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Anyone have any experience with these drives? I'm thinking of getting two for a raid setup in one of my machines. The ones I am interested in have the 8 meg cache. I use WD's already but not in SATA format. I was thinking of using a converter from IDE to SATA, but I see someone already tried that with no improvement.:?:
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IDE to SATA convertor doesnt benefit performance, but it aids in airflow as the SATA cables are small, and it does free up ya IDE channel. If ya need speed go with the Raptor 37.4 GB drives, but most likely you dont need that speed, so just get their normal SATA 7200rpm 8mb cache drives -
Hey, AMD Man..
Good suggestion! I checked prices online, and they are so close the only reason to buy one over the other is capacity, unless of course I needed the Raptor's speed. Check this out:
Raptor 10,000 rpm 37 gig - $105.00
1200 JD 7200 rpm 120 gig - $109.00
Makes for a tough decision.
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Yah, ain't it great? :D :D . Personally, when I build my new comp (when PCI-Express becomes main stream and debugged), my gaming drives are going to be two WD Raptors in RAID 0, can't beat that performance/price ratio. And I never use space, so 72GB is plenty for me (I've used up a shocking 9GB of the 160GB drive I have in here now). Decide how much space you need, and go with that :thumb: . : peace2: Mista K6Comment
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Yeah, you can... I seriously don't see why people get so excited by the Raptors for gaming. Hard disk speed ain't going to help that much, and there's not that much more performance that a normal SATA RAID array won't give...Originally posted by Mista K6Comment
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Well Beefy
If a tweaker had a MoBo with SATA +raid built in and copped two Raptors for $105.00 each he would be almost $400 ahead of the cheapest SCSI drive/controller combo that will catch it.
On a site where most of the folks are pushing the low cost CPUs and Memory beyond spec, seems to make sense that they would want to get the most HD throughput for the buck also.
They run a little warm, and have an annoying whine... but they flat smoke the IBM deathstar that Maximum PC conned me into getting a year or so ago.
I have a server with three 20GB SCSI on an Ultra 160 controller. Four years ago when I set it up those drives and controller they set me back about $2K
Storagereview.com also specs them (Raptors) out as most bang for the buck you should check out the comparisons they did and the competition they were up against... you might change your mind.
Oh before I forget....these are heavy drives and WD gives you 5 years to kill em, soon to be released WD760DG Raptor 76GB with fluid bearings and even faster seek...
Can you tell this old Winchester drive MFM/RLL encodeing (paid over $500 for my first 20Megebite drive) is now a WD fan!Comment
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Thanks for reiterating my point. Raptors are a good alternative for SCSI in server situations. You said yourself that you've got a SCSI setup in a server. BUT, my whole point was towards why gamers need these drives...Originally posted by fredvon4
I'm not saying the drives aren't any good, I know they are. It's just that some people naturally think that because they are faster, that you've got to get them because they'll just make everything superquick! But in reality, for gaming, you're not really going to see any increase from a Raptor RAID to any SATA RAID. You'll get people that throw benchmarks around saying how they are quicker. Yes, they are. Mainly when you are doing something that requires blindingly fast HDD read/write speeds and seek times. Things like servers, A/V production, etc... make good use of all the speed they can get. Gaming? Not really...Comment
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Good point there Beefy, I would like to build me a nice sata raid system to quick up my video editing work. I'm using a single 7200rpm drive with 2Mb of cache atm which I keep well defragmented so I never get any dropped frames etc when I capture, however moving large files from partion to partion is slooow and I think that area would be less of a pain with a nice fast raidsystem like yours.Originally posted by Beefy
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Excellent points, one thing I forgot to add was that when you do a raid setup you can optimize it for the environment. SATA Raid 0 will ask you to describe the stripe or chunk size. There are as many opinions on this as there are folks doing the implementation. For Large file (video editing) throughput and efficiency you can describe fairly large stripes. For the average computer needs mid sized is better.
Beefy you are right about the gamers environment and it is obvious by all the different benchmarks that efficient CPU synchronized to good fast memory, and offloading as much CPU effort to a great GPU and APU, have a much more dramatic effect in FPS than HD seek or burst throughput.
I still contend that if you can live within a 60GB storage partition (72GB Max twin Raptor stripe set minus a partition of 10GB or so for the OS) then the WD SATA in Raid 0 will assist in adding some FPS to the equation.
My initial comment focused on the idea you posted as a response to this quote:
"Originally posted by Mista K6
my gaming drives are going to be two WD Raptors in RAID 0, can't beat that performance/price ratio. "
Where Beefy said " Yea, you can.."
To some degree I agree with Beefy's later thought on SATA Raid 0 as relates to gaming. But with the WD360DGs (originally over $190) now down in the $100-$120 range, they are looking pretty good as a way to add some decent throughput to a great tweaked out system.
Of course for about the same $$$ you can get the new Hitachi (fixed IBM deskstar) in 160GB format and have a drive that will keep up or even exceed the WD Raptor in various situations.
And lets not forget that if you are not into chasing the elusive "fastest possible machine for the least bucks" then the current crop of 8MB cache 7200 rpm HDs are selling at prices way under a buck a GB.
I still have an old Seagate 20MB HD that cost about $25 a MB!!Comment
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