raptor worth it?

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are raptors worth the dosh

  • yes

    Votes: 35 63.6%

  • no

    Votes: 20 36.4%
  • Total voters
    55
S

scottoliver

Distinguished
Jun 10, 2007
82
0
18,630
hey... im building a pc, budget = $2300 probly something around that. should i spend the money and buy a raptor drive, if so which one. im not sure if they are worth lots of people have them their is a lack of praise for them =( it will be a gaming/performance pc so should i invest in them.?
 
The hard drive is one of the slowest equipment in the modern computer, so the faster ´hard drive you get the better.

Raptor is the fastest, but it's expensive, it's somewhat louder than not so fast competitors, and it has relative small storage capasity...

With same money you can buy: faster cpu, gpu, more memory etc... But if you want to have fastest that you can get, or if you use aplications that use a lot hard drive, go for it. You have a big budget, so the price should not be a problem.
You don't get higher framerates, but somewhat better loading, startin, saving etc. times...
 
Windows might load a second or two faster and you might shave a fraction of a second off your save times but with the heat, and noise generated and the expense per gig you would be much better off going with a couple of big 7200rpm drives.

When the Raptor was released it was significantly faster than any other drive which made it a name for itself but since then 7200rpm drives have been catching up. Your not going to see a large enough performance increase to justify the cost.
 
a raptor can be likened to top performing cpu/gpu/memory/etc... the performance increase they bring isnt always worth the price premium they come with, compared other more mainstream parts

if cost becomes an issue (as it does seem), you may be better off going with a current 7200... otherwise, the 36, 74, and 150GB ADFD revision raptors all offer the same performance between one another (just differing in total capacities and cost primarily)
 
I find it very strange to see how many yes's there are and no people stating why. All the people that have posted say it's not worth it. I agree. I'll use the space way more than the speed. Here in SA I can get the 750GB drives for cheaper than the 150GB Raptors. That's 5 times the size for less money!!!
 
i had chosen yes actually, that they are worth it, IMO anyhow (if the cost or capacity isnt limiting you too much)... seeing as how you cant get any faster without going into scsi territory, even when comparing raid of lesser hdds, and ssds arent practical yet either
 
Yeah, there is always the IF factor. I just think in general I really wouldn't care to buy one if I can get 5 times the capacity for the same price or even less. You can get 2 320GB drives and put them in raid and it'll still work out cheaper and with doubled the size...
 
Dude you don't understand speed, space is for pirates.

2 raptors running in raid, your load times will be cut in less than half you will never have to sit through a load screen again. TRUST ME.

Raptors are worth it if you get 2 of them they are faster than anything else you get and if you actually ever see them working you will know why, you cannot explain how much better they are. IF you can afford 2 then GET THEM. Otherwise 1 is not worth the mula but 2 together are worth it. No matter what anyone says, a 7200 rpm will not come anywhere near a raptor. some aspects of the drive may be newer and better but a raptor is MUCH faster.

If you can afford to get 2 which it seem you can dont evenhesitate, but if you can only get one then forget about it.

Oh and to the darthmaul guy if you buy from berklands then what do you expect, get direct from rectron or bethesda, e-comp even but their service sucks and they are generally idiots.
 
yeah, capacity has never been a raptors strong point... as far as raid for performance reasons, it is overhyped to be honest (particularly for the average, even enthusiast user)... that article THG did on raid being faster only suited synthetic benchmarks, but no practical uses at all (such as gaming, maybe they didnt want to upset anyone?)... having had 4 36GB raptors in raid 0, and then investing in a single 74GB a few years later, there was only a speed improvement, when it came to anything i did (i dont transfer large files constantly, or deal with constant nonstop disk thrashing)

so, raid aside.... if affordable capacity is the main reason for purchasing, raptors dont have much place, but for performance reasons, they definetly do
 
Are you sure it is not just your raid controller? cause from what i have seen they are WAAAAAAAAY better. I will bet money on your motherboard sucking away the advantage if you say that raid did not help. Also the old raptors are not as good as the new ones. just cause the platter spins fast does not mean the hard drive is as good. Cost per meg does not matter when you have a delete button.
 
