Raptor vs. Pterodactyl Byte (Terabyte) [WD Raptor 150gb vs. Hitachi Deskstar 1000gb]

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gramarye

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Dec 6, 2006
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Good Evening, I basically have the following drives and am seeking your opinions:

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Western Digital Raptor 150gb - WD1500ADFD


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Hitachi Deskstar 7K1000 - HDS721010KLA330

Background:
Originally, I was going to have the Hitachi Deskstar serve as my external drive where I backup pretty much all my files, while I would serve the 150gb Raptor as my Primary drive for installing the operating system to boot-off of. (Possibly Dual-Boot). Maybe I can eliminate one and save some money. It seems most are choosing what seems to be more space/capacity vs. minimal speed-difference performance. Maybe I'll just keep two if they're both good?

Purposes:
This is kind of a side note, but in case it plays a significant factor, I primarily look forward to using either of these (or both) drives to have a good/fast/secure scratch disk. I'm constantly busied by assigned graphic design work load and use such applications as Adobe Flash, Adobe Photoshop, Adobe Illustrator, I also undertake a lot of Video Production work in my freelance hours as well. I strongly feel both needs a good scratch disk whether or not I choose to have an external or primary in the end.

*Applications I work with: Adobe Flash, Adobe Illustrator, Adobe Photoshop, Final Cut Suite, Safari, Opera, Firefox, IE (cause I have to), Fetch, CuteFTP, Occasionaly ProTools, I don't play Video Games.

Decision:
But realizing and researching some benchmarks and tests between the two, I'm still having trouble on deciding what the final verdict should be. I don't have that much of a knowledge or background in this, so I'm here seeking your opinions. I am very interested and am looking forward reading your responses.

Thanks for your time, I really appreciate it.
 
Keeping both is probably a good choice. Use the 1TB drive as an external backup device, and the internal Raptor as a boot/scratch disk for Photoshop et al.
 
Thanks for the replies. Both points are great, I still can't seem to decide. I understand using a scratch disk on the Raptor is ideal, but I've worked with files that can be quite large, does anyone run their scratch disks on a secondary drive? Also, has anyone used the Deskstar drive as their Primary drive? Would that not be recommended? This computer would be on 24/7.

Again, thanks for the replies, I look forward to hearing more from you guys, and others.
 
How large is "large"? Even, say, a 100 megapixel image with 50 layers will fit on a Raptor with no problems.

The Deskstar is likely to be pretty fast in terms of sequential transfer rate, but the Raptor will have seek times approximately half that of the Deskstar. What that means for your workload depends. The ultimate determinator of what's best is trying it both ways.
 
unhappy_mage said:
How large is "large"? Even, say, a 100 megapixel image with 50 layers will fit on a Raptor with no problems.

The Deskstar is likely to be pretty fast in terms of sequential transfer rate, but the Raptor will have seek times approximately half that of the Deskstar. What that means for your workload depends. The ultimate determinator of what's best is trying it both ways.
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Large was referring to when I had about 350gb-ish load of raw footage training videos from this corporation I worked a few projects for. In total it was about 6-8 hours of raw footage I had to edit. So there large file concern was for the video production work I do. I really appreciate these replies, I'm learning quite a bit more each time.

I often see people use a Raptor as their primary drive, I've never heard of other using a Terabyte drive for the primary disk, i think I'm leaning more towards that, but I just needed to learn a little bit more I guess. Are 2 Raptors in RAID reliable? (I understand it depends on which RAID format to choose)

Have you, or anyone worked with a scratch disk on an external drive? The only thing is that it may be limited to whatever speed its input is, which may be USB/Firewire/Esata...
 
I would use the 750GB drive version over the 1TB version.

The 750GB are much faster, especially the one from Seagate (forgot the model).
The WD7500AAKS is also a good choice.

Further, if you deal with multiple files, having them on separate drives should help even more.
Hence, two 500GBs would do even better.
 
since it seems this is a production box and the data matters, if you decide to go with a raid, chose one that has a parity so that data can be rebuilt. I don't know a whole lot about raid setups as I have't had to deal with them in a few years, but I know that if your data matters...then 0 isn't for you ;)

If it were me and I had the money, I'd use the Raptor as the primary drive, get a 2nd raptor and setup that for use in Photoshop for the scratchdisk and windows pagefile, and use the Hitachi for storage.

If you don't have enough for a second raptor, I'd get something like a 320gb drive to use as primary, use the raptor as pagefile and scratch disk, and the hitachi as storage.

that's just me though ;) There are a lot more people on here that know a lot more about this than I do. I don't know if photoshop still benefits from having the scratch on a sperate physical drive or not.
 
