Raptor or 7200.10's

James_Bong · 13 Jul 2006 at 06:37

Which would be best for me:

1 x Raptor 150GB SATA I 16MB

or

2 x (raid 0) Seagate 250GB 7200.10 SATA II 16MB

Running on MSI Neo 4 Platinum, X2 4400, 2G, 7800GTX.

Are there any problem/issues running SATA II drives on the MSI Neo 4?

Which drive(s) would give me the best performance?

The Seagates work out cheaper and I get a lot more storage. But really don't need anywhere near 500GB, 150GB would be plenty for me.

I guess it's just a question of performance and price, I can't decide what to buy.....

FrankJH · 13 Jul 2006 at 07:31

to be honest in everyday usage I dont think you will notice that much difference unless you really want to look

I would personally go for the raid 0 only because its cheaper and just incase at some point you DO need the extra storage

earlyflash · 13 Jul 2006 at 09:29

RAID 0 in this case would double your risk of losing data - if either drive dies you lose the entire array.

Just be aware.

Mr Jones · 13 Jul 2006 at 09:43

Why not go with a Raptor 74 16mb cache + a 7000.10 @250GB or even the 320GB?

Works out cheaper.

Raptor 74GB for OS and programs whilst the 7000.10 for Storage.

No need for Raid0 - too risky if any of the 2 drives fails.

Imy · 13 Jul 2006 at 10:15

Yeah I would also recommend a 36GB/74GB (16mb cache versions) Raptor as OS/programs/games drive and then a 7200.10 for data.

jbloggs · 13 Jul 2006 at 10:59

James_Bong:

I would go along with what Dr Jones suggested:

Why not go with a Raptor 74 16mb cache + a 7000.10 @250GB or even the 320GB?

Works out cheaper.

Raptor 74GB for OS and programs whilst the 7000.10 for Storage.

Corasik · 13 Jul 2006 at 11:25

Ive been running raid0 for a while now, and while I've not suffered any dataloss, I cant say I've been that excited by the performance either.

CPU usage while accessing the raid is higher than the normal disks, I think my windows boot time might be a couple of seconds faster, but its nothing special, likewise loading time for games half a second faster perhaps. But nothing that makes a worthwhile difference.

I'll be replacing my raid0 with a single Seagate 320gig 7200.10 as soon as I get around to it.

t31os · 13 Jul 2006 at 13:18

I use 1 raptor for anything i wanted to run fast then a Hitachi and a regular WD sata drives for storage and other aps.

Admiral Huddy · 13 Jul 2006 at 13:21

From what I've been reading, there isn't much between these drives as far as performance is concerened despite the raptor operating at high speeds.

Bang for buck, your best off with the Seagate.

Mr Jones · 13 Jul 2006 at 16:35

Admiral Huddy said:
From what I've been reading, there isn't much between these drives as far as performance is concerened despite the raptor operating at high speeds.

Bang for buck, your best off with the Seagate.

The Raptor is significantly faster as I/O, so random access is quicker than what high end 7200s can offer - e.g. Boot times, search time - i.e. immediately after boot, go into search and search for .jpg (a Raptor can find them all faster! than any 7200 HDD can*)

*provided there's a lot of files

Saw that on my mate's P4HT 2.4 system with a raptor (the 8mb cache) compared to my P4HT 2.8 with a Maxtor

, with similar amount of files and size.

lay-z-boy · 14 Jul 2006 at 01:09

seagate, cant stand 10k+ whines.

And its cheaper + bigger.

Also this raid 0 failure bs gets me, i have a 2 drive raid 0 array thats been on my p4 since i got it a few years back, not crashed once.

Same goes for my quad drive raid 0 in my main rig, not crashed since day 1.

Besides, even if it did, i have 2 backups of everything

Silver_&_Gold · 14 Jul 2006 at 01:18

Dr Jones said:
Why not go with a Raptor 74 16mb cache + a 7000.10 @250GB or even the 320GB?

Works out cheaper.

Raptor 74GB for OS and programs whilst the 7000.10 for Storage.

No need for Raid0 - too risky if any of the 2 drives fails.

Best advice imho

t31os · 14 Jul 2006 at 02:42

If you want the best, buy a raptor.

If you'd rather have something nearly as good with a lot more storage go the other route.

I was also one of the ' Raptors are not worth the money ' people till i brought one a few weeks ago.

If you had a raptor you'd understand. So i'm guessing you don't or you've not been able to see the difference.

James_Bong · 14 Jul 2006 at 04:35

I have decided to go for two 7200.10's, not sure if I will raid them or not yet.
May just use one for critical data and the other for the OS.

I was going to raid them but after looking at the SMART info of my existing drives I'm a bit concerned they don't have much life left in them.

I own a couple of the old 36Gb 8MB raptors (got them the day Raptor were first released in the UK), one seems to be on it's way out according to the SMART info.

I also own a couple of maxtors one is about 2 years old but appears to be overheating reaching it maximum temp and the other is around a year old and is only 72% healthy according to SMART info.
Damn you Maxtor and your shoddy drives

chaparral · 14 Jul 2006 at 12:54

My 150gb raptor is about one of the best upgrades i have brought for my PC...Almost everything is so much faster with the raptor then what it was with my 200gb 7200rpm sata drive i had before...

PinkFloyd · 14 Jul 2006 at 12:59

People always say its twice as likely to break down having a raid array.
You still do realise its highly unlikely.....
drives with 50k hours mtbf, lets say half that with 2 in raid-0 (although I doubt its anything near that) and thats still a hell of a long time.

I had a 36gig raptor the other week (sold it within a week) wasn't impressed by its performance, nowhere near as fast as my raid0 array (2x7200.7's)
Albeit the 150gb 16mb raptor is much quicker, but I would personally get the seagates. Much quieter too

Imy · 14 Jul 2006 at 14:16

There's a new 16mb cache 36GB raptor out now which should have similar performance as the 150GB raptor.

Elric · 15 Jul 2006 at 01:33

lay-z-boy said:
seagate, cant stand 10k+ whines.

And its cheaper + bigger.

Also this raid 0 failure bs gets me, i have a 2 drive raid 0 array thats been on my p4 since i got it a few years back, not crashed once.

Same goes for my quad drive raid 0 in my main rig, not crashed since day 1.

Besides, even if it did, i have 2 backups of everything

Q.F.T. There's a lot of nay saying with regards to Raid 0 these days. It's quite simple. if you're prepared to accept that two (or more) drives will be used in a raid 0 array, then just treat them as ONE disk. if it fails it fails, it's no different to someone with a single physical disk failing....

If you don't have data backups, you're screwed whether you've used Raid 0 or a single JBOD disk.

Personally, I dont trust my PC's to hold my critical data anyway, all that stuff is hold on proper SCSi disks in my data server, that has proper backups.

Nuff said.