Western Digital Raptor 74 GB HDD Review

[MikeC]

We recently hooked Paul Zimmerman, aka zoomy942, up with Western Digital's 74 GB Raptor hard disk drive. Although expensive, when compared to mainstream SATA drives, the Raptor offers exceptionally fast performance.

http://www.nvnews.net/reviews/western_digital_raptor/images/hdd_s.jpg

Paul uses HD Tach, PCMark04's HDD Test Suite, and real-world testing to compare performance. How much better did the Raptor perform? Read on (http://www.nvnews.net/reviews/western_digital_raptor/index.shtml) to find out!

[zoomy942]

:)

[jAkUp]

Nice review!

I could not live without my Raptors :) My 74gb is lightening quick, and my GF's 36gb is almost as quick :D (Her's only has a 5.2ms seek time... muahaha)

I can definetely see why you say its loud. It doesn't bother me much at all, but the first thing the girly said when I did the upgrade is "It's Louder" :rolleyes:

WD is actually gonna unveil a 150gb drive soon... Hoping for an even lower seek time :)

[Vagrant Zero]

I can't hear my raptor. A spinning CD and my GT are louder, along with the case fans. Then again my computer is anything but quiet [I hate quiet computers, complete silence = disturbing as all frak for people who are used to Los Angeles].

Regardless, my raptor is the sex and I couldn't do without her. Also, I got my Raptor for $150 for brand new on ebay and this was in last June. I'm sure I can get them for less nowadays.

[alucard_x]

worth the price? absolutely.

and i hardly hear mine, my old ibm 20gig drive is louder than my raptor

[oliversl]

Hi,
nice review. I wonder, what is the exact model number of the Seagate drive?
I currently have a Seagate Barracuda 7200.7 and want to know if my drive is
the same as the one in the report.

Thanks
Oliver

[zoomy942]

seagate model ST3120026AS

as for the people saying its loud, with my pc, it is completely silent. its not one of those pretty quiet pc's; i cant hear a thing. so i notice the noise. but its not like the drive makes so much noise that you will wonder if something is wrong with it :), for the average pc, the noise wont be loud enough to notice.

[jAkUp]

Seagate's/Maxtors are very quiet because of the fluid bearings... I'm pretty sure WD still does not use fluid bearings.

[oliversl]

seagate model ST3120026AS

as for the people saying its loud, with my pc, it is completely silent. its not one of those pretty quiet pc's; i cant hear a thing. so i notice the noise. but its not like the drive makes so much noise that you will wonder if something is wrong with it :), for the average pc, the noise wont be loud enough to notice.
Is this the Seagate used in the review? tks

[zoomy942]

yeah

[SH64]

Very informative review Paul ... simple , short & right on the spot :thumbsup:

it would've been great if you put the Hitachi & the Barracuda's specs next to the Raptor's to see how technically they compare.

also i have a question related to the HDDs topic :
Is there a performance differenece between the regular (7200RPM) PATA & SATA HDDs ?? if so .. how big it is ?

[Clay]

Great review Paul! :cool:

[BrianG]

IIRC, the 26AS was the previous generation. I now have the 27AS that support NCQ as a storage drive, though NCQ is not going to level the playing field here.

If it weren't for the fact that I could buy two of the new 80GB Seagates to put in RAID 0 and a 160GB for the price of two 36GB Raptors, they would likely be in my system, heh.

Nice review. :thumbsup:

[zoomy942]

Very informative review Paul ... simple , short & right on the spot :thumbsup:

it would've been great if you put the Hitachi & the Barracuda's specs next to the Raptor's to see how technically they compare.

also i have a question related to the HDDs topic :
Is there a performance differenece between the regular (7200RPM) PATA & SATA HDDs ?? if so .. how big it is ?


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.

[Rytr]

Just got in and read this review. Nice job Paul!

Mine has been going good for about a year now. :)

[MikeC]

Great review Paul. I just ran my 74 GB Raptor through the PCMark04 HDD Test Suite and my results were spot on with yours.

[saturnotaku]

Simple to read with some great visuals in the charts. Very well done. :thumbsup:

Paul, I noticed in the FS/FT thread you want a 36 GB Raptor for yourself. As one who uses these drives (love their performance in RAID-0) and who noticed that you look to have a pretty quiet system, I would strongly advise against going with those drives. I'm sure the 74 GB models have improved NVH, but the drives I have are loud. If I were you, I would use the 74 GB drive for Windows and games and then buy a Maxtor DiamondMax 10 w/16 mb of cache for your backup, media, etc. storage. That way you can spare your ears while still have a kick a** storage matrix.

[zoomy942]

hmm.. well said. i was actually thinking about doing that after jakup mentioned the exact same thing. i just might do that.

would just leaving it as a 74gb chunk be faster than making her into partitions?

i havent installed games in their default path but i might start doing that. this raptor is so dang fast.

[saturnotaku]

would just leaving it as a 74gb chunk be faster than making her into partitions?

With previous hard drives I've owned, making a partition on the same drive as where Windows is didn't make a bit of difference. You could do it as a way to keep your stuff organized, but as far as it being faster, you're probably not going to notice.

[MUYA]

Hey good stuff Zoom!

How about lending me them Raptors for a few years? :p

[PaiN]

Nice review zoomy...spot on :)
imo....as a person with 4 of these drives running. 2 36gb in RAID0 as a boot\Windows partition and 2 74gb RAID0 for games and apps....I really don't find them that loud...not that they are silent :rolleyes: ..but the noise doesn't bother me at all and I like my system quiet....

[|JuiceZ|]

Great review buddy. Short, concise and to the point, I like that. Look forward to reading more from you and possibly picking up one of those raptors soon ;)

[zoomy942]

thanks, i always prefer research that is right to the point. and, for me, i always look for some real world info. to me... the seak time doesnt matter too much if it boots windows 10 seconds faster. :)

[|JuiceZ|]

thanks, i always prefer research that is right to the point. and, for me, i always look for some real world info. to me... the seak time doesnt matter too much if it boots windows 10 seconds faster. :)

Exactly, all the synthetic benchmarks in the world don't mean squat unless the performance translates in real-world scenarios.

[Rakeesh]

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