Anything coming close to Raptor?

[Zoom77]

I had a Raptor 1500ADFD before, but a few days ago it failed and I had to quickly replace it with a slower drive I had available. Now I notice the performance difference and I want to upgrade to something faster.

I am thinking to get the VelociRaptor but it is too expensive, and I am afraid that it too can be not very reliable and fail, like the previous Raptor I had. Is there any cheaper and more reliable hard drive that will not be noticeably slower than the Raptor 1500ADFD?

Thanks

 

[cjl]

Cheaper? No, but the Raptor is plenty reliable. Just because you got one bad one doesn't mean that they're all bad. Also, note that there's a 150GB Velociraptor for a lot cheaper than the 300GB version:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductList.aspx?Submit=ENE&DEPA=0&Order=BESTMATCH&Description=VelociRaptor&x=0&y=0

 

[lucuis]

This should be faster then your old raptor. Not as fast as the new Velociraptor though. http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822136283

Benchmarks from Toms Hardware. Ave. Read/Write.

Velociraptor
Read : 102mb/s
Write : 101.6mb/s

Caviar Black
Read : 85.10mb/s
Write : 85mb/s

Raptor
Read : ~75mb/s *There's three listed*
Write : ~74mb/s

 

[cjl]

It has slower seeks though, so it won't match the raptor for many everyday tasks, though it will beat it for pure sequential file copy or virus scan type activities.

 

[lucuis]

The Random Access Time is only 4ms slower on the caviar black. Would that really be noticeable?

 

[cjl]

Yes, because the total access time on the Raptor is around 8ms, vs 12ms on the Caviar Black. This means that every single seek takes 1.5 times as long, and it has to do many thousands of seeks for some operations.

 

[chookman]

Dont the Raptors have a 5 year warranty on them? Surely you havent had it for over 5 years. Check on the WD website you can punch in the serial number and see if its still under warranty. Send it back to em and voila no money spent.

 

[cjl]

I know the velociraptors have a 5 year warranty. That certainly seems to be the way to go in this case.

 

[Zoom77]

I thought about the warranty but personally I don't feel comfortable sending a hard drive full with passwords and other personal and sensitive data out to anybody.

So I guess the conclusion is that I should go with another Raptor. Or maybe I should stick with the slower drive and see if I can get used to it being slower!

 

[lucuis]

Yes, because the total access time on the Raptor is around 8ms, vs 12ms on the Caviar Black. This means that every single seek takes 1.5 times as long, and it has to do many thousands of seeks for some operations.

Learn something new everyday, ty.