I'm seriously considering getting the 74gb Raptor as a primary boot drive, than using a 320 WD Caviar drive for all my other stuff. The price is huge considering the amount of storage, but it looks like a speedy lil drive. Nice looking too. But is it worth it or would it be better money spent going after another 320 gig drive? Will it significantly increase boot and access times? Is it a highly reliable drive?
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Is the Raptor drive worth it?
- Thread starter cleathco
- Start date
This is a loaded question. Is it worth it to me? Absolutely. Is it worth it more budget-minded folks? Sometimes no. Is the Raptor the fastest SATA drive out. YES. Do you want the fastest SATA drive out? You decide. IMO $120 is cheap for a hard drive anyway. Get two, go RAID0 and hold on.
One thing I feel should be mentioned, be prepared for how LOUD it is. I had heard how good these drives were, so I bought one and yeah its fast as hell and I love it, but damn I thought it was broken when I first got it the thing was so loud. Only when seeking or writing though.
I was going to say, my Raptor 150 is pretty silent in my machine, except when I'm moving a ton of files around. Rubber grommets in the case FTW!
you would pay $240 for a 2x 74GB raptor array rather than $175 for 1x 150GB raptor ?
I put 4x150GB Raptors in a client's monster PC recently (audio/video workstation, Core 2 Quad, 8GB DDR2 800, 4x750GB for storage with more to be added later, etc) and they're dead silent. He can put his ear directly on the side of the case and all he "hears" is the hum/vibration of the power supply fan (modded that for 7v operation) and the occasional cycling of the video card's cooling fan. But from 6" away, the noise floor as recorded by one of his pro condenser mics is around -50 dB.
Dead silent, for all practical purposes.
The Raptors are mounted in the 4 5.25" drive bays using pencils and rubber bands, suspended drives that have no real physical contact with the case at all. He has two Firewire Plextor external burners on the desktop - works better that way since the actual workstation is mounted in a custom desk so there's no need for him to maintain contact (or even sight) of it.
Brilliant piece of work, if I do say so myself. His audio room is so quiet you could hear a pin drop on the carpeted floor I swear. And he's happy, so that just means I'm happy and I get more business because of it.
Raptors? Noisy? Pishaw... not if you know what you're doing.
Dead silent, for all practical purposes.
The Raptors are mounted in the 4 5.25" drive bays using pencils and rubber bands, suspended drives that have no real physical contact with the case at all. He has two Firewire Plextor external burners on the desktop - works better that way since the actual workstation is mounted in a custom desk so there's no need for him to maintain contact (or even sight) of it.
Brilliant piece of work, if I do say so myself. His audio room is so quiet you could hear a pin drop on the carpeted floor I swear. And he's happy, so that just means I'm happy and I get more business because of it.
Raptors? Noisy? Pishaw... not if you know what you're doing.
Pencils and rubber bands?? Are you serious Clark?
Yes, I am completely serious.
Another post here from the HardForum.
And the illest hard disk drive coupling of all.
I should have taken pics of my assembly work when I did it because it's lightyears ahead of the first grouping. Maybe I'll go visit the guy and see - it's not like he calls me or anything. The boxen I construct and build never go down.
Justintoxicated
[H]F Junkie
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I don't hear my raptor either, it is barley audiable, but I'm using the stacker HD cage and I sealed up my case pretty good.
Nenu
[H]ardened
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Yes, I am completely serious.
Another post here from the HardForum.
And the illest hard disk drive coupling of all.
