• Some users have recently had their accounts hijacked. It seems that the now defunct EVGA forums might have compromised your password there and seems many are using the same PW here. We would suggest you UPDATE YOUR PASSWORD and TURN ON 2FA for your account here to further secure it. None of the compromised accounts had 2FA turned on.
    Once you have enabled 2FA, your account will be updated soon to show a badge, letting other members know that you use 2FA to protect your account. This should be beneficial for everyone that uses FSFT.

Raptor worth getting? or Raid 0/1 setup?

F

frankyk

Gawd
Joined
Jan 30, 2004
Messages
891
How much performance increase is there should I use a 10k raptor vs. a regular 7200 and also a 7200 using Raid 0/1 (not sure which).

Worth the money? Load up times faster?
 
To your average user, there's no noticable increase transfering from a 7200RPM to a raptor. To someone looking for the speed difference, it's there. I've got one. Am I impressed? Nah, not really. But then again, I've been spoiled by 15K SCSI drives.
 
the 10k drive would be faster than the 7200 on its own and probably also faster than the 7200 in RAID-0. The latter is mostly useful only for moving around large files. It is not something that a normal desktop user should be using. Your ideal setup for a normal desktop user is a fast 10k raptor type drive for the OS and apps and then two cheap sata drives in raid-1 to protect your data.
 
You should always get the fastest harddrive first.

RAID-0 does not speed up all usage patterns. In particular small reads at "random" locations are not sped up at all. Starting most programs involves this pattern and you get not much of a speedup for a huge risk. Some game starts are sped up substancially, if they read large collections of textures or maps sequentially.

RAID-1 can speed up that pattern, but only with decent RAID software, aka not with onboard SATA "raid".

If you just get the faster harddrive you don't have to think about any of that stuff.
 
I went from an old 7200 RPM Hitachi Desktar 80gb drive to the least of the Raptors, the 36gb version. I noticed a HUGE difference in speed. I'm going to the 150gb version of the Raptor soon. The only issue I have with the Raptors is their noise. It's the noisiest component in my otherwise very quiet system. (besides when the optical drive has to spin up)
 
uOpt said:
RAID-0 does not speed up all usage patterns.
Click to expand...
In other words, it's application-dependent.

uOpt said:
Some game starts are sped up substancially, if they read large collections of textures or maps sequentially.
Click to expand...
Do you know of any games which do so? The ones I've examined certainly do not.
 
WhyYouLoveMe said:
I went from an old 7200 RPM Hitachi Desktar 80gb drive to the least of the Raptors, the 36gb version. I noticed a HUGE difference in speed. I'm going to the 150gb version of the Raptor soon. The only issue I have with the Raptors is their noise. It's the noisiest component in my otherwise very quiet system. (besides when the optical drive has to spin up)
Click to expand...

oh yes, how loud are the raptors? my system is pretty quiet, how's the sound compared to a regular scythe ninja fan or something?
 
TeeJayHoward said:
To your average user, there's no noticable increase transfering from a 7200RPM to a raptor. To someone looking for the speed difference, it's there. I've got one. Am I impressed? Nah, not really. But then again, I've been spoiled by 15K SCSI drives.
Click to expand...
Can you give specific examples of how the 15K SCSI drives were faster for you?
I had one and it was nothing but a headache.
 
frankyk said:
oh yes, how loud are the raptors? my system is pretty quiet, how's the sound compared to a regular scythe ninja fan or something?
Click to expand...

My system is silent except for my raptor. Let's just say I have to make sure a defrag doesn't start in the middle of the night while I'm sleeping across the room......

Edit: And the daily anti-spyware scan will interrupt a movie if I'm in a quiet part when it starts.
 
Fromwhat i have seen, the larger raptors are a "little" less noisy than their smaller brothers and sisters.

i have the 150, and although it's louder than say my 250KS, it's not as loud as my friends 36...or and of the SCSI drives he has.
 
frankyk said:
oh yes, how loud are the raptors? my system is pretty quiet, how's the sound compared to a regular scythe ninja fan or something?
Click to expand...

The 36gb is the loudest of the Raptors. You can't really compare the noise of a fan to the noise of a hard drive. They're waaaaaaay different. The Scythe Ninja fan is a very, very quiet fan. I would go so far as to say the 36gb Raptor could be the loudest SATA HDD out there.
 
WhyYouLoveMe said:
The 36gb is the loudest of the Raptors. You can't really compare the noise of a fan to the noise of a hard drive. They're waaaaaaay different. The Scythe Ninja fan is a very, very quiet fan. I would go so far as to say the 36gb Raptor could be the loudest SATA HDD out there.
Click to expand...


Yea, Raptors make a very distinct sound, and if you've never heard one you'll think your hard drives are going bad. Kinda makes a metal clicky sound. They really aren't that loud. If you have a noisy case you won't notice them at all.... but if your case is quite you can definitely hear them. My old Chieftec case I couldn't hear a thing (VERY noisy fans int eh case) but on my current LianLi case (very quiet fans at low speeds) you notice that they are working.... but not horribly so. To the OP... I wouldn't worry about noise, people make it out to be worse than it is.
 
Poncho said:
Yea, Raptors make a very distinct sound, and if you've never heard one you'll think your hard drives are going bad. Kinda makes a metal clicky sound. They really aren't that loud. If you have a noisy case you won't notice them at all.... but if your case is quite you can definitely hear them. My old Chieftec case I couldn't hear a thing (VERY noisy fans int eh case) but on my current LianLi case (very quiet fans at low speeds) you notice that they are working.... but not horribly so. To the OP... I wouldn't worry about noise, people make it out to be worse than it is.
Click to expand...

Good info. ;)
 
mikeblas said:
[game start sped up by raid-0]
Do you know of any games which do so? The ones I've examined certainly do not.
Click to expand...

I have been told that Call of Duty 2 startup speeds up considerably in RAID-0. Myself I don't game much and all my games are on network drives anyway, so I can't tell.

Also, don't forget that if the user doesn't have enough RAM, then starting a game will cause as surge of pageout activity. That creates a pattern of mostly linear writes mixing in with the more or less random reads, and that mixed read/write pattern can be sped up by raid-0 to a much higher degree that just random seeks.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top