I went through the same decision recently. Though I'm a gamer, not using my computer for graphics. I found some compelling logic for going with a 1TB drive over a Raptor. While the platters are only spinning at 7200 RPM, the TB drives have much greater density than the Raptor, so have much greater sequential read and write performance. On the other hand density doesn't mean much when it comes to random access, where the Raptor can still tear it up.

After struggling with this, I finally decided if it's really this dang confusing, I might as well go with the 1TB drive, because it has a little extra capacity over the Raptor. And I could just make a 150GB Raptor size partition at the beginning of the disk where the speeds are the greatest for performance dependent needs and partition out the rest of the drive for data storage.

I went with the Samsung Spinpoint F1 because of the 334GB platter density. Though I have yet to make it my primary drive. I still have a WD74GD Raptor as my primary. I figure it could be beneficial to have separate physical drives for OS and other stuff.
 
spectrumbx said:
I would use the 750GB drive version over the 1TB version.

The 750GB are much faster, especially the one from Seagate (forgot the model).
The WD7500AAKS is also a good choice.

Further, if you deal with multiple files, having them on separate drives should help even more.
Hence, two 500GBs would do even better.
Click to expand...

Thanks for the response spectrumbx, I'll make that assumption that you meant to serve a 750gb as the primary drive over the 1TB. For my situation, I was eying a 750gb for quite some time, but I managed a 1TB deal at prices that would be for 750gb. At that time, I didn't have any intention of putting the 750 or 1Tb as a primary drive. They were all supposed to be treated as an external storage (I already had a 500gb external, and it's already full). So I'm getting a vote on a 750gb or a 1TB instead of Raptor (you've seem to not mention the Raptor at all...)

Now I see endless possibilities. Buying another may seem like an option, hey, I might even settle for something like this, just because I can't seem to make up my mind, and time is money right? ;)


nst6563 said:
since it seems this is a production box and the data matters, if you decide to go with a raid, chose one that has a parity so that data can be rebuilt. I don't know a whole lot about raid setups as I have't had to deal with them in a few years, but I know that if your data matters...then 0 isn't for you ;)

If it were me and I had the money, I'd use the Raptor as the primary drive, get a 2nd raptor and setup that for use in Photoshop for the scratchdisk and windows pagefile, and use the Hitachi for storage.

If you don't have enough for a second raptor, I'd get something like a 320gb drive to use as primary, use the raptor as pagefile and scratch disk, and the hitachi as storage.

that's just me though ;) There are a lot more people on here that know a lot more about this than I do. I don't know if photoshop still benefits from having the scratch on a sperate physical drive or not.
Click to expand...


Thanks for the RAID tip, nst6563. I've never really thought I would consider hard drive speed as a major factor in my production work. Maybe it still isn't, and it's just non-existent? ...and that I've decided to try a Raptor since I've read countless recommendations and found a deal at the same time.

You've seem to bring up the idea of purchasing another Raptor, if I were to, than things would be a lot easier as far as this decision/debate. If I had 2 Raptors, I would probably RAID them in a safe array, and having a little less than 300gb, should be enough space as a Primary disk.

I'll be honest, I'm still new to what "Scratch Disk" is, and was introduced in the idea of having a fast one would better perform the load times I encounter, especially dealing with several layers, or in video production, when encoding. The 320gb seems like a great idea, since it's in an affordable range...wow like I've mentioned before, now it seems like endless possibilities!

If I were to consider the 320gb, than I would probably use the RAID 2x 250gb Hard Drives I have original as an External, now that I have the 1TB, I won't need those drives...


Ravynmagi said:
I went through the same decision recently. Though I'm a gamer, not using my computer for graphics. I found some compelling logic for going with a 1TB drive over a Raptor. While the platters are only spinning at 7200 RPM, the TB drives have much greater density than the Raptor, so have much greater sequential read and write performance. On the other hand density doesn't mean much when it comes to random access, where the Raptor can still tear it up.

After struggling with this, I finally decided if it's really this dang confusing, I might as well go with the 1TB drive, because it has a little extra capacity over the Raptor. And I could just make a 150GB Raptor size partition at the beginning of the disk where the speeds are the greatest for performance dependent needs and partition out the rest of the drive for data storage.

I went with the Samsung Spinpoint F1 because of the 334GB platter density. Though I have yet to make it my primary drive. I still have a WD74GD Raptor as my primary. I figure it could be beneficial to have separate physical drives for OS and other stuff.
Click to expand...