I should have taken pics of my assembly work when I did it because it's lightyears ahead of the first grouping. Maybe I'll go visit the guy and see - it's not like he calls me or anything. The boxen I construct and build never go down.
hehe splendid.
guess what I'm doing this weekend
When I parted out my old build my 150gb raptor went with it. I'm now using the new seagate 7200.10 with the single 250gb platter and 16mb cache. The only difference I notice is the extra $120 I have from buying that instead of another raptor. Raptors used to be the shit, I loved my dual 74s in raid0 years ago (before 150 came out). But "regular" drives have caught up and raptors are no longer worth the price. Just my opinion. I love my new seagate, super thin, cool, quiet, big, and fast.
tuskenraider
Gawd
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Sorry your butt dyno is broke. I find it amusing all the naysayers telling me my Raptor is hot, when it runs cooler than my Seagate .10, so go figure. Seagates average seek times are still among the slowest(15+ ms). The newest ones have great STR, which is nice if you move big files around all day, I don't. So a few of the largest, and expensive) new drives match the Raptor in some real world tests, but they're still the best overall. You pay for the best. Always have, always will.
D
Deleted member 89137
Guest
I just got one and I can't say much about it except for 2 things....
LOUD
and
FAST
That's about it.
LOUD
and
FAST
That's about it.
Which seagate do you have? Since you mentioned 15ms seek/high temps I assume it isn't the new one with a single platter and a 8ms seek. Glad you decided to put your two cents in though even without having experience with the drive that I feel is the only one out there that makes the raptor not worth the money.
tuskenraider
Gawd
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My sig says .10, I bought it a month ago. As far as high temps, I said that the Raptor runs cooler, not that any run hot. Let's see .11, same seek times with, more STR, still slower. What testing, beyond an STR benchmark, have you done to determine how great your new drive is?
Old one then.
I would hope your raptor runs cooler than a 500gb 7200.10, those things are hot.
What is the seek time on my drive? The one I have been refering to this whole time that you can't seem to grasp...
Here I'll make it easy, ST3250410AS
I didn't need a benchmark to know that my 8800GTX is faster than my 1950XTX. I didn't need a benchmark to tell me that my Q6600 is faster than my E6600. But I DO need a benchmark to prove that a raptor is faster than a seagate. So what the hell is the point? We are not talking about pennies here. The raptor is $180 and the seagate is $70. I would rather have a drive that is slower on paper, virtually the same in practice, and half the price.
tuskenraider
Gawd
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ST3250410AS, yes the one that specs the same in seek as the older drives according to Seagate. As far as your other analogies, well most know that the evolution of hard drive tech is much slower and the performance gains much smaller between generations. Claiming how much of an improvement it is with no facts to back it up is typical for the internet I guess. My 500GB drive runs at 29C, hot?
Sorry, I still can't find where it says my drive has 16ms seek time. Everywhere I look it says 8.5?
Again, if you could point me in the direction to where I said my seagate is faster than my raptor I would appreciate it.
To spell this out for you, the seagate is not faster. The raptor beats it on paper and in most benchmarks. The seagate is a drive that's for all intents and purposes, identical to a raptor in the real world (the one I live in, where we have seagates and 8800s instead of raptors and x1900s).
tuskenraider
Gawd
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Your right, my mistake. I wrongly wrote seek instead of average read. Average read is seek+latency, though Seagates numbers don't jive with benchmarks, like most manufacturers. You'll find 15.1ms all over the forums, which is slow compared to 12-13ms of many other 7200rpm drives. The point was besides a little higher STR, the .11 drives performance isn't much better.
Maybe a bad interpretation on my part.............
I disagree, as do most others who have posted. They won't need to try the new Seagate, with almost the same specs as the old, to feel any different. Been fun.......cheerio.
Nenu
[H]ardened
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Nowhere seems to quote the Average Latency which is the figure normally used for comparison.
The last item on this page shows the drives Latency.
http://shopping.pathfinder.gr/?q=St3250410as
Here is the text if you dont fancy clicking the link
250GB SEAGATE ST3250410AS
Barracuda 7200.10, 250GB, 7200 rpm, 16MB cache, average seek 8,5ms, average latency 4,16ms, SATA II. Βάρος 382gr, 5 χρόνια εγγύηση
Hardware: Σκληροί Δίσκοι
thebeephaha
2[H]4U
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Hehe, yep... I went from two silent 7200.10 drives in RAID0 and replaced them with two Raptors and was shocked by the noise, but the speed is like drugs, I just ordered two more Raptors and a hardware raid controller to run all 4 in RAID0.
