Velociraptor = Wow :)

TechLarry

TechLarry

RIP [H] Brother - June 1, 2022
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I've been holding off on the Raptor bandwagon due to the limited sizes available. I finally bit on a 300GB VelociRaptor.

I don't know if the other Raptors were this fast,but I wish I had done this a long time ago.

It has completely transformed my machine. Everything happens damned near instantly.

I did some quick and dirty Before (Seagate 500GB Barracuda 7200.10) and After (300GB Velociraptor) tests with ATTO and HDTach:

http://s32.photobucket.com/albums/d...rrent=ATTOBench32-ST3500630AS500GBBarracu.jpg

http://s32.photobucket.com/albums/d...ction=view&current=ATTOBench32-WD300DGLFS.jpg

http://s32.photobucket.com/albums/d...rrent=HDTune-ST3500630AS500GBBarracuda720.png

http://s32.photobucket.com/albums/d...ts/?action=view&current=HDTach-WD300DGFLS.png

I haven't been this wow'd by a simple upgrade in many, many years :)
 
When I get the money, two of these would almost smoke my four older Raptors easily...

Excellent. Thanks TechLarry!

4x80GB Raptor RAID0 for reference.

raptors_r0_wbc_cio_ara.JPG
 
I can't hear it at all unless it's being heavily thrashed, and then it's just barely. It is no louder than the 500GB Seagate it replaced. In fact, I think it's quieter.

[H]exx;1032803435 said:
Wow 7ms seek time...

I've been looking at new drives for a year now...I just haven't had the cash to buy anything :(

How loud is the drive?
Click to expand...
 
I can't overstate what this drive has done to my machine (#2 in sig). This was a prime example of not needing a new processor, but needing a better drive. It has fixed things a new processor could never fix:

1. Windows open like right now. I mean they literally snap open.

2. File copies from the second 500GB drive. When it was a dual-Seagate system, the transfers in windows were around 23MB/Sec from the D drive to the C drive. Now, copying from the D drive to the C (Velociraptor) drive hits and exceeds 50MB/Sec consistently. The slowest I've seen is 35MB/Sec.

3. The system boots WAY faster.
 
People really do underestimate the need for fast drives, I constantly see people with really nice gaming rigs and high end workstations with crappy 80GB budget drives all the time.
 
thebeephaha said:
People really do underestimate the need for fast drives, I constantly see people with really nice gaming rigs and high end workstations with crappy 80GB budget drives all the time.
Click to expand...

The hard drive is the biggest bottleneck right now, when Intel is pairing thier SSD's with Nehalem they know exactly what they are doing.
 
I got tired of waiting for practical affordable SSD's also, But my experience with the Velociraptor is the same as with the previous gen raptor - great HDtech stats, but hardly noticable improvement in gaming performance over my Seagate 7200.10. And sure, it boots/shutsdown faster on a clean install - but now with the usual software, what's a few seconds?
 
DEX1 said:
I got tired of waiting for practical affordable SSD's also, But my experience with the Velociraptor is the same as with the previous gen raptor - great HDtech stats, but hardly noticable improvement in gaming performance over my Seagate 7200.10. And sure, it boots/shutsdown faster on a clean install - but now with the usual software, what's a few seconds?
Click to expand...

A good drive will show difference in the usual software. For my system i have a 15000 RPM SAS drive. When I view photos through adobe bridge, the high res (10mp to 22mp) images opens very very fast without making the entire system lag like crazy.

I execute batch commands on photoshop such as the image processor (auto resize / compress large amount of photos), my system still operates smoothly. I can capture high definition video from a camcorder and still use my system for something else w/o dropping frames. All these would not be possible on a regular SATA drive.
 
i just went from the raptor to the velociraptor and i can definitely "feel" a difference. during startup, all programs load/start up faster compared to the previous raptor.

velociraptor being the primary drive, i now use the raptor as the paging file drive. :)
 
DEX1 said:
I got tired of waiting for practical affordable SSD's also, But my experience with the Velociraptor is the same as with the previous gen raptor - great HDtech stats, but hardly noticable improvement in gaming performance over my Seagate 7200.10. And sure, it boots/shutsdown faster on a clean install - but now with the usual software, what's a few seconds?
Click to expand...

