My small Raptor review

J

JasonG

Limp Gawd
Joined
Jul 9, 2003
Messages
202
Recently purchased one of the new 74gb Raptors to replace my 80gb Seagate Baracuda 7200rpm 2MB cache hard drive.
Sound
The Raptor is a tiny bit louder than the Seagate. I'm not sure if that's totally correct though. It might just be that it's a different pitch sound. Sounds like the noise is at a higher pitch. Barely noticeabe for me because I usually have the tv on or am playing some music. With only my computer on you can just barely hear either one of the drives over my 4 case fans. :)
Speed
The speed is a noticeable difference. The Raptor in everyday computing is a good bit faster. Double click to open a program and I can tell that it pops a bit faster. Went through several programs and games to try this out and it is easy to see the difference between the two drives.

I hope this is usefull for someone thinking about picking up a new Raptor. I only commented on the speed and sound because we all look at buying because it's supposed to be fast(and is) but some people are worried about the sound and I can't see that as an issue unless you want an absolute soundproof system.

JasonG
 
glad you liked your wd740

how much the speed increased as % ratio?

and do you have norton anti virus installed or any anti virus program with real time protection?
 
% wise would only be a guess... 15-20% for some of the things I've been doing. What used to take about 4 seconds to open now takes about 3. Load times are what seem nice a fast now.

JasonG
 
cool review bro :)
i purchased my raptor yesterday ...should be here by monday im guessing. im still on a 5400 rpm hard drive...so im expecting a pretty big boost lol.
 
Jason

are you using any anti virus program?

and what is your system specifications? and is it brand name?

i am asking this cos i have wd360 and 7k250 on dell 4600 and it is running slow but i have NAV2004, so i started to believe that the problem of being my program load time slow is because of the motherboard dell used is not optimized for fastest performance but slowest
 
Raptors are known to be louder then current 7.2k rpm drives...they run at 10k RPM....thats pretty fast =) The high pitch sound is cause of the speed difference.

Im thinking about it, but i would have to get a new board to get it. So no sense right now, cause if im going to get a new board im going to get a A64 chip.
 
i just dont see why peopel complain about harddrive noise.

i guess i've been around computers so long that i like hearing my raptors scream. guess i know there working.
 
My Raptor is far quieter than my old hard drive. The fluid bearings work wonders for drive noise.

-dB
 
Originally posted by blue_heart71
it is running slow but i have NAV2004
Click to expand...

my experience with NAV 200x (currently using 2004 also) is that the second you install this program it slows down most of your load times dramatically. I've ran my system for a few months without NAV and decided to finally put it on so I didn't get a virus...and as soon as I did...I felt the slow program opening times. Not saying this is your whole issue, but in my experience NAV has always tended to slow my program opening times. BTW, I've also been following your thread at storagereview.com:)

I just got my 74 raptor yesterday. I haven't had time to install it yet, but I did hook it up real quick and I was surprised and HAPPY to hear how quiet it was. I was just holding it in my hand and it wasn't attached to the case. But I always suspend my hard drives anyways to help keep noise down so I think it was an accurate test of the sound. I have a fairly quiet system (5 volted case fans x2, water cooling, modded video card with 80mm 5volted fan, antec truepower psu and from what I heard just testing the 74 raptor out last night...I don't think it'll add ANY noise to my system!!!

I'll post more on performance once I get a chance to install it.
 
I'm very happy with my first gen 36gb Raptor and considering upgrading to the new 74gb version since I will be reinstalling everything soon anyways.

My raptor is in a very quiet Dell case and I can barely notice the high pitched whine from the drive. The noise from seek is noticable louder then most 7200 drives. However it's nothing extreme and the extra performance more then makes up for it in my mind.
 
Yes I'm running AVG antivirus. I'm on a ASUS P4PE with a P4 3.06, 1GB Corsair XMS, ATI 9800np, Chieftec case with 4 90mm fans cooling it and making some noise.

JasonG
 
I can't say as for all AV programs, but the ones I have seen seem to default to scanning on access as well as create. Most have options that can set the scan only when the file is created or written to. The only caveat here is to remember to do an entire scan when you update your AV definition files, or to schedule them on a regular basis.

I have mine set to scan on create/write and a scanjob setup nightly (after updating). That way the performance hit is minimized.

This all depends on how frequently you update your defs, and how paranoid you are that you're going to open up that zip, exe or pif file by accident. ;)
 
quick question about heat... is the 36gig or 74gig version too hot to put in a small form factor? There really isn't much air flow and I know from experience that the raptors get pretty hot in stagnet air b/c I have two of them but I didn't know if anyone has any experience with these in a small form factor
 
i uninstalled NAV2004 and installed AVG 7.0 and the performance increased dramtically, now i feel the speed and fast response and much glad than before.

i setup the options in the virus to scan any incoming and outgoing email also to filter files downloaded from internet and this is what i care for, however the resident scan also working and i think this is enough for me, the only i did not choose was on close scan (that scans every file type), usualy i scan every new cd or disk i insert it before opening it and i hope AVG will do well as i am not thinking to back to NAV anymore

forgot to tell that AVG could found 2 trojan files where NAV could not find it, seems AVG programmed to catchs much more trojan files than NAV.
 
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