My Take on Raptor Hard Drives

[soulburner]

I bought into the hype by reading the maximum PC article and bought 2 of the 74 gig Raptor Drives everyone said they are so fast you will feel the difference. To tell you the truth the only difference I notice is when I run benchmarks. Some people claim that windows installed in less than 10 minutes I didn't notice much difference. I wish I would hve bought the Hitachi 80 gig SATA for $79 instead of shelling out almost $460 for these.
The hard drive I had before was a WD 120 gig 8meg cache special edition. Just wanted to let people know before you spend all your dough on parts.

[TiGgErDbC]

if there set up on raid 0... well i cant imagin you not noticing. but maybe you dont load large apts. i'm buying a 36 gig for World of Warcraft a MMOPG hopefuly it will help with loading the landscapes and stuff

[CompGeek01]

hehe, supposedly WoW will run on a 700mhz cpu and 128MB ram.... I'm sure Raptor will run it

[Rob R.]

I bought my Raptor for better performance in an MMORPG as well. My choice is Horizons instead of WoW but it made a significant impact on the game. I notice Windows loads a little quicker and applications splring to life a little quicker but the difference isn't that siginificant and neither makes any difference to me. For someone who doesn't play MMORPG's or use advanced graphics software, it seems that it would be a complete waste of money to buy a Raptor.

[sm8000]

I like my SCSI I hear the Raptors are built just as tough as SCSI.

[Bigjakkstaffa]

Personally, at this given point in time, outside of server based situations, SATA/Scuzzy are a pretty pointless and costly indulgence of the wallet over a fast IDE drives, in temrs of speed gained, cost and size limitations

--Jakk

[mobo57]

I have two of the little raptors set up in RAID 0 config. You are right, in certain applications such as loading your os, not that big of a difference. But in some applications, such as loading large game files, etc the difference is very noticable. Used to be when loading Unreal Tournament Awakening game file I could go grab a coffee and come back and it would still be loading. Loaded on the raptors it's loaded in a matter of seconds. I don't know about installing windows in 10 minutes though. Using W2K pro took about 20 for me with my 52x cd drive.

[sm8000]

Originally posted by Bigjakkstaffa
Personally, at this given point in time, outside of server based situations, SATA/Scuzzy are a pretty pointless and costly indulgence of the wallet over a fast IDE drives, in temrs of speed gained, cost and size limitations

Fortunately, I know where to get good deal$, I like the speed among multiple drives, and I don't need massive storage space. And the reliability is a big plus for me - can you say five year warranty?

[dajogejr]

I think the 74's a are a bit too pricey, but...then again, so were the 36's when they first came out.

I notice performance gains all around when I switched from a maxtor IDE, and even more so when I RAID0'd a set of 'em.

Worth the cost? Hmmm...good question.

For the average user...prolly not.
I bought one from Micro Center at 220 bucks when it first came out, bought it's twin for less than half that as OEM from Newegg....

Say it before, say it again.
Internet, Email, Office Apps...don't need 'em.

If you're going to get into video and audio editing, hard core gaming...then, prolly worth another look.


Jakk has an excellent point. They're small for what you pay, no doubt.

You can easily get 3 times the space for the same price...

[sm8000]

Originally posted by dajogejr
Jakk has an excellent point. They're small for what you pay, no doubt.

You can easily get 3 times the space for the same price...

That only matters to people who want or need that kind of space.

[mobo57]

For grins and giggles ran hdtach on my raptors and then on my maxtor 133 results:

[DozerLYP]

so you guys are saying if i'm building a gaming pc i should definitly get the 2 rapters on raid 0. because i just got battelfield vietnam last night and it takes forever to load.

[mobo57]

yup

[dajogejr]

Originally posted by DozerLYP
so you guys are saying if i'm building a gaming pc i should definitly get the 2 rapters on raid 0. because i just got battelfield vietnam last night and it takes forever to load.

Dozer...I'd opt for the cheap...or, FREE, things first.

Two things:

What are your current system specs, and...
Have you performed your normal system maintenance?
i.e.,
Defrag
Virus Scan
Ad ware and Syp ware scan, etc....

Also..I've seen you post on other threads about this...we're kinda on the borderline of hijacking soulburner's thread...


And...one last thing. These drives will load the game faster...but, once you're playing...won't make much, if at all, a difference.

[sm8000]

Exactly, you shouldn't have to splurge on premium hardware just to load a game faster.