I'm looking to replace my main hd with a raptor. is raptor still the fastest there is or are there any good competition now?
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what are good alternatives to a raptor hd?
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I believe that the WD Raptor is still the only 10,000 RPM SATA drive available. However, what you gain in performance, you loose in disk space and gained noise. You might also consider gaining some performance by using two or more SATA drives "striped" together in a RAID 0 configuration.
are you mad? raid 0 while fast is taking a nice gamble with you data. make sure you make backups.
raid 0 with raptors, mmmm fast. and a nice big drive for regular frequent backups, which you are doing anyway right?
solid state drives are fast so are memory (ram) drives, but very expensive.
Well, if you aren't in the habit of making regular backups, absolutely. But we all know that everyone makes their faithful backups, now don't we. 😉 Especially now that we have time machine.
Agreed that several Raptors striped together would make a nice setup. Not that it would be any safer for your data than two slower SATA drives without regular backups. 🙄
Why are Raptors still so popular? Pickup a 750GB or 1TB Drive that have equal performance, is a lot quieter and cheaper per gigabyte. RAID them up if you want even more performance.
Newegg has Samsung 750GB F1's with 32MB Cache for $150
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822152100
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Newegg has Samsung 750GB F1's with 32MB Cache for $150
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822152100
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Raptors are designed for speed, not storage capacity. They easily beat standard 7,200RPM drives.
If you're looking at spending money on Raptors, which are $200 each, you should also check out SSD. SSD drives destroy ANY AND ALL HDD options because they do not have mechanical parts, which slows down the seek time.
Also I've seen computers with 5 SSD drives RAID0'd together, and WOW.
Since SSD drives don't have mechanical moving parts, they are much less susceptible dying, and don't mind being dropped the way HDD's do.
...But since 128GB is $3000, you might be a little limited 😛
If you're looking at spending money on Raptors, which are $200 each, you should also check out SSD. SSD drives destroy ANY AND ALL HDD options because they do not have mechanical parts, which slows down the seek time.
Also I've seen computers with 5 SSD drives RAID0'd together, and WOW.
Since SSD drives don't have mechanical moving parts, they are much less susceptible dying, and don't mind being dropped the way HDD's do.
...But since 128GB is $3000, you might be a little limited 😛
Seagte drives with Perpendicular recording drives offer some pretty good performance. Some of their higher end server market drives can nip at the heals of the original 36GB raptor with 8MB of cache but are still outpaced by modern raptors which have double the cache and Native Command Queuing (NCQ) or Tagged Command Queuing (only one model) and since the single platter 72GB and later versions of the drive, have a native SATA controller instead of a bridge chip.
So basically no, nothing short of a RAID array or as-fast/faster SCSI drive will compare to a Raptor.
So basically no, nothing short of a RAID array or as-fast/faster SCSI drive will compare to a Raptor.
bigbossbmb
macrumors 68000
In read/write tests, the latest Samsung and Seagates have outperformed the Raptors. Raptors still have an I/O speed advantage.
CanadaRAM
macrumors G5
One other thing to take into account -- when any drive starts getting full, the heads are working on the inner tracks that have a smaller diameter, thus fewer bits pass under the head for each revolution (amount of data is proportional to the perimeter / track length). Performance on inner tracks is commonly only half of the performance on outer tracks. This is also why a 7200 RPM 2.5" laptop drive will never match a 7200 RPM 3.5" drive -- smaller diameter = crippled performance.
Now the gotcha -- Raptors are approx 3" drives, not 3.5", and with their small GB capacity, they move to the inner tracks WAY quicker than a large capacity 3.5" drive. 90 Gb of data on a 150 Gb Raptor is already most of the way to the slowest track, whereas 90 Gb on a 500 Gb or 750 Gb 3.5" drive is still almost at the fastest outer tracks - barely scratching the surface.
Now the gotcha -- Raptors are approx 3" drives, not 3.5", and with their small GB capacity, they move to the inner tracks WAY quicker than a large capacity 3.5" drive. 90 Gb of data on a 150 Gb Raptor is already most of the way to the slowest track, whereas 90 Gb on a 500 Gb or 750 Gb 3.5" drive is still almost at the fastest outer tracks - barely scratching the surface.
Wild-Bill
macrumors 68030
Oh really? I'd like to see a link to that statement. In my research, I've read that the WD 750 gig AAKS is a monster. And for the 1 tb drives, the Hitachi is still the king. I read there was no significant leap in speed going from the 7200.10 to the 7200.11 Seagates. 😕
I second this. The WD7500AAKS beats a 7200.11 even with half the cache (16MB vs 32MB), from the reviews I've read. Not to mention it's quieter.
I'm going to wait for Western Digital's own 32mb cache offerings. The 7200.11's didn't get any faster, just more expensive... and then there's the whole bad firmware thing.
dint have to search very far... ,your thinking of the old seagate 7200.11 🙂
seagates are very quiet. they did have problem in the earily model of 32mb but now has been fixed.
http://www.barefeats.com/hard94.html
oh and here
http://www.extremetech.com/article2/0,1697,2206630,00.asp
only 1 bench that wd beats seagate.
seagates are very quiet. they did have problem in the earily model of 32mb but now has been fixed.
http://www.barefeats.com/hard94.html
oh and here
http://www.extremetech.com/article2/0,1697,2206630,00.asp
only 1 bench that wd beats seagate.
You guys might want to check out these benchmarks:
http://www.tomshardware.com/2007/11/21/samsung_overtakes_with_a_bang/
The Samsung F1 terabyte drives tear up the charts.
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http://www.tomshardware.com/2007/11/21/samsung_overtakes_with_a_bang/
The Samsung F1 terabyte drives tear up the charts.
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no, not old tech and not obsolete.
you can get faster read/write performance now, but not i/o or random access.
You would be surprised how much of your day-to-day hard drive usage falls into the random access category.
same with i/o performance. lots of small files scattered across a disc (such as tiny preference files, cached web images, etc) will get to the RAM and the processor faster from a raptor than from a 7200 rpm drive.
they are louder, yes. they are smaller, yes.
but a RAID 0 of Raptors is going to be faster than a RAID 0 of non-raptors.
They are also due for a refresh, so don't be surprised when they get bigger, quieter, and faster some time before mid-08.
you can get faster read/write performance now, but not i/o or random access.
You would be surprised how much of your day-to-day hard drive usage falls into the random access category.
same with i/o performance. lots of small files scattered across a disc (such as tiny preference files, cached web images, etc) will get to the RAM and the processor faster from a raptor than from a 7200 rpm drive.
they are louder, yes. they are smaller, yes.
but a RAID 0 of Raptors is going to be faster than a RAID 0 of non-raptors.
They are also due for a refresh, so don't be surprised when they get bigger, quieter, and faster some time before mid-08.