okay you guru geeks, im getting a SATA drive for my games and apps.
im debating between these two:
Seagate 7200.11 Barracuda 500GB
or a:
Western Digital Raptor 10K 74GB
now before you jump the gun here.... im choosing between these two for the reasons as follows....
the Raptor drive is the only 10K Spindle Speed in my price range that they have left. and the seagate 7200.11 has the 32MB Cache and is 500GB in size, plus its a SATA 3.0.
Krom ive heard you say on a solid basis that the 7200.11 is the best thing to get now days, but what do you think about the Raptor drive in comparison to the 7200.11?
ALSO!! i may go ahead and put windows XP SP2 on the drive, and just use my PATA Drives for storage.
HDD Debate.....
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Krom
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In terms of bang for your buck, the 750 GB drives deliver the most, followed closely by the 1 TB drives and the 500 GB drives. Beware SATA 3.0 is a joke (mostly)which is why the raptor is still SATA 1.5, don't fall for the marketing BS on that since even the fastest drives today can't even reach the 150 MB/sec bandwidth available on SATA1.5 outside a burst from the cache. Only the next generation SSDs even get close (and at the present rate, they will need SATA 6.0 before too long).
Also the Raptor 74 is not exactly a spring chicken anymore if you know what I mean, you might be surprised to learn that in both the number of I/O operations/sec and raw transfer speed a recent generation 7200 RPM desktop drive will usually beat out the raptors. A recent 750 GB or 1 TB will spit out a windows XP or windows Vista boot trace faster than all but the latest Raptor. The only spec that the even the old 36 GB Raptor still holds a lead in is random access latency, being 10,000 RPM the raptors can reach down into the 9 MS range compared to a 7200 RPM drive where the best of them can approach 12 MS.
All this means is that while the raptors are indeed faster than their desktop counterparts of the same generation, as the areal density of normal desktop drives goes up, their performance rises at a rate that quickly surpasses the very light raptor in only a generation or two. And in the end whoever passes the most data under the heads wins the race, a 250+ GB per platter 7200 RPM drive will be able to pass nearly 7 times the amount of data under the heads per revolution compared to a 37 GB/platter raptor 74. Meaning in order for the raptor to match the flow of data under the heads, 10,000 RPM is not going to cut it at that density.
I'd recommend while you are at it, using nlite to slipstream SP3 on to your XP CD instead of SP2, plus you can add in relevant textmode SATA drivers and switch your drives over to AHCI mode if your controllers support it which can give a pretty solid performance boost in multi-tasking situations (something that you would buy a raptor for). I bought a Seagate 7200.11 750 GB drive just a couple weeks ago to replace my nearly full 7200.10 320 GB drive. I'm using a 98.6 GB C: partition and a 600 GB even D: partition. I'm not sure exactly how much of it is the drive, how much is the format, and how much is switching the SATA controller from IDE compatibility mode to AHCI native mode, but it DEFINITELY loads my games and apps faster. The OS is not a fair comparison since I installed it new on the drive rather than ghosting, and I ditched some older applications that I rarely if ever used anymore, but it is still one of the fastest loading XP installs I have seen.
Also the Raptor 74 is not exactly a spring chicken anymore if you know what I mean, you might be surprised to learn that in both the number of I/O operations/sec and raw transfer speed a recent generation 7200 RPM desktop drive will usually beat out the raptors. A recent 750 GB or 1 TB will spit out a windows XP or windows Vista boot trace faster than all but the latest Raptor. The only spec that the even the old 36 GB Raptor still holds a lead in is random access latency, being 10,000 RPM the raptors can reach down into the 9 MS range compared to a 7200 RPM drive where the best of them can approach 12 MS.
All this means is that while the raptors are indeed faster than their desktop counterparts of the same generation, as the areal density of normal desktop drives goes up, their performance rises at a rate that quickly surpasses the very light raptor in only a generation or two. And in the end whoever passes the most data under the heads wins the race, a 250+ GB per platter 7200 RPM drive will be able to pass nearly 7 times the amount of data under the heads per revolution compared to a 37 GB/platter raptor 74. Meaning in order for the raptor to match the flow of data under the heads, 10,000 RPM is not going to cut it at that density.
I'd recommend while you are at it, using nlite to slipstream SP3 on to your XP CD instead of SP2, plus you can add in relevant textmode SATA drivers and switch your drives over to AHCI mode if your controllers support it which can give a pretty solid performance boost in multi-tasking situations (something that you would buy a raptor for). I bought a Seagate 7200.11 750 GB drive just a couple weeks ago to replace my nearly full 7200.10 320 GB drive. I'm using a 98.6 GB C: partition and a 600 GB even D: partition. I'm not sure exactly how much of it is the drive, how much is the format, and how much is switching the SATA controller from IDE compatibility mode to AHCI native mode, but it DEFINITELY loads my games and apps faster. The OS is not a fair comparison since I installed it new on the drive rather than ghosting, and I ditched some older applications that I rarely if ever used anymore, but it is still one of the fastest loading XP installs I have seen.
so the Seagate is the better choice? and im assuming this one?
i guess ill get the seagate, now whats the difference between the ES and .11's?
hehe, didnt need \"all\" that much info krom, but thanx for the great 3 minutes of reading
i guess ill get the seagate, now whats the difference between the ES and .11's?
hehe, didnt need \"all\" that much info krom, but thanx for the great 3 minutes of reading
Not to jump off topic, but I have read some very good things about these babys: http://www.wdc.com/en/products/products.asp?driveid=494
Outside your requested price range though.
I also use a 7200.11 Seagate in my main rig. A great drive. (This one here)
Outside your requested price range though.
I also use a 7200.11 Seagate in my main rig. A great drive. (This one here)