Interesting stuff there Ravynmagi. I'm understanding more about densities and spinning RPMS...along with Random access speeds. If I were to choose the TB drive as my Primary Disk, I would probably just split it 750gb for OS X, and 250gb for Vista, and Dual-Boot. I think have more space and capacity is definitely beneficial. I think if the Raptor was 300gb, than I probably wouldn't have such a tough decision, and being using that as my Primary Disk already. I wonder about the reliability and speed of a Raptor in a RAID-array...


Thanks for all these replies, these are ALL such good answers and replies and are helping me a lot, I think I'd still like to continue on this discussion. Decisions got a bit tougher with the introduction of the possibilities: 750gb as primary instead of 1TB, 320GB as primary, Raptor as Scratch Disk, and so forth...I wonder if i made a poll, what results may be... THANKS AGAIN! ;D


EDIT: Did some research as well as got some help from another thread, a RAID-0 on with Raptors are not really recommended: http://www.anandtech.com/storage/showdoc.aspx?i=2101&p=8
^RAID-0, being the fastest(?) RAID configuration out there. If a RAID is not recommended with Raptors, why do a lot of people do it?
 
Raid 0 will split the reads and writes across however many drives are in an array. This as you can imagine can be very fast because it basically uses the "burst" speed to do the operations. If you only have 2 drives, you can only do Raid 0 or a JBOD (just a bunch of disks). Neither is redundant or recomended for data that needs to be kept safely and recoverable in an even that something should happen.

If however you have a raid with a parity disk such as Raid 5 I believe (and I'm not an expert, but from what I've dealt with on Raid setups a Raid 5 is basically a Stripped volume with parity) then if a disk dies or becomes corrupt, then you can simply swap the bad disk out and have the raid array rebuild itself - thus restoring your data to a usable state. We have this sort of setup at the office building I used to work at.

As far as your setup goes...Raid doesn't seem to fit the need of a scratch disk. A single Raptor would probably perform better. As for keeping the data safe... a Raid with parity should work or a good backup.

If you're thinking of a Raid, this site has a good reference to the different levels, the characteristics and advantages as well as disadvantages. http://www.acnc.com/04_01_00.html
just click on the numbers on the right under the JetStor graphic (1-10, 50, and 0+1) and it will bring up example diagrams as well as the data and a short demonstration of how that raid level functions.

Don't think this will help your decision any as it's true there are MANY possibilities here.. but if you're looking to keep costs down then the Raid is probably not what you're looking for at the moment.
 
colinstu said:
Get two $150 raptors, throw them in RAID 0... get 300GB of space and they are f'ing fast. Yea they cost a lot and are noisy... for that speed it's totally worth it.
Click to expand...

^It's the comments like that, that really make this decision more difficult for me...

So now I'm discouraged from RAID...I'll read along and get back to this. Thanks for the helpful link nst6563.
 
just don't want to see someone that has important data risk it without knowing. Raid 0 is a risk. For data that doesn't matter...it's great...does give a speed boost...but if 1 drive in the array fails...the entire array is lost. I think it's Raid 5 that combines both the speed of Raid 0 and the reliability of a parity which will allow you to rebuild if something were to happen. You'd need a minimum of 3 drives of equal size/spec for a Raid 5. Which is why I said if you're looking to keep your data safe while not throwing a lot of money into it then a Raid may not be the option you're looking for.
 
nst6563 said:
just don't want to see someone that has important data risk it without knowing. Raid 0 is a risk. For data that doesn't matter...it's great...does give a speed boost...but if 1 drive in the array fails...the entire array is lost. I think it's Raid 5 that combines both the speed of Raid 0 and the reliability of a parity which will allow you to rebuild if something were to happen. You'd need a minimum of 3 drives of equal size/spec for a Raid 5. Which is why I said if you're looking to keep your data safe while not throwing a lot of money into it then a Raid may not be the option you're looking for.
Click to expand...

A great answer, I think RAID-0 should not be an option. Eventhough the RAID-0 Drives I'm referring to would only matter to my Operating system and applications.

I think I'll just keep my Raptor as well as my 1TB on an external. My Scratch Disk would be external as well. Raid-5 Sound really nice...but I think It might get a bit more pricey than I've already spent. Hmm getting to more Raptors having the total size of roughly 450gb...sounds quite nice and having the security and speed...sounds perfect, but I can keep dreaming.

Thanks for all of the help you've been giving me. I appreciate this so much. I've only gained so much as a computer enthusiast my stay here at [H]. Thanks again to the others as well. If this discussion could go on, I wouldn't mind, hearing more thoughts, and reading more about what others choose for their work/computing solutions.
 
no problem. Most of that was from experience. Years ago I ran a raid0 and ended up losing some valuable data. Never again will I run a raid 0 for drives that the data matters on. Since it sounds like you use that system for professional use I'd hate to see the same happen.

