WD Raptor vs SSD

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seancky2

Limp Gawd
Joined
Oct 28, 2004
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I found a locally used, but remaining 3 year warranty on a Western Digital Raptor WD740GD 74GB 10Krpm SATA HD for $40. Is this a pretty good deal? Or would it be worth spending an extra ~$60 and getting the new OCZ 32BG Onyx for $99? It will be used for mainly OS and apps. Strictly REAL LIFE performance wise, which is a better buy, also taking into consideration the extra storage I would get with the WD raptor.

Thanks
 
The raptors are no better than modern 7200rpm drives. SSDs are night and day.
 
You really think so? I wouldn't be suprised. But to be honest, I still don't think I will really be "wowed" even with SSDs. We are talking a matter of seconds faster here. Is it really worth it? I just can't really justify spending so much money on SSDs in their current state.
 
I think it was worth it. Guess I'm pretty impatient, I like being able to push the power button on my pc, see the windows logo and within a couple seconds be able to open firefox or any other app. 32gb may be pushing it though with Win 7. If you need more space, ssd's just simply aren't there yet with a limited budget.

Even the new raptors are much slower than ssd's in many areas. I had a couple of the first gen raptors, even in raid 0 they were barely faster than a standard 7200rpm barracuda hdd these days, and a hell of a lot louder.
I wouldn't get the raptor though, a good 1TB hdd won't be much more $ and not noticeably slower, if any. If you don't think an SSD will "wow" you, an old raptor won't even raise an eyebrow.
 
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seancky2 said:
I found a locally used, but remaining 3 year warranty on a Western Digital Raptor WD740GD 74GB 10Krpm SATA HD for $40.
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The WD740GD Raptor had a 5 year warranty. It was discontinued in 2006. I suspect you misheard and there are only 3 months remaining on the warranty, not years.

I would ask the seller for the serial number so you can confirm the remaining warranty (and model) yourself on Western Digital's website, before even considering purchasing.
 
I went from a 300 GB Velociraptor to 160 GB Intel X25-M G2 SSD a few months ago, and it's definitely one of the best computer related updates I've ever made. Windows 7 feels much more responsive and load times in most of the games I play are tremendously improved. I couldn't imagine going back to using operating system and playing games on mechanical hard drive anymore.
 
I wouldn't buy a Raptor. It's not even a VelociRaptor. In your shoes I would either go for a low-end SSD or a new 7200 RPM drive. Apart from access times, most modern 7200 RPM drives are better then a Raptor.
 
It's NOT a night and day difference comming from a raptor to an intel 80 gig drive. I dunno what people are smoking, but on regular drive, the os was fast enough.

I recently did the upgrade to a 80 gig intel gen2 drive on win 7 and I7 920 @ 3.8 g and trust me it's not worth the money. Only difference I see is windows will load up a FEW seconds faster and shut down a FEW seconds faster, and some programs will load a little bit faster. Other then that unless you constantly stress your computer constantly opening and closing programs, turning on and off your computer all day, it's just not worth it. Save your money and buy a nicer video card if you aren't already on the Core I7 or I5 set yet.
 
74GB raptors are slower than modern large HD's like 500-1Tb drives, with 320-500Gb platters.

lame upgrade, don't do it. Now if you could get a 300Gb velociraptor for $40 I might buy that, but even that would be considerable slower than an SSD.
 
I went from a 150GB raptor running XP to a 120GB SSD running Win7. Big difference. I have noticed that my HTPC (where the raptor is now with Win7) and my gaming computer take about the same to boot Win7 but the SSD is much faster once inside of windows. Also game load times are really fast.

I use to be all about raptors or 15K sas drives but now SSD's are the way to go.
 
seancky2 said:
You really think so? I wouldn't be suprised. But to be honest, I still don't think I will really be "wowed" even with SSDs. We are talking a matter of seconds faster here. Is it really worth it? I just can't really justify spending so much money on SSDs in their current state.
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I thought this as well. And then I built a new PC with an Intel SSD.

O
M
F
G

You will be wowed. And if you say you aren't, I'll assume you are lying.
 
