WD Raptor 74GB drive

[gate1975mlm]

I am thinking about getting a WD Raptor 74GB drive. Anyone here use it? Are they really fast? And are they loud?

[stncttr908]

The good folks at Storage Review could explain it to you much better than I.

http://www.storagereview.com/articles/200401/20040126WD740GD_1.html

[PaiN]

I am thinking about getting a WD Raptor 74GB drive. Anyone here use it? Are they really fast? And are they loud?

They are the fastest 1st gen SATA drives you can buy....hands down. They do "tick" when accessing but its not obtrusive...not silent either.
I have two each of the Raptor 36gbs and 74gbs both in RAID"0" arrarys and basicly I can say, I wait for nothing :)

[Dazz]

Same here i have 2x 74GB in RAID-0 also they an't that bad for sound really, they make the same amount of sound as my old 10GB IBM drive.

[Bill The Cat]

In my Shuttle case my 74 GB Raptor doesn't make a whole lot of sound - It's not noticable. And the speed is one of those things that just makes you smile. It's not a huge difference, but just big enough to make you grin. Windows loads faster, UT04 loads a couple seconds faster, and defrags/virus scans take quite a bit less. If you've got some spare cash, it's a good investment.

I don't get the ticking that Pain mentioned, though. I think storage review has some threads on it, and some people get it bad, others don't.

For best results attach it to an NCQ-enabled controller.

[Dazz]

I wouldn't not NCQ i have tried it and my peformance was way way way lower. Even through my Ms time was only 2ms in SISoft!!!

[GlowStick]

Yes, the 74g raptor is a great drive, it is very fast. It dose make a 'tick' sound when accessing data, however its not very loud or sharp. One thing to rember is the drive is awfully small for todays standards. It also has a 5 Year warrenty witch is very nice.

I will not buy another HDD that isnt a raptor for my main computer again, read that as I am very pleased with its preformance. : )

[Dazz]

Same where thinking i might get an other 2 down the line muhahahaha

[Rytr]

Must have lucked out on my Raptor as it makes almost no noise, definitely no 'ticking'.
The case I presently have it in is cooled by (2) 120mm Panaflos and one 80mm Panaflo. The only fan that is audible is the stock fan on the P4E heatsink. It would be a very quiet system if not for the 32x HP CD/RW when it runs...sounds like its coming apart. :D

[shoes]

yeah, it's fast. wife has on in her 875p I don't cause i have the little amd k7 HTPC budget rig :) - but they are fast. windows loads on hers about 2-3 seconds faster than mine (i have 2x seagate 120's ide drives). ATTO and HD tach scores are better on that raptor too of course .

[PaiN]

ya know.....I think when I said "ticking" ...I said the wrong word.. :rolleyes:
Let me try to better describe what I hear when the two 74gb Raptors are accessing like this; not a "tick" but "a low machanical growl"

[Riptide]

My 36GB models produce noise when they are accessing. I wouldn't call it a tick though, not really sure how to characterize it. Anyway it's nothing out of the ordinary and it's quieter than my previous SCSI drives.

[alucard_x]

i get very little noise from my raptor, not nearly as bad as some of my older IDE drives i've had. definitely worth the money and the storage problem can be worked around assuming you have other IDE drives in your system. another benefit that is implicit but didn't consider when buying it, is that by putting your page file on this drive, swapping is so much faster even with my ****ty ram. fyi, the drive is the fastest within the first 14gigs, so i put my pagefile on my windows partition which is the first 10gigs of the drive. run hdtach to see.

[shaker718]

on quick question, what would be better, 1 raptor alone or 2 maxtor sata drives in raid? i've heard the argument about games and raids so i dont care about that, but which configuration would load say premiere pro faster?

[GlowStick]

1 Raptor alone. RAID dose not give any preformance gain.

[Riptide]

It doesn't help much with games. It does help when copying or reading/writing large volumes of files. For instance, if compressing a DVD w/DVDShrink or DVD2One RAID will speed up those programs at least in my experience it has.

[GlowStick]

It doesn't help much with games. It does help when copying or reading/writing large volumes of files. For instance, if compressing a DVD w/DVDShrink or DVD2One RAID will speed up those programs at least in my experience it has.
Agreed, with large streams of video it will give you moderate preformance increase, but the 10k raptor will still stomp any maxtors out there. However, you still have to rember that the 74gig raptor is still INCREDIBLY small for todays standards. it comes to 69gigs formatted, and a windows xp2 install takes about 3 gigs alone. space fills up fast.