I'm by far no raid expert...but that's what I've learned from my mistakes :D
 
RAID 0 shines with doing a lot of video editing. I would suggest that you do get a storage server so you can keep any raw or final videos instead of keeping them on your video editing machine.
 
How many jobs is this for? If its just one job, the time spent thinking about it and setting stuff up would probably cancel out any performance benefits.
If its something you plan to do a lot and want to invest serious dough in it, maybe do something like get 2 1tb drives and raid 1 them just to have security.
 
nst6563 said:
no problem. Most of that was from experience. Years ago I ran a raid0 and ended up losing some valuable data. Never again will I run a raid 0 for drives that the data matters on. Since it sounds like you use that system for professional use I'd hate to see the same happen.

I'm by far no raid expert...but that's what I've learned from my mistakes :D
Click to expand...

Was that RAID-0 your Primary Disk? Do you think if I run a RAID-0 on a Primary Disk having only my Operating System and Application would be okay? And yes, you are right in every way, on the concern on losing valuable data, for that it's usually backed-up on an external source, but I understand even that might not be a safe solution.


protias said:
RAID 0 shines with doing a lot of video editing. I would suggest that you do get a storage server so you can keep any raw or final videos instead of keeping them on your video editing machine.
Click to expand...

I'm getting mixed answers, at first RAID-0 was not an option, now you're recommending it especially for the field I'll be using it for...Again, are you referring to RAID-0 on Primary Disk, the Scratch, all the work saved on an External?

Jakalwarrior said:
How many jobs is this for? If its just one job, the time spent thinking about it and setting stuff up would probably cancel out any performance benefits.
If its something you plan to do a lot and want to invest serious dough in it, maybe do something like get 2 1tb drives and raid 1 them just to have security.
Click to expand...

Trust me this business requires a lot of dough, and technology improves/advances/develops so fast, it's hard to keep up with times. There are great investments as well, this is my freelance work, it's definitely more than one project, many more to come, hopefully my future. I have quite of bit of backup drives, 4 x250gb, 1 tb, 2x 250gb...Just learning more on how to really benefit from this and what to do, and how to manage it.

This question was intended to reflect on the Primary Disk Drive, and not really about backup, but they're all somewhat interrelated, especially for this work.


Thanks again for these informative replies, great stuff!:D
 
gramarye said:
I'm getting mixed answers, at first RAID-0 was not an option, now you're recommending it especially for the field I'll be using it for...Again, are you referring to RAID-0 on Primary Disk, the Scratch, all the work saved on an External?
Click to expand...

Ya, when you are doing your work, use it on the RAID 0 array, then when you have it finished, put the finished product on a backup. I don't know if you keep the raw footage or not, but you could put that on a separate disk.
 
I'd agree with Protias. If you do a Raid0 setup then use it as a working drive. Short term stuff but anything that's vital I'd keep on the seperate non-raid drives. I'm not knocking the speed benefits of a raid setup because it can be hella fast depending on the application, but the cheapest and easiest raid is raid0...unfortunately it's also the easiest to lose data should something happen to the array.

Get another raptor, raid it with the one you have and use that for the primary, scratch and working disks and use the 1Tb and other drives for the storage and backups. That way you'd get the benefit of the speed a raid can give while still not having to worry about losing vital data if something were to "break" the array.
 
spectrumbx said:
I would use the 750GB drive version over the 1TB version.

The 750GB are much faster, especially the one from Seagate (forgot the model).
The WD7500AAKS is also a good choice.

Further, if you deal with multiple files, having them on separate drives should help even more.
Hence, two 500GBs would do even better.
Click to expand...

Since you and many others have recommended the 'AAKS' models of Western Digital, would the 750gb WD7500AAKS perform faster than a 500gb WD5000AAKS? I've also read around that Seagate Barracuda's perform quite well.
 
gramarye said:
Since you and many others have recommended the 'AAKS' models of Western Digital, would the 750gb WD7500AAKS perform faster than a 500gb WD5000AAKS? I've also read around that Seagate Barracuda's perform quite well.
Click to expand...

Yep, it does.
 
gramarye said:
Since you and many others have recommended the 'AAKS' models of Western Digital, would the 750gb WD7500AAKS perform faster than a 500gb WD5000AAKS? I've also read around that Seagate Barracuda's perform quite well.
Click to expand...

Yep, it does.
 
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