Raptor 150

[chaikovski2002]

Hi all, my raptor 150 is running out of room for my OS/Games/Apps. Do you have any suggestions on what to get? I love the speed of the raptor 150, but its almost full and I still have things I want to install. Should I get another one and raid0 them both giving me 300gigs total? Ive been reading up on some threads here that the new 320gig platter drives have caught up to the raptors performance, is that statement correct? Any input would be greatly appreciated, im looking for a purchase towards the middle of march.

 

[Farva]

Yes, synthetic benchmarks of reads are similar to a raptor, however, when you look at the access times, that is where the raptor eats other SATA drives for breakfast. Are you looking for just storage or more for performance?

 

[[LYL]Homer]

This is the part where you get a large (320+gb) disk and put all your data on it and clean up the Raptor to only have installed stuff.

 

[chaikovski2002]

Yes, synthetic benchmarks of reads are similar to a raptor, however, when you look at the access times, that is where the raptor eats other SATA drives for breakfast. Are you looking for just storage or more for performance?

Im looking for a bigger OS/Game/Apps drive. I have a 500gig drive for all my media and storage needs, its just that the 150 gigs isnt enough anymore, it was plenty 2 years ago, I never thought id run out of room on it until now, I have more games I want to install on it, and theres no more room.

 

[-=Antimatter=-]

I replaced my 74GB Raptor with one of the 320GB single-platter WD drives and I haven't missed it much. Now I have 200GB+ of games installed and I'm loving it.

 

[jasonlitka]

If you're only 10GB short you could get the 160GB Raptor that Dell sells. I've got three (two in my work box and one at home) and they're great.

 

[Farva]

Im looking for a bigger OS/Game/Apps drive. I have a 500gig drive for all my media and storage needs, its just that the 150 gigs isnt enough anymore, it was plenty 2 years ago, I never thought id run out of room on it until now, I have more games I want to install on it, and theres no more room.

Why not just buy a second raptor and keep them unRAIDed then? For my own clarification, the apps are installed applications right, not downloaded apps that are just sitting on your drive waiting to be installed?

 

[chaikovski2002]

Why not just buy a second raptor and keep them unRAIDed then? For my own clarification, the apps are installed applications right, not downloaded apps that are just sitting on your drive waiting to be installed?

Yeah, Apps are installed applications, I don't download anything to my main drive, thats what the other storage drive is for, so If I get another raptor and keep them unraided what about installation directories? They both cant be C: drive at the same time without the raid.

 

[[LYL]Homer]

That's a lot of installed stuff, do you really use it all? Can some be uninstalled?

 

[Farva]

Yeah, Apps are installed applications, I don't download anything to my main drive, thats what the other storage drive is for, so If I get another raptor and keep them unraided what about installation directories? They both cant be C: drive at the same time without the raid.

Well, it would be treated as any other drive. Perhaps you could have your OS and apps on own drive and then your games on the other?

 

[Grentz]

Yeah, Apps are installed applications, I don't download anything to my main drive, thats what the other storage drive is for, so If I get another raptor and keep them unraided what about installation directories? They both cant be C: drive at the same time without the raid.

Most programs let you pick where to install them during setup. Things do not HAVE to be installed to the C drive...

 

[chaikovski2002]

Most programs let you pick where to install them during setup. Things do not HAVE to be installed to the C drive...

So if I have my OS/Apps installed on one raptor and just my games installed on the other raptor, and I format somewhere down the road the OS/Apps drive and keep my raptor with the games as it is, will I still be able to play my games when I put in the newly formatted raptor? Or will it not work, since all the registry entries from the raptor with OS be erased from the format?

 

[-=Antimatter=-]

That's a lot of installed stuff, do you really use it all? Can some be uninstalled?

It's really not a lot of stuff. Steam is 15GB+, add another 15GB for Windows, 8GB for MATLAB, 12GB+ for Supreme Commander and expansion, 2GB for Office, and 10GB of other random apps/games and suddenly you don't have room for the new game you just bought.

 

[Grentz]

So if I have my OS/Apps installed on one raptor and just my games installed on the other raptor, and I format somewhere down the road the OS/Apps drive and keep my raptor with the games as it is, will I still be able to play my games when I put in the newly formatted raptor? Or will it not work, since all the registry entries from the raptor with OS be erased from the format?

You will have to reinstall them as like you said registry and other entries would be removed from the OS if you did a clean install.

 

[Farva]

You will have to reinstall them as like you said registry and other entries would be removed from the OS if you did a clean install.

Unless you backup the registry, but that would defeat the purpose of starting off fresh.

 

[Mithent]

Yes, synthetic benchmarks of reads are similar to a raptor, however, when you look at the access times, that is where the raptor eats other SATA drives for breakfast.

The Raptors do have very fast seek times, but that's also a synthetic test. With a single-user load, it's not often that there are large numbers of seeks going on all the time, and if there are only a few seeks per second then shaving off a few milliseconds doesn't mean much - especially if the Raptor isn't quite as fast at reading when it gets there. This is a different matter in a server situation where the server is trying to keep many different clients happy at once and constantly doing seeks, and that's why high-RPM drives are always favoured for file servers.

 

[Farva]

The Raptors do have very fast seek times, but that's also a synthetic test. With a single-user load, it's not often that there are large numbers of seeks going on all the time, and if there are only a few seeks per second then shaving off a few milliseconds doesn't mean much - especially if the Raptor isn't quite as fast at reading when it gets there. This is a different matter in a server situation where the server is trying to keep many different clients happy at once and constantly doing seeks, and that's why high-RPM drives are always favoured for file servers.

Access times are not synthetic, just as spindle speed is not synthetic. Data transfer is completely different as the data is not always congruent.

 

[Mithent]

Access times are not synthetic, just as spindle speed is not synthetic. Data transfer is completely different as the data is not always congruent.

Well, synthetic is probably inaccurate, but my point was more that it can't be directly correlated with end-user experience any more than a data transfer benchmark can; it depends what you're doing. A badly-fragmented disk would probably benefit from a high seek speed, whereas if the files are mostly large and contiguous then the high sequential transfer is going to be more important.