WD740GD or WD2500KS for the OS?

[blank]

hey guys, I've got two drives, currently I've got my OS on the 250gb 7200rpm one but I found my old WD740GD in the closet...should i make the switch for the main OS, or rather, is it worth the switch? are there any programs that can copy the image from one drive to the other?

 

[bbz_Ghost]

Raptor for the OS drive? And you have to ask this question?

Even the old 74GB model will still outperform the other in day-to-day usage of the OS, most anyone would tell you that. For a data drive the other is perfect, but for the OS itself, for the system drive, Raptors rule - as far as non-SCSI/Fiber Channel solutions go.

 

[luke51087]

yea same as ^ i have been running an os on my 74gb raptor and would never go back to using my standard 7200rpm drives for it everything is a lot more responsive.

 

[slappynutz]

I dunno. I have a first-gen 74GB raptor and I'm seriously considering buying a new Hitachi 1TB drive and using that for my OS instead. At least from the performance charts the new 7200rpm drives seem to be catching up and do so with a lot less noise. My 74GB raptor has always been a bit noisy and compared to the high-end 7200rpm drives which are nearly silent, the raptors tend to be less of an advantage. Noise should be a consideration.

 

[Xeth]

If you partition off say 20% of a nice 1TB drive and use it for the OS it would probably be faster than a Raptor because the head would only have to move a tiny bit to seek across the whole partition, and the transfer rate is faster due to areal density.

 

[unhappy_mage]

If you partition off say 20% of a nice 1TB drive and use it for the OS it would probably be faster than a Raptor because the head would only have to move a tiny bit to seek across the whole partition, and the transfer rate is faster due to areal density.

But the drive is more likely to miss on the 1TB drive due to that very density. And the seek actuators are significantly less powerful on that 1TB drive than on the Raptor.

 

[Manny Calavera]

But the drive is more likely to miss on the 1TB drive due to that very density. And the seek actuators are significantly less powerful on that 1TB drive than on the Raptor.

I wish we had a post rating system,and thanks for explaining that,I didnt know that myself.

 

[unhappy_mage]

I wish we had a post rating system,and thanks for explaining that,I didnt know that myself.

I should mention that I don't know if the partitioned drive will be faster or slower for a given workload than the Raptor; if you're interested, try both ways and see what works better. But it's not as much of a huge performance/$ win as it looks.

 

[slappynutz]

I don't mind if there's a few ns difference in benchmarking if it means getting rid of the annoying "ticking" drive seeks that are so loud on the Raptor.