Raptors for OS and games

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Mansize_tissue

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I'm planning a new rig soon with a 36gb raptor for the OS and a 150gb raptor for games etc.
Do you guys think that by creating a seperate partition on the 36gb raptor for a page file i would see any performance increase than if i were to leave it as a whole drive? Also, am i better to have the page file on the OS drive, so it can be reading/writing while the other drive is loading games, for example?
 
Mansize_tissue said:
I'm planning a new rig soon with a 36gb raptor for the OS and a 150gb raptor for games etc.
Do you guys think that by creating a seperate partition on the 36gb raptor for a page file i would see any performance increase than if i were to leave it as a whole drive? Also, am i better to have the page file on the OS drive, so it can be reading/writing while the other drive is loading games, for example?
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First things first; If you are going to buy a Raptor Hard Drive you might as well buy the 150GB or the 74GB b/c when you have a HD with more room more can be stored on the outer edges of the disc where it spins more quicker.

Second "I" do not suggest that you buy another raptor drive just for games, it really isnt that important what HD you buy for games.

Third; Page file has nothing to do with having another partition or not. PF is in use if you have less RAM than the system needs and therefore stores data there temporarily. If you have a large PF then that means that you need more RAM.
 
CptFalcon said:
First things first; If you are going to buy a Raptor Hard Drive you might as well buy the 150GB or the 74GB b/c when you have a HD with more room more can be stored on the outer edges of the disc where it spins more quicker.
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I will buy a 150GB drive and use it for storing games and programs.

CptFalcon said:
Second "I" do not suggest that you buy another raptor drive just for games, it really isnt that important what HD you buy for games.
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I will be using this rig for gaming only, so i was thinking that it may be a worthwhile investment to shorten load times.

CptFalcon said:
Third; Page file has nothing to do with having another partition or not. PF is in use if you have less RAM than the system needs and therefore stores data there temporarily. If you have a large PF then that means that you need more RAM.
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I understand, but when running games some and data is stored in the page file, wouldn't it be better to have the page file on a different drive to the game files so they can both be read at the same time? And if so, wouldn't it be better to have it in a different partition to the OS to prevent fragmentation?

Thankyou for you quick reply, by the way.
 
Ok, now things are starting to become clear!

PF does cannot be assigned to another partition, PF is in use on the drive that it was assigned to be used. So, no you cannot put the PF on another partition however you can eliminate the PF usage by buying more RAM.

Hope I helped, and have fun! :D
 
So, no you cannot put the PF on another partition however you can eliminate the PF usage by buying more RAM.
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Ok, that is plain wrong. You can put the pagefile on whatever drive you want or whatever partition if the drive has more than one. Yes, it's better to the pagefile on a "data" drive, separate from the OS/app/game drive for the possibility of better performance. If you have one drive with two partitions for whatever reason, keep the pagefile on the first(OS) partition so it's at the speedier part of the drive.
 
tuskenraider said:
Ok, that is plain wrong. You can put the pagefile on whatever drive you want or whatever partition if the drive has more than one. Yes, it's better to the pagefile on a "data" drive, separate from the OS/app/game drive for the possibility of better performance.
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Well then I stand corrected on the partition part. And yes op basically what me and tuskenraider have said (excluding the partition part from me)

Hope we helped! :D ;) :p :eek:
 
page file- same physical harddrive= 0 advatnage
page file - seperate physical HD = better then same drive if used heavily

as for the 150 and outer rims and it spinning faster, show me some test that show the improvement of data being in the inner section of the hd.

36g has the same size platters as the 150 and for all you know, that 36g' may be on on the outer section.

i bet if you tested a 36 and a 150 and and installed the same on both, numbers would be the same.
 
Ok I think you got two ways to go on this. You could have the 150 as your OS, games and page file drive or you could have the 150 for your OS, games and a seperate drive for your page file (A 150 raptor preferably). The second option would give you slightly better performance but a is more expensive.

Personally I think get one 150 raptor for your OS, games and page file and lots of RAM so your page file gets used less.

Forget getting a raptor 36 they aren't fast any more.

A couple more points.

The raptor 36 has one platter of 36GB, is a PATA drive with a SATA interface and has 16MB cache with the ability for NCQ.

The raptor 74 has two 37GB platters, is native SATA and has 16MB cache and NCQ.

The raptor 150 has two 75GB platters, is native SATA has 16MB cache and NCQ.

The part about drives spinning faster on the outside as oposed to the inside is next to irrelivent these days. In the old days system admins would really customize an installation so that the fastest part of the drive (the outside) had whatever data on it that needed the best performance. Absolutely unnescesary on a gaming system
 
Forget getting a raptor 36 they aren't fast any more.

A couple more points.

The raptor 36 has one platter of 36GB, is a PATA drive with a SATA interface and has 16MB cache with the ability for NCQ.
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More nonsense. Anyone check their facts before they post anymore? The ADFD 36GB Raptor is a native SATA drive. All the ADFD drives are basically the same minus the fact that the 150 uses two platters and that the RaptorX(AHFD) has even more desktop oriented firmware.
 
I bought the ADFD 36gb from newegg and I'm happy with it for OS and applications. I personally don't like using the OS drive for storage or constant file moving. Another thing I don't like is using a huge disk for OS/Apps since the space would be unused with my use pattern.
 
