10,000rpm HD vs. 7200rpm HD

[project240]

One of my drives just went in my computer. I need to buy a new one and am wondering if it is worth spending the extra money and buying a raptor. As far as price goes, here's what i've found:

36gB WD Raptor --- $149.95 from Memex
160gB WD --- $79.99 after rebate from bestbuy (not that I need a drive this big, but just for price comparison)

So I'm wondering if it's worth the additional investment and upgrade to a raptor? Also, the drives I have right now are ATA, my mobo supports both ATA and S-ATA, can I run one of each??

Just looking for some advice before I purchase... if you have something for sale that looks like it might meet my needs, please PM me.

THANKS in advance!!

[Carfanman]

Well, the 10,000 is pretty fast, but Ive heard that if your going to get a raptor you should get the 15,000 rpm one.
If you dont need a fast drive though, Id say go for the bigger storage

[MerfBall]

U can run ata and s-ata. Unless you do things that require alot of disk I/O (i.e. authoring videos, file server), you won't really notice the difference between the two. I would say that its not worth the extra money for the sata until it comes down alot more in price.

[Canaduh]

depends on what you do with it as mentioned before. Boot times are way faster with raptors, especially if you run two of them in a raid. Gameplay gets a little faster which is nice but, for what you pay you aren't getting much space. Unless speed is a huge concern I would wait. You can run sata and ata at once. As far as price goes though I would go with the bigger ata drive for now and wait til the 74gb raptor comes down in price.:dunno:

[blinkme_210]

You're not really going to notice those extra 2800 RPM unless you do heavy video editing, CAD, or photoshop work. Go for the Western Digital Caviar editions. The Caviar editions have a 8mb cache, as opposed to the regular 2mb cache.

[rage2]

Originally posted by blinkme_210
You're not really going to notice those extra 2800 RPM unless you do heavy video editing, CAD, or photoshop work. Go for the Western Digital Caviar editions. The Caviar editions have a 8mb cache, as opposed to the regular 2mb cache.
Even with heavy video editing, 7200rpm is more than enough. I can run 3 concurrent HD video streams with 7200rpm drives, and 5-6 if I throw them in a RAID configuration.

[Xtrema]

Save the money, it ain't worth it.

And don't buy Maxtor.

[project240]

Just the answers I was looking for. Thank you all for your input. I don't do video editing or anything of that sort, so I think based on these replies that I'll go with a WD caviar. Thanks again to everyone who replied. Your help is appreciated!!

[Weapon_R]

Originally posted by rage2

Even with heavy video editing, 7200rpm is more than enough.


"640K ought to be enough for anybody." -- Bill Gates, 1981.

[Zero102]

^^^
HAHAHA!
We just went over that in class a couple weeks ago...
*insert bad joke about bill gates and 640K here*

With a 10,000RPM or 15,000RPM drive, what are you really gaining? Sustained transfer rates, or seek times, or both?...

[tulit]

Like everyone has said, it depends on what you are using it for as to whether its worth it. I disagree though with people saying normally you wont notice a difference. You will, in pretty much everything, how much though depends what it's for.
They make excellent boot disks and scratch disks (especially if you start striping a few together).

Also the MTBF is a lot higher on them than "consumer" grade drives (hence the 5 yr warranty on them). Think of the RAPTORS as SCSI drives with a SATA interface on them. So if reliability is another factor, they might be a look at too.

Id be looking at the 74gb raptors though. They are noticably faster mainly in sequential ops than the 36'ers (higher data density).

[tulit]

With a 10,000RPM or 15,000RPM drive, what are you really gaining? Sustained transfer rates, or seek times, or both?...

both.

Your best case seek time is when the next piece of data you want is right next to where the head currently is. The worst case is that the head just past that data you wanted and now the disk has to spin all the way around again to get to that point to that data you want. The average is assumed to be the time it takes for the disk to spin half way around. So if it takes less time to go half way around, obviously that seek time is going to be shorter.

And well sustained sequential transfer rates, more "stuff" is flying past the head in the same amount of time so therefore you should be able to read/write faster that "stuff".

[ThinkAboutIt]

Another note, your powersupply may not actully support SATA Harddrives so if you wanted to go that way you might also need to get a converter or an entirely new powersupply.

[hampstor]

after having an arguement w/ a coworker regarding a similar issue, i'm going to say : Command Queuing > faster spin :D

Making a hard drive work harder isn't necessarily better.

Anyway, both drives serve totally different purposes. If you fit into the 'average home user' category, then an 80gb will do just fine (Samsung 80gb is $69 @ memx). Granted the 160gb is only $10 more after MIR, but that's still going to be $10 more for something that you won't need. Keep in mind that it's an MIR, so you have to fork out the cash up front and then wait 2 months for your rebate.

[hampstor]

Originally posted by ThinkAboutIt
Another note, your powersupply may not actully support SATA Harddrives so if you wanted to go that way you might also need to get a converter or an entirely new powersupply.

WD/Maxtor SATA drives have the 4 pin LP4 Molex on them as well. If you buy a seagate, then you're going to need the adapter.

[Charon]

I run Websphere and do J2EE development and run dual 36 Gig raptors in RAID0. Makes starting/stopping servers and running a dev envriroment useable. But as per games. I have not noticed a difference other then my load times. Im allways the first into the game as I load the map/game the fastest. But the actuall game play is the same, as everything is then in ram.

But if I had time I would reinstall my RAID and go with 64k clusters instead of 4k which hurt me.

Lean my computer boots in about 12 seconds into a usable WinXP Pro enviroment.