Pianomahnn said:
I thought this as well. And then I built a new PC with an Intel SSD.

O
M
F
G

You will be wowed. And if you say you aren't, I'll assume you are lying.
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+1.

I went from a VR to one of the slower SSDs on the market (OCZ Agility) and my reaction was something along the lines of HOLY SHIT it's fast.

Surprisingly the area that received the least benefit was copying large files from one drive to another. But man, OS responsiveness had a bigger impact than going from a junk P4 Prescott to a C2D - it had a far bigger impact. Using the system now feels as fast as an chipmunk simultaneously high on caffeine and struck by lightning.
 
SSD will be MUCH faster.

The old raptors are good drives, and still a tiny bit faster as an OS drive than the latest 7200 RPM drives (though not really worth it unless you have one or get a good deal on one) (I just moved from a Raptor X to one of the fastest 7200 RPM drives (the Samsung F3)). The SSDs are in a different league though.


AVT said:
Surprisingly the area that received the least benefit was copying large files from one drive to another. But man, OS responsiveness had a bigger impact than going from a junk P4 Prescott to a C2D - it had a far bigger impact. Using the system now feels as fast as an chipmunk simultaneously high on caffeine and struck by lightning.
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Not surprising at all, as copying depends on the SSD AND the drive you are copying from/too.
 
hdgamer said:
It's NOT a night and day difference comming from a raptor to an intel 80 gig drive. I dunno what people are smoking, but on regular drive, the os was fast enough.

I recently did the upgrade to a 80 gig intel gen2 drive on win 7 and I7 920 @ 3.8 g and trust me it's not worth the money. Only difference I see is windows will load up a FEW seconds faster and shut down a FEW seconds faster, and some programs will load a little bit faster. Other then that unless you constantly stress your computer constantly opening and closing programs, turning on and off your computer all day, it's just not worth it. Save your money and buy a nicer video card if you aren't already on the Core I7 or I5 set yet.
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Thank you this is exactly how I feel. It seems like a total waste of money for a few seconds of quickness. The only reason why i was considering getting the raptor is because I was wondering if it was just slightly a bit slower than any SDD but i guess that is not true, and I am definitly going to wait a few years to go with an SDD or until a 320GB is less than $100.

Thanks guys.
 
seancky2 said:
Thank you this is exactly how I feel. It seems like a total waste of money for a few seconds of quickness. The only reason why i was considering getting the raptor is because I was wondering if it was just slightly a bit slower than any SDD but i guess that is not true, and I am definitly going to wait a few years to go with an SDD or until a 320GB is less than $100.

Thanks guys.
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You do make a good point about cost and benefit. Yes, in the grand scheme of things a few seconds doesn't really matter. And yes, they are expensive. So if you're on a tight budget for this, it's understandable to want to get the most for your money. I was going through the same decision process as you, considering the same things. I found the idea of spending a few hundred on 80GB to be crazy. But then I did it anyways, and I'm glad.
 
hdgamer said:
It's NOT a night and day difference comming from a raptor to an intel 80 gig drive. I dunno what people are smoking, but on regular drive, the os was fast enough.

I recently did the upgrade to a 80 gig intel gen2 drive on win 7 and I7 920 @ 3.8 g and trust me it's not worth the money. Only difference I see is windows will load up a FEW seconds faster and shut down a FEW seconds faster, and some programs will load a little bit faster. Other then that unless you constantly stress your computer constantly opening and closing programs, turning on and off your computer all day, it's just not worth it. Save your money and buy a nicer video card if you aren't already on the Core I7 or I5 set yet.
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I also have a VR 150GB and compared to normal slower HDDs it's pretty fast. Close to it are the Black series drives. And in day to day basis you will notice the difference from a standard 7200rpm drive. But for now is all i need , i will go for a SSD when the technology will get mature and prices drop. And a few secs in Win boot don't matter that much .
 
