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Question about WD Raptor drives

S

Smooothie

n00b
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Dec 21, 2004
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I'm considering purchasing a 74GB WD Raptor SATA drive soon because I'd really like a faster boot drive. Currently I have an 80GB 7200rpm WD HDD w/8MB cache as my boot drive & 120GB 7200rpm WD HDD w/2MB cache as my storage/backup drive.

I'm just wondering how much noiser they are than 7200rpm drives? Also, how much hotter do they run?

My current rig is in an Antec Lanboy case with an 80mm intake & exhaust fan, including the 2 fans in the PS. The way I figure, I may not notice the increase in noise from the Raptor because the system is fairly noisy as it is with the case fans, CPU fan, & fans on my BFG 6800 GT (which is pretty loud itself).

I'm more concerned about heat. If it's really hotter than typical drives, I may invest in an HDD cooler for it, possibly a kit that mounts in a 5-1/4 drive bay.

My last question is regarding speed. I'm sure these things are fast, but just how fast compared to newer 7200rpm HDDs?

I won't be RAIDin anytime soon, so this will be my new boot drive. I ask about speed because I've read a few reviews that pit the Raptor against some newer drives like WD's own 250 & 300GB drives with 8MB caches & the Maxtor Diamond Max 10 series drives with 16MB caches & according to the benchmarks, they weren't too far behind the Raptor.

Apparently this is partly due to the fact that these newer drives have higher platter densities, which really speed up access, along with the drive cache. Also, NCQ wasn't utilized during these benchmarks.

I'm just thinking, if they're not that much faster as stand alone drives, I may just go with a 250GB drive, which is about the same price as the Raptor, at least on Newegg's site anyway.

Thanks in advance!! :confused:
 
I owned a 36GB raptor which is basically the same thing, they arent loud at all i think they are quieter than some 7200rpm's i have herd, and as for heat the are cool to the touch if you have a fan blowing on them....but with no fan i litterly could have cooked an egg on it.

incomudro
 
Look in the sticky buyer's guide at the top of this forum. You'll see, and I have links to prove it, that Raptor is the fastest thing going on SATA. That speed comes at a much higher cost per GB, and is it not that much faster than a top flight 7200RPM drive (Hitachi 7K400/Maxtor MaxLineIII, which are also recommended in the guide) A Raptor will put your current 80GB WD to shame though. The motors are pretty quiet FDB units, so the motor 'whine' is not much of a problem on them. However, the much faster seeks on a Raptor mean that you will be able to hear seek noises, and they will be louder than all but the worst 7200 drives. Ventilation is also a must, although heatsinks aren't necessary. If you've got a front fan, don't worry about it.

The Raptor is not more than 20% faster than the fastest 7200RPM drives available. The 36GB version is actually barely even with the latest and greatest in 7200 units. If you want fast 7200RPM drives, look at DM10/MLIII or Hitachi's drives. WD's BB/JB/JD drives, along with Maxtor's consumer drives, and most any 7200 drive from Samsung or Seagate is going to lag behind Maxtor's and Hitachi's best.
 
MaxPC just said the DiamandMax drive is just a tiny bit behind the Raptor and it's 16mb cach makes it almost even. And being about 5x's cheaper, any oppinions?
 
If you need more than 73GB of space, then the Maxtor 16MB drives are the only way to fly. NCQ is gravy on top of that if you will be multi-tasking with more than one disk intensive activity at a time. If you foresee staying under 73GB, the the Raptor will be slightly faster. I know for a fact that 73GB is not nearly enough for me, but if the box will only have Windows and the latest games installed on it that you actually play, that may be enough. There is no question that returns diminish pretty rapidly in the hard drive world after the fastest 7200RPM drives, esepcially in cost per GB.
 
Someone please correct me if I'm wrong, but doesn't NCQ only work if you have an SATA controller that supports it? If that's the case, my Asus P4P800 Deluxe's ICH5R won't be able to utilize the technology. :confused:
 
Correct. Both the controller and the drive must support NCQ for NCQ to work. However, both drives and controllers are backwards compatible with each other. That was one of the goals of the evolutionary SATA standards. They are designed to be compatible with all versions, and they will run at the highest common feature set. If you upgrade to a mobo or add-in card that supports NCQ, your drives will be good to go if they are NCQ ready as well.
 
That's what I figured. So, since I won't see any performance improvements from my current mobo as far as NCQ is concerned, does that mean that most of the performance increases will be negated?

Or will I still see a good bump in performance due to the Maxtor's improved firmware logic, increased cache, & larger areal platter density?

I'm guessing this will still be a speedier drive than my current 80GB WD, especially because it's packing more bits per platter. As much as I'd love to have a Raptor, I think the opportunity for far more storage starts to make the newer 7200rpm drives look enticing. I mostly game & do archives of my DVDs (not so much full blown editing), so as long as a new 7200rpm drive shows a noticeable speed improvement over my current setup, I'd be pretty happy.
 
You are correct. A 16MB cache Maxtor will hold all of yur DVDs and blow away your old 80GB. This link shows the that the MaxLineIII (The DiamondMax10 is the same drive but with a shorter warranty) pretty thoroughly trashing the 80GB WD, and that the impact of NCQ is pretty small except in the bootup test. That should answer your questions and make you feel pretty good about picking up one of those beastly new Maxtor 7200 RPM drives.
 
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