptor? If they are close in performance, I'll get the smaller drive because of lower cost.
 
goosecat said:
Many people like the raptor but I'm still wary about the noise having never heard it for myself. I've read that the new 7200 drives like the WD 640gb come close to the raptor in performance. So how do the 160 or 320gb drives compare to the 640gb or raptor? If they are close in performance, I'll get the smaller drive because of lower cost.
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i have a 74GB Raptor and while it is louder than other drives, its not THAT loud. I don't notice it 90% of the time, but I guess it depends. I know that when the central air kicks in at my house, the air rushing through the vents drowns out the sound of the Raptor, so maybe that might give you a better indication of the noise levels.

With that being said though, I would also be interested in seeing how close the 160 comes in performance to the Raptor. I am in the market for a bigger harddrive in the 150-160GB range, but can't justify spending >$180 for a Raptor X when a 160GB Caviar with 16MB cache is ~$60. If the difference in performance is less than 10%, then I'll go for the Caviar.
 
axan said:
raptor if you want to spend the $$ otherwise a nice single platter 160 or 320 gb, like the wd1600ys or the new wd3200aaks
Click to expand...

As far as the WD's, which 160gb is better for OS/apps - the Caviar SE WD1600AAJS or the Caviar RE WD1600YS?

The RE is the enterprise version which supposedly may be more reliable and has a longer 5yr warranty.

My guess is there isn't any difference?
 
+1 on the Raptor/Noise issue. That being, it's a non-issue if you use rubber grommets when you mount the drive in a decently built case. My GPU fan makes more noise than the Raptor does.
 
Term-X said:
+1 on the Raptor/Noise issue. That being, it's a non-issue if you use rubber grommets when you mount the drive in a decently built case. My GPU fan makes more noise than the Raptor does.
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So with noise being a non-issue, does the Raptor in the real world noticeably outperform a 160gb drive? The Raptor costs about $100 more.
 
goosecat said:
So with noise being a non-issue, does the Raptor in the real world noticeably outperform a 160gb drive? The Raptor costs about $100 more.
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No. We're talking about a few seconds difference in startup time. Totally not worthwhile.
 
goosecat said:
So with noise being a non-issue, does the Raptor in the real world noticeably outperform a 160gb drive? The Raptor costs about $100 more.
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well it is faster, undeniably. But noticeably faster is a matter of personal perceptions. You might consider an extra 2 seconds to load a file as insignificant, while someone else might think that's an eternity. The difference we're talking about in terms of my personal observations is maybe 2-10 seconds difference in load times (compared to my previous 120GB 7200 Maxtor with 8MB cache), depending on what you're doing.
 
wd1600ys over the aajs, 16mb cache + it's faster, i benched both of them the ys is about 5mb/s faster
 
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