Another thing to note is that textures in games load a lot faster. Gears of War for Windows on a WD Velociraptor vs. Gears of War for Windows on an OCZ Solid2-series was a noticeable difference. Also, I went from a 43 second boot to a 17 second boot. That's a few more than a few seconds, and does make a difference when I'm angry I just had to wake up for work :D
 
Seiz said:
And a few secs in Win boot don't matter that much .
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I find the benefits not related to booting (always one) but in the responsiveness when opening programs. There is no noticeable delay. No lag. Nothing. I press the mouse and blammowammo, it's open. Is it necessary? Absolutely not. But is it awesome? Absolutely.
 
The speed bonus on SSDs is not that large if you cleanly installed your OS. Then the files are at the fastest portion on the HDD and everything is still 'tidy' meaning its close together and non-fragmented.

If you work a few years on the same OS install and an SSD; you'll notice your computer becoming slow and the HDD is pretty much rattling continuously at every key you press. That's because after some time, data has become fragmented and the HDD has to seek alot to get to all the snippets of data.

This is where you'll most notice the speed benefit from an SSD. So after a clean install the difference is less big than in real circumstances where the OS isn't so clean anymore but heavily fragmented.
 
sub.mesa said:
The speed bonus on SSDs is not that large if you cleanly installed your OS. Then the files are at the fastest portion on the HDD and everything is still 'tidy' meaning its close together and non-fragmented.

If you work a few years on the same OS install and an SSD; you'll notice your computer becoming slow and the HDD is pretty much rattling continuously at every key you press. That's because after some time, data has become fragmented and the HDD has to seek alot to get to all the snippets of data.

This is where you'll most notice the speed benefit from an SSD. So after a clean install the difference is less big than in real circumstances where the OS isn't so clean anymore but heavily fragmented.
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You're severely understating SSD performance. I made the jump to a single 80GB intel g2 awhile back on my gaming machine. The previous ( 2 month old) OS install was on 2 WD Black 1 TB in RAID 0, short stroked to 300GB for the OS partition. The single intel SSD is tremendously more responsive and everything loads much faster. Now I just use the 1TB black drives as storage (non raid) on that machine.
 
Well was it a brand new installation? Even though you short-stroked to 300GB, the data files that are read will be moderately sequential right after a clean install. But as you continue using the system, install and uninstall stuff, everything becomes scattered and HDDs have to seek alot. Especially in those circumstances, the SSDs are hundreds if not thousands of times faster than HDDs.

However, if the data stream is highly sequential, HDDs still do a good job. So they make excellent data disks. Also, Windows 7 (and Vista?) have optimizations (SuperFetch) that preloads some commonly access chunks and puts it together in one sequential file. In essence, the optimization tries to create sequential I/O out of random I/O. As long as you can do I/O sequentially; HDDs will be fast and SSDs only 2 times as fast - not hundreds of times like in my previous example.
 
I dunno whats the bonus getting a raptor these days.. No noise and low power consumption makes it worth getting a SSD and let alone the speed..
 
As a tangible example, here is my experience.

I went from a WD 640GB Blue to an Intel SSD as a boot drive for WinXP.

My computer apparently processes a lot of stuff on bootup. After the Windows screen comes up, it takes a good minute for the HDD light to calm down after some initial scans by my antivirus, loading background processes, etc. I usually leave it alone so the CPU & HDD have a chance to idle.

With my SSD, this takes seconds and my PC is available almost immediately. All that is random reads.
 
SSDs rule for multitasking, try running multiple memory-hungry programs on an HDD and your computer will slow down to a crawl. Ever saw those youtube videos of multiple programs being launched from SSD and HDD? Same thing happens with multiple data-files. And who cares about superior sequential WRITE on HDDs, if they are still slower at reading it than any decent SSD (i.e., Intel G2 ;) ) I mean it's 250mb/s vs 120mb/s! not to mention that HDD's speed falls off from outer to inner parts of the disk, and SSDs have much better random write/read, ridiculously fast access times and so on... If you can afford to waste your time waiting on HDDs, more power to you.
 
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The hugestest difference you'll notice is for short file reads. The random access times of an SSD absolutely destroy any and every spinning disk, hands down. I was also skeptical of spending several hundred on an 80GB drive but I am oh so glad I did.
 