Hehe, yep... I went from two silent 7200.10 drives in RAID0 and replaced them with two Raptors and was shocked by the noise, but the speed is like drugs, I just ordered two more Raptors and a hardware raid controller to run all 4 in RAID0.
Awesome. I just ordered a 3rd WD740ADFD for my RAID0 array. I simply needed more space for the pig that is Vx64, I'm sure the additional throughput will be nice too.
Please post your thoughts when you get your new drives!
I think in the long run what separates the Raptor from the rest of the pack is the sheer speed it musters because of that 10K rpm and the random access times. Get a drive that has a 10ms or higher average random access time and put it up against a Raptor with the effective average random access times they are capable of and the Raptor will destroy it in regular day to day operation.
There's a difference in average read speeds that can be nearly identical nowadays - a Raptor and some high end 1TB drive or one of the Seagate 7200.10/.11 series drives might post the same average read speeds, but it's that access time the Raptor is capable of that leaves the others in the dust.
If you've never used a machine that is SNAPPY and RESPONSIVE to everything you're doing, then you don't have anything to base a judgment on. Look at it this way:
Say you have 1,000 small files you need to move from one partition on a drive to another on the same drive. Say you have two hard drives set up relatively the same: one is a Raptor, the other is a <insert whatever product you want here>. Now, look at the random access times. The Raptor comes in with the effective average random access time of roughly 6ms give or take a millisecond; the other drive, a 7200 rpm drive (for this test, both drives have 16MB buffers) has effective average random access times of 10ms or more. Let's also state that the drives are within a few percentage points of each other for sustained transfer rates (STR is what the usual abbreviation you'll see). Give the Raptor 75MB/s and the 7200 rpm drive 70-75MB/s, so they're almost even there for STR as far as read operations are concerned which is all we care about for this test.
Now, for 1000 small files, that's roughly 1000 transactions the drives have to do to find the files in the first place, then read a chunk of them (let's say they're all 1KB files, perfect 1024KB files), then another 1000 transactions to write them to another partition on the same drive. Looking at the basic math and timing here, it might be expressed as:
Raptor: 2000 x ~6ms = 12,000 milliseconds, or 12 seconds approximately.
7200: 2000 x ~10ms = 20,000 milliseconds, or 20 seconds approximately.
Now, considering the drives can pump out data at nearly the same speed (70-75MB/s sustained), then it comes down to how fast the drive(s) can actually acquire the data it needs to transfer around in the first place. 8 seconds for a transfer like that - and this is truly a simplistic analogy for all of the find/read/move/write operation, I admit that - that adds up over time because the Raptor is faster in the long run over the other 7200 drives regardless of the STR. Those timing differences add up, and in the long run you end up with a much snappier, more responsive system overall.
I've been using ATA/IDE drives for a long damned time, and recently I acquired an older Dell Precision 530MT workstation that has 2 73GB Seagate 10K RPM U160 SCSI drives in it. Their access times aren't all that but, they do show themselves as particularly snappy when compared to most of the ATA/IDE drives I've put in this box since I acquired it. Whenever I'm trying to do a multitude of things, the Seagates outperform an old ATA133 Maxtor I have - and the Seagates are about 4 years older. It's that 10K RPM and low CPU time that makes the difference.
Yes, Raptors are expensive, but for the price, and for the performance they can provide, there's really nothing out there to match them currently. I know some of the diehard SCSI/Fiber Channel people simply laugh at Raptors, but for Joe Average, consumer that happens to own a computer, putting a Raptor in their PC is like putting Nitrous Oxide into the intake manifold of their cars. It's a burst in speed and performance they love, and once they get a taste, they're not interested in "Life in the slow lane" anymore.
