Western Digital Raptor vs Seagate Barracuda

tehjord

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Ive owned a raptor 74 gig close to or more than 5 years now. As far as reliability goes, you cannot get much better than that. The speed is also amazing, you will boot up faster, load levels faster in your favorite game etc. An hard drive truly in its own class.

Of course the barracuda is cheaper and ive only heard good thing about seagate reliability... Only the price could keep you away from getting a raptor but rest assured that the raptor with its 5 years warranty is a worthy investement if you can find a decent enough price.
 

bildo123

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How big is the barracuda? I have the Raptor 74GB for years now so I know what it's about. Personally the only real thing I have noticed was maybe file uncrompessing is faster. Games do not load faster. Maybe the OS does a little bit. But just grab the Barracuda if it's a big cheap one. Reason being is the HDD now are fast and large. Also when playing games most of it cached in RAM, if you run out and start paging the HDD it doesn't matter if you have a SSD drive, it's going to lag when loading. HDD in reality have nothing to do with gaming. And to prove it I ran Battle for Middle Earth II off my External WD 320GB Mybook using a USB, YES I said USB, connection. Compared to when I ran it off my raptor. NO difference I could tell. Be smart with your money and get the Barracuda.
 

grieve

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1) Which one of these hardrives is really better?
Raptor

2) And a far as speed goes which would be the faster hard drive?
Raptor
 

cusimar9

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The Raptor is faster at Random IO Access, the Seagate faster at sequential reads/writes. Loading large files or copying large directories the Seagate would be better, but something like booting windows the Raptor would be best.

From the sounds of it an ideal setup would be to have a small Raptor as your OS drive and the Barracuda as your filestore.

However all computers are built to a budget and I've decided to spend the money on more and faster RAM and have gone for the Seagate instead of the Raptor.
 

russki

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They are two very different drives. With respect to speed, see cusimar's response. But also, don't forget, most of Barracudas are much larger, cheaper on a price / GB basis, and run cooler and (I think) quiter (although I think 'cudas are pretty loud if memory serves).

In the end, neither is "better." Better for certain apps, but you can't generalize.
 

vtr99

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The Raptor is by far the best drive, and the best long term investment. I have a large stack of dead hard drives, and the average lifespan is about 2 to 3 years. In my experience Seagate drives last about as long as most Maxtor and WD drives. The exception seems to be the long lasting Raptors. I have 2 old Raptors that are close to 5 years old, and still run like new. I would bet my new Raptor Xs will last just as long considering the 5 year warranty. If you can afford the best, nothing beats the Raptors. Here is an article that compares performance:

http://www.tomshardware.com/2007/03/12/cheap_raid_ravages_wd_raptor/page11.html
 

ausch30

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These are the results from my 500gb 7200.11

Capture-4.jpg


Very fast and quiet drive which I bought for $110. Seagate also has a 5yr warranty on their drives and I have a 120gb 7200.7 drive in my system currenty which I've had for about 5yrs.
 

ausch30

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I think it's interesting that you say Raptors are the best but then you link an article which states that you would be better off with 2 7200rpm drives in RAID 0 than a Raptor.
 

vtr99

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"Raptors are a waste of money. 8x the cost per GB of SATA2 and you'll never notice the difference, except for the noise. Get two SATA drives, put your OS/apps on one and the paging file and data on the other."

Actually the difference is quite noticeable. I also run a pair of Samsung 500gb Spinpoints as storage drives. The Raptor Xs bench out about 50% faster on sustained read and writes. The price of the Raptors has also dropped.... Not much I admit, but again, you will most likely see a couple failures of the cheap drives before a Raptor gives out. From this standpoint the Raptors don't look so expensive. It also depends on how much you value your data, and your time if you need to rebuild a drive. If you can afford the best, the Raptor is well worth the money.
 

vtr99

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"I think it's interesting that you say Raptors are the best but then you link an article which states that you would be better off with 2 7200rpm drives in RAID 0 than a Raptor."

Sure a couple 7,200s in Raid 0 are faster, but as the article says reliability of Raid 0 is an issue. The Raptors running Raid 0 are MUCH faster, and I might say considerably more reliable. Again, the 7,200s are still slower at access times even in Raid 0. I am not trying to debate what setup is cheaper.... The question was "Which one of these hardrives is really better? And a far as speed goes which would be the faster hard drive?". If these are the only questions being considered, the Raptor is by far the superior choice. You could also say that an overclocked E2140 is a better deal than an E6750, but which would you rather have in your system?
 

ausch30

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vtr99 run HD Tune with your Raptor, I and I'm sure the OP as well would be interested in comparing the results. I have 4 Seagate drives in my system currently so you can see where I stand on the issue. Current drives are just as fast and in some ways faster than Raptors with a significant price difference. Up until very recently I would agree that the Raptor was a much better performer but 7200rpm drives have caught up.