shall i sell my raptors?

[it_burns_when_i_pee]

I had my replacement raptor 150gb back after a warranty claim recently and im contemplating selling the 2 i have and "downgrading" to 2x sata II drives with perpendicular recording.

looking at some benchmark charts i see sata II drives are faster in alot of tests than the raptors.

i had 2x 74gb raptors before and one of them died on me and having the same thing has happened again my faith in western digital is diminished.

i have re-raided the 150gb drives however there is thought knawing at me that when setting up raid you should get 2 identical drives together on purchase because of the slightest of varients drives can have coming off assembly lines over a period of time. the new drive i got is labelled as a refurb and its original manufacturer date is several months newer than the one that didnt fail.

whilst waiting for the drive to be returned i bought 2 x 160gb maxtor sata 150 drives off ebay quite cheap as the guy only had them for collection & was loca plus they were originally used in a raid setup so it was an extra bonus. however having gone from these to the raptors the performance increase is hardly noticable, but one or two things seem a little hesitant? like something is waiting, possible one drive to the other?

whats your thoughts guys? on changing and any confirmation of performance of perp recording sata 300 drives vs raptor 150's

[strange|ife]

I had my replacement raptor 150gb back after a warranty claim recently and im contemplating selling the 2 i have and "downgrading" to 2x sata II drives with perpendicular recording.

looking at some benchmark charts i see sata II drives are faster in alot of tests than the raptors.

i had 2x 74gb raptors before and one of them died on me and having the same thing has happened again my faith in western digital is diminished.

i have re-raided the 150gb drives however there is thought knawing at me that when setting up raid you should get 2 identical drives together on purchase because of the slightest of varients drives can have coming off assembly lines over a period of time. the new drive i got is labelled as a refurb and its original manufacturer date is several months newer than the one that didnt fail.

whilst waiting for the drive to be returned i bought 2 x 160gb maxtor sata 150 drives off ebay quite cheap as the guy only had them for collection & was loca plus they were originally used in a raid setup so it was an extra bonus. however having gone from these to the raptors the performance increase is hardly noticable, but one or two things seem a little hesitant? like something is waiting, possible one drive to the other?

whats your thoughts guys? on changing and any confirmation of performance of perp recording sata 300 drives vs raptor 150's

raptors are fine drives, and will outperform any 7200 in substained transfer rates. not burst though. Honestly i would just keep them at this point, unless your out growing them. Some seagates will give two raptors a run for there money though, you cant tell the diffrence, unless its a benchmark..like most things

[virtualrain]

I'm going to hold on for a year until I can get a couple of reasonably priced SSD's and run those in RAID-0 :D

[it_burns_when_i_pee]

aye solid state be nice

however i got 5 drives here and i need to sell off 2, its been a very expensive month for me with other things

the seagate i was looking at was a seagate 250gb ST3250820AS. it out performed a single raptor admirably in many tests and of course i will be having 2 for the RAID. however there is a few reviews of a NL series - 250gb ST3250620NS seagate drive thats slightly better again than the ST3250820AS

i checked tomshardware.com as they got a large comparison charts of cpu, video etc and the hard drive charts reveals the raptors dont match many sata300 drives. and this hesitating the machine seems to have is knawing at me. i didnt notice it before and the maxtors just grinded away when i opened or did things. the raptors have a second delay, playing half life 2 and fear is much more noticable but i think that may be because they slightly different given manufacture gap, as i said i was happy with them before

[Brian MP5T]

Personally, The idea that more is better, That faster is better, is quite true.

However, if you can't actually see the diference in performance or you will not miss it, then the Raid 0 SATA II will be a more cost friendly option.

I had a choice initially of fast drives with small storage or slightly slower drives with much much more room.

I was toying around also with simply one Raptor, but decided to RAID0 3x 500Gb SATA II drives for about the same price. I would do the same over and over.

[Serra]

The question you have to ask yourself is this: do you want sequential read speed or access rates? If you want "snappy" general desktop use, stay with the Raptors - perpendicular or not, 7200rpm drives still can't move to new data as quickly to access small data blocks.

For example, I've chosen to RAID my 2 Raptors for the sole use of housing my VMs because with a decent size virtual lab on one drive, that access time is going to really make a difference for me... though as a result, my desktop is now being displayed with a regular 7200rpm drive. It's not *quite* as snappy as it could be, but I can barely notice the difference and I'm quite happy to leave well enough alone and just use 7200rpm drives for my regular day-to-day stuff.

[it_burns_when_i_pee]

i wont grumble about the performance of the raptors before but now there is something up, im convinced its the difference on manufacturer's date / assembly lines. i went from happy performance to slightly slower but consistent performance with the maxtors and now back to the raptors but with hesitation

i havent wiped the maxtors yet although i have put them up for sale. i should time some things / benchmark and then swap to the maxtors and repeat.

if i sell the raptors they will outweigh the cost of 2 new drives, and i was thinking of upgrading the cpu so it will contribute to the cost of that, im getting a new case shortly so could combine shipping costs. i will mess around with the maxtors then the raptors and see how i feel after that. thanks for the input guys but i wish i had the seagate NL's to test too to get a real comparison in my own machine.

[Soulburner]

After setting up multiple machines with and without Raptors, I can definetely tell the difference. Raptors install programs faster, defragment faster, and load up games and applications faster. The only areas where "normal" drives have almost caught up to them are constant long reads like opening a large file off of a disk. This is due to large platter sizes on the newer drives. I have used the newer Seagate 7200.10's and the Samsung HD501LJ drives against a 150gb Raptor and there is a difference.

WD could absolutely make a 300gb Raptor right now, they are just choosing not to. Cost would be prohibitive and most people that use these simply don't need that much space on that drive. However with double the density there would be no more question of whether or not they are faster.

[it_burns_when_i_pee]

thing is these benchmarks are indeed showing that they are rivaling or besting the raptors. but as we all know benchmarks dont always give real world results.

if they are what they say they are, then for money and performance the raptors seem a silly choice. given the fact my raptors are making this hesitation decision before they do anything all the time i am gonna get rid and "upgrade" to the seagate nl drives shortly. i will update you .... hopefully without disapointments

[Soulburner]

What benchmarks are you referencing? Synthetic tests or actual application times? The former isn't very useful whereas the latter is.

[it_burns_when_i_pee]

i just chucked in the model number followed by "review" in google and checked several sites

however tomshardware has a good rundown where they benchtest them for dozens of things like xp startup time, constant read transfer. avg transfer, random etc etc. pretty good i used it alot when deciding on my pc setup at the beginning of the year -they have video card and cpu charts too.