Just thought someone should point out that the 36g Raptor is on the [H] Not Recommended list in the sticky for reasons listed on that post.
 
Vista with BF2, Company of Heroes, and Office 2007 would use about 36 gb's. Add those restores points and you better buy 5 (raptor 36's).;)
 
Thanks you for all your help, everyone.

Basically, i was thinking that i would like to keep the OS seperate to everything else, so instead of putting it in its own partition on a 150GB raptor, i would just buy a 36GB and put it on there. Then, i am going to use the 150GB for apps/games/programs, since i won't need a 'storage' drive. So, am i better to have the page file on the 150GB or on the 36GB, and if so it is better to have it in its own partition to keep it seperate?

Sorry about dragging this out a little, i just want to be sure what will give me better performanance, even if it's very little.
 
devman said:
Just thought someone should point out that the 36g Raptor is on the [H] Not Recommended list in the sticky for reasons listed on that post.
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That's for the GD version of the Raptor, which is irrelevant in this conversation, not the ADFD. :eek:
So, am i better to have the page file on the 150GB or on the 36GB, and if so it is better to have it in its own partition to keep it seperate?
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Keep it on the OS drive(36GB Raptor) and the 150 for your programs.
 
tuskenraider said:
Keep it on the OS drive(36GB Raptor) and the 150 for your programs.
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That's what i was hoping for, thank you! That way the workload is spread between the 2 drives: 36GB read/write page file while the 150GB loads game files.

Would it be better to make a partition on the OS drive and put the page file in there, to seperate it from the OS? If so, how large should the partition be with 2GB of RAM?
 
I wouldn't make a partition for the PF. Just set it as a static size of say, 3GB, so it doesn't fragment and you'll be golden.
 
Okay thanks, will do. If i were to put it in a partition, though, would it have any affect on performance at all?
 
I don't believe so. If you were to put a PF on a partition, I would assume you'd be making the partition after the OS partition and there would be located on the inner part of the disk which is slower, maybe minutely, but slower nonetheless. It certainly wouldn't be quicker. You could make a small partition before the OS partition and put the PF there, but again, not worth the hassle or possible minute gain. Unless you have to use one drive for OS and data, and want to keep them separate so you can reformat/reimage your OS install without harming your data, there's no reason for partitions IMO.
 
Thank you for all your help. Looks like i can forget about partitions then since the OS will be on its own drive. :D
 
Did I miss a new revision of the Raptor 36 cause I wouldn't touch one with a 10ft pole, cause there are plenty of 7.2k spindle speed HDD that outperform it for the same cost and 10x the storage space, not to mention they are not nearly as loud. I really don't see why anyone would purchase one at this point.
 
Is the 36GB raptor really that bad? I mean, it has the same 16mb cache as the other models.

Something else i've always wondered, how come with raptors the write (or some other) speed is 1.5GB/s while a lot of 7200RPM drives have a speed of 3.0GB/s, when raptors are supposed to be the faster drive?
 
devman said:
Did I miss a new revision of the Raptor 36 cause I wouldn't touch one with a 10ft pole, cause there are plenty of 7.2k spindle speed HDD that outperform it for the same cost and 10x the storage space, not to mention they are not nearly as loud. I really don't see why anyone would purchase one at this point.
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You must have and there is only one ADFD 36GB model and what I mentioned above about it has been true since it's release. The new drive is comparable in every way to the 74 or 150GB model in noise and performance, and as such, there is no comparable 7200rpm drive. Perfect for those who don't need to waste money on the larger drives.
 
Something else i've always wondered, how come with raptors the write (or some other) speed is 1.5GB/s while a lot of 7200RPM drives have a speed of 3.0GB/s, when raptors are supposed to be the faster drive?
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Simple, no hard drive can even get near the SATA1.5 speeds and so WD didn't upgrade the interface. SATA3.0 is nothing but futurproofing for some new drives that don't even exist, or may never, at this point(thinking new technologies beyond iRAM will replace clunky mechanical drives).
 
Thank you very much tuskenraider for clearing that up. So even though some drives have a data transfer rate of 3.0GB/s, they can't actually transfer anywhere near these speeds, correct? So, what's the highest transfer speed reachable by SATA drives, then?
 
Mansize_tissue said:
Thank you very much tuskenraider for clearing that up. So even though some drives have a data transfer rate of 3.0GB/s, they can't actually transfer anywhere near these speeds, correct? So, what's the highest transfer speed reachable by SATA drives, then?
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Well the new Raptor is close to 90MB/s on the outside platters in read/writes with various benchmarks, give or take a few, and I haven't seen a drive do better. Though I'm sure some of the newer high capacity drives could match this. This tapers off as you go inward and get an average of about 78MB/s for the whole drive, which is better by about 8MB/s I've seen over any other drive. A SATA1.5 interface can handle 187MB/s or so and each port is separate, so even in RAID, each drive gets 187MB/s of bandwidth. It should be mentioned though that data that is sitting in a drives cache can potentially meet SATA1.5's bandwidth transferring just to the controller, but of course the drive could never feed the buffer quick enough to maintain anything near full capacity. That's where the "burst speed" comes in to play on a HD Tach graph, though HD Tach's validity of this measurement is questioned by many based on incapable scores being shown.


I have 2 74GB Raptors and 2 36Gb Raptors. I was wondering what the performance differences were, so I ran HD tune and here are the results:
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That's definately typical of the GD series.
 
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