WD 36 gig 8mb raptor owners in here please...

locutus12 · 19 Oct 2006 at 15:31

im trying to find out if its worth me keeping this drive or if i should just go sell it on that auction site...

basically i bought it from MM for £37 and after running this bench tool on it

click this to download diskspeed32

i have surmised that its only about 8 to 10% faster than my current 200 gig seagate barracuda sata

which begs the question, why are these still so expensive if for the same money, you can buy a 160 gig sata 2 drive which should be faster...

wizardmaxx · 19 Oct 2006 at 15:35

The 16mb versions are quite a bit faster than the 8mb versions. Also 10% difference is quite a lot considering that hard drives are the slowest component in the system (barr dvd, stiffy, etc.) Why did u buy it anyways, impulse ?

locutus12 · 19 Oct 2006 at 15:41

wizardmaxx said:
The 16mb versions are quite a bit faster than the 8mb versions. Also 10% difference is quite a lot considering that hard drives are the slowest component in the system (barr dvd, stiffy, etc.) Why did u buy it anyways, impulse ?

no, i always wanted a raptor and now people are selling the 36 gig drives on MM for £37, nobody told me there were 2 types

i feel a little conned.

wizardmaxx · 19 Oct 2006 at 15:42

locutus12 said:
no, i always wanted a raptor and now people are selling the 36 gig drives on MM for £37, nobody told me there were 2 types i feel a little conned.

LOL. They probably selling to get the 16mb model.

smids · 19 Oct 2006 at 16:06

The 36GB 8MB cache raptor is the slowest of the family.

Only 50MB/s sustained read but it obviously has the uber quick raptor access time of 8ms. That is what makes them so good.

The 74GB 8MB caches are more standard - 65MB/s sustained read and 8ms access.

The newer models with 16MB cache are hugely improved boasting 75-80MB/s sustained read and 7.5ms access time.

locutus12 · 19 Oct 2006 at 16:14

im getting 58mbs sustained here verses my barracuda at 49mbps sustained... hell if the test was longer than ten minutes it may well of sunk lower than that.

so in your opinion smids, should i just flog the raptor and buy an sata 2 drive ?

smids · 19 Oct 2006 at 16:18

That's pretty good for a 36GB tbh.

Umm, well it's up to you. As a windows/programs drive, for 37 quid, it's good. Everything will feel nippier and load faster thanks to the access times.

wizardmaxx · 19 Oct 2006 at 16:20

smids said:
That's pretty good for a 36GB tbh.

Umm, well it's up to you. As a windows/programs drive, for 37 quid, it's good. Everything will feel nippier and load faster thanks to the access times.

For £37 agreed

locutus12 · 19 Oct 2006 at 16:24

smids said:
That's pretty good for a 36GB tbh.

Umm, well it's up to you. As a windows/programs drive, for 37 quid, it's good. Everything will feel nippier and load faster thanks to the access times.

im sitting here with a mildly ammused look on my face as im watching this raptor running through a 30 minutes test and its sustained write is actually going up... not down... never seen a drive do that before O.o currently avg 59mbps, current speed 61 / 62mbps

i will be honest and states that i bought this drive mainly for battlefield 2, im so sick and tired of "verifying client data: please wait"

smids · 19 Oct 2006 at 16:27

Run HDtach instead - it's easier for us to compare that way.

locutus12 · 19 Oct 2006 at 16:28

kk, i think im running some freeware written by a russian at the moment... ooo look, there go my credit card details...

brb with results.

Jimbo Mahoney · 19 Oct 2006 at 17:51

smids said:
Only 50MB/s sustained read but it obviously has the uber quick raptor access time of 8ms. That is what makes them so good.

Quoted for truth.

It's not about the sustained read speeds, it's about the access time.

I bought my 36GB (8MB I assume) drive purely for use as a Windows drive. Windows has tonnes of small files => access time is much more important than sustained read speeds.

I have another one sitting in a cupboard waiting for the day I get around to putting them into RAID 0, again, purely as a gaming OS system.

locutus12 · 20 Oct 2006 at 19:48

my results pretty much match what smids said. 49.7mbps... so its more the access time thats the jewel in the crown ?

i bought it mainly to speed windows XP booting up and to put battlefield 2 on it in the vain hope that it will load faster...