Western Digital Raptor 74 GB HDD Review

[Jak Crow]

alot of sata drives right now are just pata drives with a bridge chip.

the main thing about sata drives is that with surrent rotation speeds, they dont beat on the pata interface it sata interface too much. an ata133 drive wont hit that 133 barrier. the raptor skews this because it has such a high speed that it can hand lots of info very quickly to the cpu, and it does a decent job of using the sata bus.
The 10k Raptor is currently one of those drives with a bridge chip. Just FYI...

[Jak Crow]

Exactly, all the synthetic benchmarks in the world don't mean squat unless the performance translates in real-world scenarios.
Which many times, these drives do not carry over in serious applications. RAIDing two 10k Raptors against two 7200 Maxtors gains minor speed benefits for something like software development where we have build machines constantly cranking out software builds. IMO, your money would put to better use given the storage capacity of the Raptors.

[zoomy942]

Which many times, these drives do not carry over in serious applications. RAIDing two 10k Raptors against two 7200 Maxtors gains minor speed benefits for something like software development where we have build machines constantly cranking out software builds. IMO, your money would put to better use given the storage capacity of the Raptors.


true, but to those of us that dont RAID, like me, a single raptor beats down anything else.

i use RAID all day at work, and i dont like to bring work home with me :)

[Jak Crow]

Yeah, but give me more capacity than speed IMO. I'd feel ripped off by the price of a Raptor right now when you can get a 300GB for the same.

[jAkUp]

Which many times, these drives do not carry over in serious applications. RAIDing two 10k Raptors against two 7200 Maxtors gains minor speed benefits for something like software development where we have build machines constantly cranking out software builds. IMO, your money would put to better use given the storage capacity of the Raptors.

Two raided raptors is incredibly fast:
http://www.pcstats.com/articleview.cfm?articleid=1746&page=4

[JonathanM]

Nice review dude. :)

[Falkentyne]

Pretty speedy drives. I notice I am always the first person to enter the game on map changes in all multiplayer games :D

Well, I have a 200gb WD SATA drive, and a P4 3.7EE (s478) and 2 GB of RAM and I get on the server at the same time as my friend, who has 1 GB plus 2 raptors in raid 0......

Anyway, I wouldn't pay $185 for a drive when you can get 3x as many MB for 2/3 the price. Space fills quickly, when you leech porn on the newsgroups daily :) I'm sure better deals can be had at computer shows, though...

[zoomy942]

yeah. the space vs. cost was a big thing for me. but, with my pc, there are no movies or mp3's or anything like that.. i only install games i am gonna play. i have 4 installed now, and all .iso's and anything thats large, i burn to a dvd.

so on my pc, i have 18 gb used, so i dont really need space.

[ricercar]

My first generation RAID0 36G Raptors are louder than my FX 5800 in the same box. YMMV.

[Vagrant Zero]

Well, I have a 200gb WD SATA drive, and a P4 3.7EE (s478) and 2 GB of RAM and I get on the server at the same time as my friend, who has 1 GB plus 2 raptors in raid 0......

Anyway, I wouldn't pay $185 for a drive when you can get 3x as many MB for 2/3 the price. Space fills quickly, when you leech porn on the newsgroups daily :) I'm sure better deals can be had at computer shows, though...

That's why I have 1 75gb raptor [the performence drive, OS and games] and 2x250gbs [storage drives, porn, tv shows, music, comic books, etc].

[zoomy942]

That's why I have 1 75gb raptor [the performence drive, OS and games] and 2x250gbs [storage drives, porn, tv shows, music, comic books, etc].

exactly/ and since i dont have any of that stuff you have on your extra drives.. one 74 raptor is good enough for me

[jAkUp]

Thats exactly what I have too.. 1 74gb raptor. Was thinking about getting another one and running a Stripe array... but.. meh, you lose seek time :D

[zoomy942]

Thats exactly what I have too.. 1 74gb raptor. Was thinking about getting another one and running a Stripe array... but.. meh, you lose seek time :D

and add noise, weight and heat. :)