IS a old 74gb Raptor faster than a Caviar Black?

Tobes · 30 Jul 2009 at 19:49

Buying my new rig soon and I totally forgot about SATA ports. The mobo has 5 and I currently have 4 hardrives:

1TB for Movies and Media
300GB for Music
250 for Downloads and other stuff
74GB for Windows 7

and I will be buying a SATA DVD RW because both my IDE drives have had their day and keep acting up. That takes up all the ports but I wanted to buy a 650gb WD Black for OS and apps. Obviously I don't have a spare port for it. So I was thinking of replacing the 300 and 250 for another 1TB WD Black and using the 74gb as a scratch disc (drive for temp active files such as PS and music programs).

However if the raptor is only slightly faster than other drives then I will replace this.

Any ideas?

elpedro · 30 Jul 2009 at 20:32

I believe its only the access times which are better, the caviar drives have higher sustained read/write speeds.

fross · 31 Jul 2009 at 14:16

If you're looking into doing some drive consolidation, I'd put the music and downloads on a new 1TB drive, and get a 64GB or so SSD for the operating system. You won't look back from the speedup that gives you!

Stonedofmoo · 31 Jul 2009 at 14:18

As said the access time will be slightly quicker, but in every other way the WD Black is the better drive, especially so in noise and power consumption

Tobes · 31 Jul 2009 at 14:22

Stonedofmoo said:
As said the access time will be slightly quicker, but in every other way the WD Black is the better drive, especially so in noise and power consumption

Looks like it's time to say goodbye to the raptor then as it's just not worth it. It's the noisiest thing in my system.

fross said:
If you're looking into doing some drive consolidation, I'd put the music and downloads on a new 1TB drive, and get a 64GB or so SSD for the operating system. You won't look back from the speedup that gives you!

Believe me I would love one but the prices are just too high at the moment.