RIGHT. I'd rather spend my monies on a VERY nice 30" (bigger maybe, depending on how much of the budget is left) screen and an 8800GTX, some after market cooling, a quad to OC like mad, big sound and a decent gaming keyboard, mouse and headset. Those kinds of things, not a way overpriced harddrive just to gain a couple of seconds of load time...

And who the hell are you calling me a pirate just because I have alot of space? Have you ever worked with REALLY big audio/video files? Yes I know the raptors would be nice for those as well but they are not big enough.
 
I have used a raptor for 2 years as a boot drive. It works fast and is loud which is cool. With 11 case fans heat is not a problem. Raid is not really needed for a personal computer in my opinion. You can always use a 7200 rpm as a second drive.
 
the controllers were on numerous older boards with raid (dont remember specifics), a couple nforce2s, an nforce4, promise fasttrak s150 tx4 (only a 33mhz pci card, so 2 raptors already saturated it), recent ecs intel chipset (dont know the controller), different stripe and cluster sizes... but they all were pretty similar, both on and off of raid... at least where it mattered (windows boot times aside, how often do you really need to restart though), i will say windows is slightly more responsive though in raid 0, so thats a plus

as far as the older raptors sucking... no command cueing, 8mb cache, 36GB platter, GD revision, hotter noisier more power hungry running in raid... newer one ncq, 16mb cache, 74GB platter, ADFD revision, quieter, and cooler, less power hungry (because it wasnt running in raid)... they were 3-4 years older, but even with 4 of them being in raid, it should make some difference above the single faster raptor... too many other articles pointing to the contrary though for average uses (the average user)

i used to be a heavy advocate of raid 0 (for everything disk related even "you want faster, just go raid, because the benchmarks say so")... up until i started paying attention to it, dissecting it beyond just benchmarks... to find out how much i was imagining things, and wasnt... raid can help (no doubt there), but for certain things it just really doesnt... and for those things, you are simply better off going without it... the average user for example, wont be able to see much difference at all, even for gaming (its very game specific at that point too though)... games arent designed for raid, some games see no benefit, or very little, current FPS show very little benefit for example (i know enough people want to claim the contrary to that though)... strategy games however may show a large benefit to loading (completely different game design)
 
I have heard arguments from both sides of the house. I am currently running a Raptor 150 and a 750GB secondary HD for storage. The performance that I experienced from the raptor was a drastic change for me but of course mileage will very. I guess the question is what kind of computer user are you? Do you just turn on your computer, play a game then turn it off, or are you the user that surfs the internet a lot (raptors do make a difference with accessing and manipulating lots of small files such as cache) or do you edit photos that aren't over a gig each? I could go on about these uses but you get the point; they all increase the computer experience beyond just gaming and they make a well rounded computer, so just add one and get a large drive for storage. If in the future you want more performance then get another raptor and raid. Oh and by the way, I think the cost of the raptor is more because of the progress in that area, just look at the 36GB raptor, I bought one when the radeon 9800 was the hot thing, now the radeon is worthless in new games but the raptor is still good, just a little small. As for the noise, with a good case and one drive I can sleep 2 feet away with no problems.
 
Dude you don't understand speed, space is for pirates.

2 raptors running in raid, your load times will be cut in less than half you will never have to sit through a load screen again. TRUST ME.

Raptors are worth it if you get 2 of them they are faster than anything else you get and if you actually ever see them working you will know why, you cannot explain how much better they are. IF you can afford 2 then GET THEM. Otherwise 1 is not worth the mula but 2 together are worth it. No matter what anyone says, a 7200 rpm will not come anywhere near a raptor. some aspects of the drive may be newer and better but a raptor is MUCH faster.

If you can afford to get 2 which it seem you can dont evenhesitate, but if you can only get one then forget about it.

Oh and to the darthmaul guy if you buy from berklands then what do you expect, get direct from rectron or bethesda, e-comp even but their service sucks and they are generally idiots.
Click to expand...

