Raptors - what's so good?

Mr Spew · 5 Jan 2007 at 23:43

Guessing it's the speed (10,000rpm), is it really a heck of a lot faster, and what is it worth keeping on that drive, just the OS? Some games as well?

Just working out what I want in my new PC from the start.

Cheers!

b.cummins · 6 Jan 2007 at 00:03

Not only the 10,000 RPM, seek time is also half a normal SATA, bout 4.5ms. Amazing boot drives, get a 150, and use it for OS, fast-swap apps, and all your games!

Mr Spew · 6 Jan 2007 at 00:11

What are fast swap apps? MSN Messenger and Firefox?

Marcus1977 · 6 Jan 2007 at 00:18

I had the 74GB one and while it was a little loud when seeking, the boot and game level loading were noticeably quicker. I also noticed a speedier defrag although this was probably due to the drive capacity been smaller.

snowdog · 6 Jan 2007 at 00:30

seek time, its better at reading a lot of small files and files far apart on the hdd from eachother. For big files like 1gb on a defragmented partition reading wont be faster as on (for a example) a 7200.10 seagate, so it depends on the game, if the game just has 2 huge .dat files, raptor wont be much faster, but for games with thousands of small files its a lot faster... Same for windows, and for anything with a lot of small files...

tastyweat · 6 Jan 2007 at 00:43

I have four of them in Raid-0

blisteringly fast, only downside to them is the noise.

I'm actually selling mine to move to higher capacity/slower/quieter drives

Mr Spew · 6 Jan 2007 at 02:05

What's the noise like? That's putting me off now.

Lolcb · 6 Jan 2007 at 02:09

Im getting one of this along with vista.

Mr Spew · 6 Jan 2007 at 02:17

Same, but noise is a big factor for me. Standard hard drive it is I guess.

33L · 6 Jan 2007 at 03:22

personally they are great for bring a file up a second quicker but i think they are over hyped. Dont expect to be wowed after you load them with all the junk thats going to sit along side your os

jaykay · 6 Jan 2007 at 10:12

some hd coolers and silencers are quite good at silencing the raptors

jellybeard999 · 6 Jan 2007 at 10:38

Had a 74gb Raptor, didnt see what all the fuss was about tbh, only noticable in benchmarks, and sounded like a slightly subdued banshee :/

Get a decent SATA2 drive and save the cash tbh

fumbles · 6 Jan 2007 at 12:45

If you are going for the quiet PC thing, then they will be too loud. The raptor is not the loudest thing in my system... My video card and CPU fans are louder (both stock) under load.

Although it is a bit hard to justify spending that much more on something with such low capacity.

tastyweat · 6 Jan 2007 at 14:03

Mr Spew said:
What's the noise like? That's putting me off now.

Anandtech say it's about 40-45dB, whereas a normal sata 2 drive sits at about 30dB

b.cummins · 7 Jan 2007 at 16:00

Mr Spew said:
What are fast swap apps? MSN Messenger and Firefox?

no anything that heavily taxes transfer if you are doing big file swaps they probably arent best. I mean stuff like encoding apps, editing suites.

.Griff. · 7 Jan 2007 at 17:17

I can't quote facts or figues but I can say this...

Since swapping my 3 year old Maxtor 7200rpm drive for a 150g Raptor the difference has been amazing and I simply would not swap back to a 7200rpm drive now.

The only time the noise has been an issue for me was when I had two instances of quickpar running at the same time and granted it did sound loud. Saying that day to day I haven't really noticed much of a difference in noise volumes.

Legend · 7 Jan 2007 at 18:58

The Silentmaxx are excellent for Raptors apparently!

Massive Attack · 7 Jan 2007 at 19:05

b.cummins said:
bout 8.0ms.

fixed for you, when raptors are 4.5 ms seek let me know and ill buy some

b.cummins · 7 Jan 2007 at 19:50

er.. straight from OcUK

- Average Read Seek Time: 4.5 ms

b.cummins · 7 Jan 2007 at 19:50

or am i missing something here?