My next step will be trying to get some U320 15K Cheetahs someday and a proper U320 SCSI controller.
There's a difference in average read speeds that can be nearly identical nowadays - a Raptor and some high end 1TB drive or one of the Seagate 7200.10/.11 series drives might post the same average read speeds, but it's that access time the Raptor is capable of that leaves the others in the dust.
If you've never used a machine that is SNAPPY and RESPONSIVE to everything you're doing, then you don't have anything to base a judgment on. Look at it this way:
Say you have 1,000 small files you need to move from one partition on a drive to another on the same drive. Say you have two hard drives set up relatively the same: one is a Raptor, the other is a <insert whatever product you want here>. Now, look at the random access times. The Raptor comes in with the effective average random access time of roughly 6ms give or take a millisecond; the other drive, a 7200 rpm drive (for this test, both drives have 16MB buffers) has effective average random access times of 10ms or more. Let's also state that the drives are within a few percentage points of each other for sustained transfer rates (STR is what the usual abbreviation you'll see). Give the Raptor 75MB/s and the 7200 rpm drive 70-75MB/s, so they're almost even there for STR as far as read operations are concerned which is all we care about for this test.
Now, for 1000 small files, that's roughly 1000 transactions the drives have to do to find the files in the first place, then read a chunk of them (let's say they're all 1KB files, perfect 1024KB files), then another 1000 transactions to write them to another partition on the same drive. Looking at the basic math and timing here, it might be expressed as:
Raptor: 2000 x ~6ms = 12,000 milliseconds, or 12 seconds approximately.
7200: 2000 x ~10ms = 20,000 milliseconds, or 20 seconds approximately.
Now, considering the drives can pump out data at nearly the same speed (70-75MB/s sustained), then it comes down to how fast the drive(s) can actually acquire the data it needs to transfer around in the first place. 8 seconds for a transfer like that - and this is truly a simplistic analogy for all of the find/read/move/write operation, I admit that - that adds up over time because the Raptor is faster in the long run over the other 7200 drives regardless of the STR. Those timing differences add up, and in the long run you end up with a much snappier, more responsive system overall.
I've been using ATA/IDE drives for a long damned time, and recently I acquired an older Dell Precision 530MT workstation that has 2 73GB Seagate 10K RPM U160 SCSI drives in it. Their access times aren't all that but, they do show themselves as particularly snappy when compared to most of the ATA/IDE drives I've put in this box since I acquired it. Whenever I'm trying to do a multitude of things, the Seagates outperform an old ATA133 Maxtor I have - and the Seagates are about 4 years older. It's that 10K RPM and low CPU time that makes the difference.
Yes, Raptors are expensive, but for the price, and for the performance they can provide, there's really nothing out there to match them currently. I know some of the diehard SCSI/Fiber Channel people simply laugh at Raptors, but for Joe Average, consumer that happens to own a computer, putting a Raptor in their PC is like putting Nitrous Oxide into the intake manifold of their cars. It's a burst in speed and performance they love, and once they get a taste, they're not interested in "Life in the slow lane" anymore.
My next step will be trying to get some U320 15K Cheetahs someday and a proper U320 SCSI controller.
I think in the long run what separates the Raptor from the rest of the pack is the sheer speed it musters because of that 10K rpm and the random access times. Get a drive that has a 10ms or higher average random access time and put it up against a Raptor with the effective average random access times they are capable of and the Raptor will destroy it in regular day to day operation.
There's a difference in average read speeds that can be nearly identical nowadays - a Raptor and some high end 1TB drive or one of the Seagate 7200.10/.11 series drives might post the same average read speeds, but it's that access time the Raptor is capable of that leaves the others in the dust.