I have one Raptor and am thinking of getting a second. I think its pretty fast on its own but here are some "problems" I am thinking about if I do that.

1.) To get best performance I would have to raid them, not a problem with my mobo but raiding brings a new set of issues.

2.) If raided striped, if one fails all your stuff is lost

3.) If you have boot problems or your OS gets corrupt like when I'm trying out OC settings the raid control starts to get in the way.

4.) If you install Vista or any other OS for testing or dual boot again the raid controller gets in the way unless it has support for it.

5.) If you have XP loaded as C: with the raptor as your boot drive and attempt to load Vista or any other OS, that OS will not install on the Raptor but on your other slower drives. This can be fixed by partioning the Raptor before doing the upgrade and installing Vista or whatever on a second partition of the Raptor but again...Who thinks of this BEFORE hand????

To many issues so I haven't decided...., I would have to have extra cash and be really bored to tackle all these problems.
 
Windows might load a second or two faster and you might shave a fraction of a second off your save times but with the heat, and noise generated and the expense per gig you would be much better off going with a couple of big 7200rpm drives.

When the Raptor was released it was significantly faster than any other drive which made it a name for itself but since then 7200rpm drives have been catching up. Your not going to see a large enough performance increase to justify the cost.
Click to expand...

You took the words out of my mouth. The slight speed difference is not worth the price premium nowadays.
 
Mmm...interesting topic this. I'm also looking to upgrade my HHD to something with good performance and have been considering a raptor for a while.

Can I just ask though, what would be the real world difference in running a raptor as opposed to a cheaper drive in say boot up, and load up games. Are we talking 1 or 2 seconds? If I was looking to get the fastest drive I could for around £100 would the 75Gb raptor be far superior to anything else? Or is there something that would be slightly (1 or 2 seconds) slower but at a better price/performance? I'm looking to use the speed for games, computer boot up and general usage and file copying.
 
Way to flip your lid

an 8800 gtx is R7000
a 30" is R4500 MINIMUM
Big sound is about R2800 for audigy and the speakers are at least R500 for CRAP.

So go and find me a raptor that costs R14800 you must shop at incredible connection. A raptor is only R1800 for a 78 gb. Oh and you are a system admin or some such, so YES you are definitely a pirate cause you don't use your pc for the only thing that takes space, VIDEO, so IOW i will bet money there are many many MANY pirated movies on your pc, oh and yes, YOU ARE FROM SOUTH AFRICA. You, Jack Sparrow, likely have copies of all 3 movies on your pc. I did not directly accuse YOU of being a pirate but you seem to take great offense to it so it MUST be true, people are generally scared of/offended by the truth. Also for someone who is complaining about prices i doubt that you can afford the equipment to get good enough quality video equipment to fill up your space. Oh yes, it s also the middle of the day and you are supposed to be working so you are also busy slacking off and getting paid to do so so cram a sock in it.

To warezme (thanks for the piracy honesty in your very name) It is highly unlikely that you will have a crash so you are not that likely to lose your data. And if you can afford it you can have an extra drive with XOR data on it. No clue about the other stuff but i NEVER use more than one OS on a pc at a time. All you will need to do is install all your games on the raptor and you should get the speed from there, vista will still load slowly but that is not such an issue. basically if you have an internet connection all data is replaceable just keep your important stuff on your flash or something.

Raptors rule but raid only.


3) i have never broken my OS by overclocking so don't know about that.
5) well you will think of it before hand next time 😉
 
I know you wont get any in game difference, that would be silly to assume, but it is the load times that it helps, and it helps a LOT. i have a friend with 2 seagate cheetas ( i know they are scsi) but holy crap stuff loads and saves like nobodies business. I think i deleted this from one of my previous edits. It wont give you better fram rates, stuff will just save and load quickly. QUICKLY.
 