4x4not said:
The hugestest difference you'll notice is for short file reads. The random access times of an SSD absolutely destroy any and every spinning disk, hands down. I was also skeptical of spending several hundred on an 80GB drive but I am oh so glad I did.
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Installs are where I notice it the most but I can't recommend them for the price they are asking for. 10-15k drives give you more space for the cash and the difference in speed isn't that noticeable.
 
I beg to differ. In real world "seat of the pants" feel, the SSD feels much more responsive. They are pricey, but if you are that concerned about price... don't build a high end machine :)
 
4x4not said:
I beg to differ. In real world "seat of the pants" feel, the SSD feels much more responsive. They are pricey, but if you are that concerned about price... don't build a high end machine :)
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Exactly, I don't get with this debate why everyone acts like they have a gun to their head. Plenty of people run on VERY slow drives for OS drives no problem. You just have to pick what you want to pay and for what performance level...just like anything (graphics cards, CPUs, memory, etc.)

Slowest -> Fastest (and for the most part, Cheapest -> Most Expensive):
-Green Drives/5400rpm drives
-Regular 7200rpm drives
-Top of the line 7200rpm drives
-Old Raptors (transfer rates are down from the top of the line 7200rpm drives, but access times are still very quick which balances things out)
-New Velociraptors
-SAS
-Budget SSD
-High-End SSD
 
I just jumped on a 128GB Gen2 Kingston SSDNOW drive because it was under $250 :(

Can't wait to see what all the hype is about...
 
The issue is probably, Grents, that everything in your PC is already very fast - except the harddrive which still relies on mechanical technology. Now we're getting the disk performance we lacked for so many years. Finally the last component that brings your system to its knees removed, and replaced by mechanical-free technology.

CPUs are so fast now you don't really notice it, and most people can do with a CPU thats only half as fast; and wouldn't notice a thing. With HDDs that's different, different because compared to SSDs, mechanical drives are so much slower - up to a factor 1000 faster when comparing random I/O. Those kind of performance gains are unseen - i've never seen a computer component that differs so much in terms of performance. If you think going from floppy drive to HDD was an improvement, the difference between HDD and SSD is even bigger.

Though, through the years, operating systems and applications have adapted to the slow performance of HDDs; by limiting disk I/O, making it more sequential or pre-fetch/buffer it, so you don't have to wait for the disk. All these technologies, just to circumvent the slow HDD. And right now, all those optimizations are limiting SSD performance. So you can see the damage HDDs have done to the computer as a whole. It'll take 10 years to fix that. Right now, optimizations are to limit the load on the disk; to reduce seeking. But SSDs actually want the exact opposite; they want to be loaded heavily at random spots; exactly what all HDD optimizations have been trying to prevent for the past 20 years.

All in all, i'd say SSDs are a true revolution in the storage market. Never before was the difference between two pieces of technology so huge; and perhaps we won't see such big gains for quite some time.
 
sub.mesa said:
The speed bonus on SSDs is not that large if you cleanly installed your OS. Then the files are at the fastest portion on the HDD and everything is still 'tidy' meaning its close together and non-fragmented.

If you work a few years on the same OS install and an SSD; you'll notice your computer becoming slow and the HDD is pretty much rattling continuously at every key you press. That's because after some time, data has become fragmented and the HDD has to seek alot to get to all the snippets of data.

This is where you'll most notice the speed benefit from an SSD. So after a clean install the difference is less big than in real circumstances where the OS isn't so clean anymore but heavily fragmented.
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This.

Forget how your computer feels after a fresh OS install. Think about a couple of years down the line, after things become messy and fragmented. This is where SSD's and high-rpm hard drives really shine. However I agree about the cost of higher capacity SSD's, the price is simply not worth it for individual consumers.

I would tell you to get the raptor if it wasn't used. At first a modern 7200rpm drive will be faster but as things become scattered the lower seek times of the raptor will keep things quick, even after defragging. However I cannot recommend purchasing a used hard drive, with or without a warranty.