I don't think you should expect a huge increase in gaming performance other than shorter load times. Gaming performance is mostly affected by GPU, CPU, and memory.
 
thebeephaha said:
When I get the money, two of these would almost smoke my four older Raptors easily...

Excellent. Thanks TechLarry!

4x80GB Raptor RAID0 for reference.

raptors_r0_wbc_cio_ara.JPG
Click to expand...

They actually won't smoke your 4 raptors, other than access time, and sequential near the end of the drive - your perc5 is on PCI-e, correct? It looks limited at 1x lane.
 
I think when we run into those peeps here in the forums that say that "Raptors are overkill", "why do people think Raptors are any good?", or "7200rpm drives are just as fast" - then we should refer them to this thread. This emulates my experience years ago with my first 36gb Raptor and each one since. Sucks to go to work and use a 'slow' 7200rpm drive.
 
Problem is now they say just get cheapo's and RAID0 them. However, they keep failing to understand that the Velociraptor is the fastest platter drive that is SATA. Consider how little power it uses..it is actually a nice drive for compact boxes.
 
mwarps said:
They actually won't smoke your 4 raptors, other than access time, and sequential near the end of the drive - your perc5 is on PCI-e, correct? It looks limited at 1x lane.
Click to expand...

My Perc is in a 16x slot. Keep in mind my Raptor model (WD800GD) is the older OEM made for Dell which only has 8MB cache.
 
thebeephaha said:
My Perc is in a 16x slot. Keep in mind my Raptor model (WD800GD) is the older OEM made for Dell which only has 8MB cache.
Click to expand...

I'll be curious to see your setup with some VRs, and if it shows a PCI-e bottleneck. Even 2 won't be able to really bottleneck 1x PCI-e, you'd need 3 or 4.
 
This is exactly what I really dig about this drive. Everything about the machine is faster from loading software, rebooting, copying files, etc...

I care more about drive speed in my daily workstation than I do my gaming machine :)

DEX1 said:
I got tired of waiting for practical affordable SSD's also, But my experience with the Velociraptor is the same as with the previous gen raptor - great HDtech stats, but hardly noticable improvement in gaming performance over my Seagate 7200.10. And sure, it boots/shutsdown faster on a clean install - but now with the usual software, what's a few seconds?
Click to expand...
 
Not only that, but with RAID you have twice (or more) the possible points of failure.

I used to run RAID 0 SCSI setups back in the 90's on my Mac's (talk about money, whew!). Never had any issues with them.

I haven't seen that same stability/trusworthyness in IDE/SATA RAID-0's.

I'll use them for RAID 5, but RAID 0 IDE/SATA just isn't my cup of tea.

A single drive this fast makes me very happy :)

Trepidati0n said:
Problem is now they say just get cheapo's and RAID0 them. However, they keep failing to understand that the Velociraptor is the fastest platter drive that is SATA. Consider how little power it uses..it is actually a nice drive for compact boxes.
Click to expand...
 
TechLarry said:
I can't overstate what this drive has done to my machine (#2 in sig). This was a prime example of not needing a new processor, but needing a better drive. It has fixed things a new processor could never fix:

1. Windows open like right now. I mean they literally snap open.

2. File copies from the second 500GB drive. When it was a dual-Seagate system, the transfers in windows were around 23MB/Sec from the D drive to the C drive. Now, copying from the D drive to the C (Velociraptor) drive hits and exceeds 50MB/Sec consistently. The slowest I've seen is 35MB/Sec.

3. The system boots WAY faster.
Click to expand...

Think I'll get that kinda zippy feeling from a WD6400AAKS?

My current 7200.10 just ain't quick enough.
 
bigdavethehorn said:
Think I'll get that kinda zippy feeling from a WD6400AAKS?

My current 7200.10 just ain't quick enough.
Click to expand...