I have a file server running 8x250GB on a RAID-5 and I use a raptor hard drive for the boot device. I have a boot partition on my Raptor as well as the RAID-5. I make a mirror of the Raptor(my normal boot drive) every so often so that if the Raptor dies I can just choose to boot from the RAID-5 while I RMA the Raptor. I do this because my Raptor died in Oct 2006 with no warning. Suddenly it wouldn't boot, and I was stuck with a brick to mail to WD. I installed Windows 2003 Server on the RAID-5 boot partition. When it came to performance, I saw very little performance difference between the RAID-5 and the Raptor. Raptors do make alot of noise(you can hear it over the 8 other hard drives that are all 7200RPM) and they do get pretty darn warm. Raptor's also come with a 5 year warranty, so that could be a plus depending on what brand hard drives you are buying. Also, since I got the 36GB version, I've often installed the common software I use and the pagefile on the raptor, and installed less common stuff on my RAID.



So really the list is simple(but complex depending on the purpose of the computer you are building):

RAPTOR-

+ faster(if you are considering only single drives and not RAID arrays)
+ 5 year warranty
- cost(ALOT more per GB)

RAID-

+ could be as fast as a Raptor
+ 5 year warranty if you buy Seagate drives
+ cost(cheap per GB)
+ single drive failure(if RAID-5)

Me personally, I'd go for the hard drive space. You can almost buy 2 500GB for the price of 1 150GB Raptor drive. Instead buy a RAID controller, and 3x500GB drives and have a RAID-5 so you have single hard drive failure and still not lose data.

I use the Highpoint RAID 2220 SATA controller and 8 250GB 7200.10 Seagate drives for my RAID-5. The great thing about RAID controllers nowadays is that you can do RAID expansion later as needed without having to lose data. I built my system with only 5 drives, and added them 1 at a time when I needed 250GB more space. I like to try to build my system to be 'upgrade resistant' for at least a year or 2. So I sometimes buy less powerful stuff for the initial build that will suit my needs now, and upgrade later when I feel I need to. Most non power users are generally more than content with what I consider 'less powerful' as I am a power user myself.

If you know what you plan to use the PC for you are welcome to PM me and i'll give you a more personal opinion.
 
Look dude, you are trying to build a gaming rig, assuming that you will be using quality parts, you want to make sure that everything is you rig is beefed up, someone stated that space is for pirates? htas when you purchase multiple Raptors, I run 2 raptor x's in raid, but im planning on purchasing 2 more so that I can run my system in RaiD 0+1
The performace is well worth it, yes I understand that they are costly, I have the 150gb version, they ran me @ $210 a pop, PC club has them for that Price 😀
GET IT, you will love yourself, untill the 15,000 RPM Raptors come out, or if you decide to go with a seagate Cheetah 15,000 RPM, but those drives wont be out for a while 😀
GL :wink:
 
I know that opinion differ a lot, and rightfully so!

For me, you'd be better off with a new generation high-end large capacity HDD. Real life performance will be the same for many reason.

First, 7200 rpm HDD work on 3.5 inches platter as oppose to 2.5 on 10K rpm HDD. This is because 3.5 inches platters wouldn't stand such high rotationnal speed. This bring about equal "straight line" speed in the outside of the platters. You should see why I hope.

Also, 7200 rpm HDD have higher density (bits per square inches) platters. So at same speed, you read more informations. That also gets both type of HDD closer in reading speed.

Where a 7200rpm HDD will "always" lags, is in latency. But even this will be put aside by new NCQ (native command queing) technology that rearrange reading request to start with the ones closer to the reading heads and from there stay in line.

All this put together, and considering that you'll pay (Can$) 300-320$ (depending on revision) for a 150GB 10K Raptor and 285-335$ (revision also) for a 750 Seagate 7200 rpm HDD, there's no contest here to me. Even better would be 2*500GB WD 7200rpm drive in Raid for 290$.

But in the end, get more memory if you don't want to wait for you HDD except on applications opening.

Things would be different if you were thinking of putting 5000$ instead of 2300$ for your PC. The money you'll save can also be put on a better VPU/CPU for even better gains in performances.

P.S.: Go check Tom's HDD chart to see the difference.
 
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