You can do what I did and get a small capacity SSD like the OCZ Vertex 30GB for your OS and critical apps and pick up a Velociraptor or 10-15K SCSI drive with 150-300GB for other apps. I got my Vertex 30GB for $67 after MIR from tigerdirect throught he [H]ot Deals board on this forum (and have 22GB free after Win7 64 Pro Install). Then get a 1TB+ behemoth for your media / storage. This will at least hold you over until SSD prices become reasonable.
 
Thanks Pete, but i run something much more advanced already, take a look at this topic if you like:
http://hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=1500505

However, i would not recommend any Indilinx-SSD at the moment, its price is only slightly lower than the Intel based SSDs while being factor 5-10 less fast when it comes to random I/O. So that means that 10 Indilinx SSDs in RAID0 would give you about the same random IOps as one Intel. If you can't afford the 80GB version, the Intel X25-V 40GB is probably the best buy.
 
For my needs, an SSD was a waste.

I have both a VelociRaptor and a SSD from OCZ, and see only a smaller performance increase with the SSD but a heck of a lot of headachs since I use the SSD on a nVidia board and no way to get Sanitary Erase nor HDDerase to wipe the SSD if I needed to and I don't have another non nVidia system to get those programs, so for me and others like me, SSD's are still not ready for prime time.

Perhaps in another two years things will be a little different, but still too early and expensive
 
SR45 said:
For my needs, an SSD was a waste.

I have both a VelociRaptor and a SSD from OCZ, and see only a smaller performance increase with the SSD but a heck of a lot of headachs since I use the SSD on a nVidia board and no way to get Sanitary Erase nor HDDerase to wipe the SSD if I needed to and I don't have another non nVidia system to get those programs, so for me and others like me, SSD's are still not ready for prime time.

Perhaps in another two years things will be a little different, but still too early and expensive
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rofl, you are blaming SSD for you problems with nvidia chipset?
 
TehQuick said:
rofl, you are blaming SSD for you problems with nvidia chipset?
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Blame is on both nVidia and the SSD manufactures. SSD manufactures do not have programs for all motherboards so to use a Sanitary Erase program to keep the drive in top shape and one should be provided as they are now doing with a "Tool box" http://www.anandtech.com/storage/showdoc.aspx?i=3702&p=7 for the future OCZ SSD coming out. Not too hard to do to keep customers happy.

If not, then they should explain to customers that if one has a nVidia chipset you are out of luck and the customer can weigh in as to whether to buy or not. Customer support is very important to make us happy to recommed/buy again.

Though nVidia has some blame as well, nVidia chipsets were out before some of the SSD's were popular. SSD's are still not mature enough so one should think carfully about getting one until they are, not only to save some money (Will go down in price ) but also having issues with them. Hard drives are so much simple in comparison.

My 2cents worth and not alone on this if one checks out the SSD forums. Many issues still. If you are lucky to have an Intel board, good for you
 
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You don't need secure erase if you do a full format in Win7; same thing. You also don't need the toolbox if you can do TRIM.

As for speed; you selected an OCZ drive which is kind of 'whore-ish' about controllers; it can have a crappy JMicron controller or mediocre Indilinx controller; but that still would be a much less advanced and fast SSD than, say, Intel/Micron/Sandforce controlled SSDs.

SSD's are still not mature enough
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Why is that? HDDs are mature according to you?

HDD technology has been out for multiple decades - and still are they unreliable, slow, power inefficient, vulnerable and have several compatibility issues: think about 4KiB sector EARS drives; SATA 1.5/3.0 jumpers; firmware issues, etc.

So i don't really understand your negative thoughts about SSDs. Aside from the inability to do a secure erase, what were your issues? Did you know about the big performance differences between Intel SSDs and cheap SSDs with Indilinx/JMicron controller?
 
sub.mesa said:
Why is that? HDDs are mature according to you?
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I don't disagree with your sentiments but HDDs are pretty much the definition of a mature technology. Whatever flaws they have are no longer due to our understanding of the tech, or our ability to engineer it. Those flaws are fundamental limitations of the technology itself.
 
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