The raptor advantage is seek times, the 640AAKS would give you better transfer rates but I wouldn't expect miraculous improvements in system responsiveness.
 
anybody know how the Velociraptor hard drive is mounted to the "Ice Pack"??

is it screwed in? maybe adhesive backing?


i ask this cause i may have to mounted those bastards in my case upside down and was worried that gravity may eventually pulls the physical hd's off the "ice pack" if they be adhesived down... ... :(

anyhow will be off to best buy to pick up two of these babies retail $299 (i'll be pist off if they only gots one there, need my raid!)
 
goldznnz said:
anybody know how the Velociraptor hard drive is mounted to the "Ice Pack"??

is it screwed in? maybe adhesive backing?


i ask this cause i may have to mounted those bastards in my case upside down and was worried that gravity may eventually pulls the physical hd's off the "ice pack" if they be adhesived down... ... :(

anyhow will be off to best buy to pick up two of these babies retail $299 (i'll be pist off if they only gots one there, need my raid!)
Click to expand...
It's connected via 4 Torx T8 screws as well as a couple of adhesive pads - not going anywhere
 
bigdavethehorn said:
Think I'll get that kinda zippy feeling from a WD6400AAKS?

My current 7200.10 just ain't quick enough.
Click to expand...

For sure, it is much better than a 7200.10. My buddy got one and it is niiice. No Raptor in the seek times department, but transfers are way better.
 
ok finally got my x2 raptors to work in raid0. Was about to totally give up (shatt took 2 days) for some reason my computer would not recoginize my VR raptors for the raid setup. strip my computer down and fiddling and some more pounding on that F6 driver install, and then finally stuff went through.

after all said and done, i am truly amazed at this point. this setup bee smokin my old ADFD off the charts. hd temps be in the 90's F range too!

oh yeah just an fyi, as soon as i got my VR raptors going, serioulsy later i heard WD is gonna serioulsy relocated the sata ports on that ice pack version, go figures, but anyways i'm beasting right now though :D
 
TechLarry said:
I've been holding off on the Raptor bandwagon due to the limited sizes available. I finally bit on a 300GB VelociRaptor.

I don't know if the other Raptors were this fast,but I wish I had done this a long time ago.

It has completely transformed my machine. Everything happens damned near instantly.

I haven't been this wow'd by a simple upgrade in many, many years :)
Click to expand...

This post is my thoughts exactly when I bought the 36GB raptor coming from a 7200RPM IBM/Hitachi Deathstar many years ago. I had recently upgraded at the time I bought my raptor from a 1.6ghz machine to the top of the line 2.4Ghz p4. The raptor made a tremendous amount more difference than the 800mhz processor jump made.

It was like a HUGE processor/memory upgrade. Very much worth the money. My original 36GB raptor is still running, and has been ported through many machines as my primary OS drive. The 300GB is that much faster than my 36GB, but man --- nothing but postiive things to say about these drives.
 
I want to buy the Velociraptor 300GB but I have seen a few complaints of corrupt sectors being sold via the OEM version from newegg. So which one is better, the OEM or should I grab a retail?

Also, how do I know if an HD has corruption?
 
I have a 150GB Raptor ("Play [H]ard" computer in sig). Obviously the answer to this is opinion alone, but do you think I'd notice increased system snappiness or decreased game load times if I bought a new 300GB one? I mean, I know theoretically speaking the 300GB smokes the 150, but is it noticeable enough to be worth it?
 
XS Janus said:
"SSD Nehalem"
:cool::D:cool::D:cool::D:cool::D
Click to expand...
That'll be next years dream machine. Maybe 2 in R0 for even faster transfer rates (with a mirrored backup drive of course)

HDD really is the bottleneck today, and loosening that at all shows big gains.
 
You know how at Windows startup it takes like 30 seconds for the tray icons to load and for windows to stop being sluggish, well when I got my VelociRaptor all that stuff happened within like 5 seconds.
 
Dammit, each time I revisit this thread a little part of me dies. I am so tempted to get one but I really can't justify the cost since my current OS drive (74GB raptor) is doing fine and everything's still reasonably snappy.
 
i had some mula to burn! i had a ADFD raptor, had to put her away for the younger and faster lady (vr raptor). IMHO its damn faster and responsive, VERY WORTH IT. i was reluctant to spend 6 bills on two of these, and now would like to get another for my page file :D

Sovereign said:
I have a 150GB Raptor ("Play [H]ard" computer in sig). Obviously the answer to this is opinion alone, but do you think I'd notice increased system snappiness or decreased game load times if I bought a new 300GB one? I mean, I know theoretically speaking the 300GB smokes the 150, but is it noticeable enough to be worth it?
Click to expand...
 
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