If you've never used a machine that is SNAPPY and RESPONSIVE to everything you're doing, then you don't have anything to base a judgment on. Look at it this way:
Say you have 1,000 small files you need to move from one partition on a drive to another on the same drive. Say you have two hard drives set up relatively the same: one is a Raptor, the other is a <insert whatever product you want here>. Now, look at the random access times. The Raptor comes in with the effective average random access time of roughly 6ms give or take a millisecond; the other drive, a 7200 rpm drive (for this test, both drives have 16MB buffers) has effective average random access times of 10ms or more. Let's also state that the drives are within a few percentage points of each other for sustained transfer rates (STR is what the usual abbreviation you'll see). Give the Raptor 75MB/s and the 7200 rpm drive 70-75MB/s, so they're almost even there for STR as far as read operations are concerned which is all we care about for this test.
Now, for 1000 small files, that's roughly 1000 transactions the drives have to do to find the files in the first place, then read a chunk of them (let's say they're all 1KB files, perfect 1024KB files), then another 1000 transactions to write them to another partition on the same drive. Looking at the basic math and timing here, it might be expressed as:
Raptor: 2000 x ~6ms = 12,000 milliseconds, or 12 seconds approximately.
7200: 2000 x ~10ms = 20,000 milliseconds, or 20 seconds approximately.
Now, considering the drives can pump out data at nearly the same speed (70-75MB/s sustained), then it comes down to how fast the drive(s) can actually acquire the data it needs to transfer around in the first place. 8 seconds for a transfer like that - and this is truly a simplistic analogy for all of the find/read/move/write operation, I admit that - that adds up over time because the Raptor is faster in the long run over the other 7200 drives regardless of the STR. Those timing differences add up, and in the long run you end up with a much snappier, more responsive system overall.
I've been using ATA/IDE drives for a long damned time, and recently I acquired an older Dell Precision 530MT workstation that has 2 73GB Seagate 10K RPM U160 SCSI drives in it. Their access times aren't all that but, they do show themselves as particularly snappy when compared to most of the ATA/IDE drives I've put in this box since I acquired it. Whenever I'm trying to do a multitude of things, the Seagates outperform an old ATA133 Maxtor I have - and the Seagates are about 4 years older. It's that 10K RPM and low CPU time that makes the difference.
Yes, Raptors are expensive, but for the price, and for the performance they can provide, there's really nothing out there to match them currently. I know some of the diehard SCSI/Fiber Channel people simply laugh at Raptors, but for Joe Average, consumer that happens to own a computer, putting a Raptor in their PC is like putting Nitrous Oxide into the intake manifold of their cars. It's a burst in speed and performance they love, and once they get a taste, they're not interested in "Life in the slow lane" anymore.
My next step will be trying to get some U320 15K Cheetahs someday and a proper U320 SCSI controller.
Nice post. Been using Raptors since they came out - nothing really compares once you've used them. I've built many systems without them for friends and there's just no comparison.
Old Hippie
Supreme [H]ardness
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- Oct 31, 2005
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I'll second that emotion!
Yes, I am completely serious.
Another post here from the HardForum.
And the illest hard disk drive coupling of all.
I should have taken pics of my assembly work when I did it because it's lightyears ahead of the first grouping. Maybe I'll go visit the guy and see - it's not like he calls me or anything. The boxen I construct and build never go down.
What happens when the rubber band becomes aged and brittle?
Hard drive crash (get the pun)
silent mike
n00b
- Joined
- Jan 20, 2005
- Messages
- 10
No one should be using an ordinary rubber band. The ideal material is clothing elastic. It has a core of small multiple rubber cords. The exterior is woven polyester (or something like that) which is tough and still stretchy. It's extremely difficult to break without deliberately taking a sharp blade to it. It may gradually sag over time, though, especially in a hot climate. My original dual HDD suspension, pictured below, was >5 years old, and still working with the same clothing elastic when I finally took it apart to replace the drives earlier this year.
Went strong for >5 years...