Are Raptors really worth the money??

Mythago

Are they? Asking because I've bought one (150gb) and to be honest it's loud & while faster than the Seagate 7200.7 it replaces, I just can't get over how noisy it is! Reminds me of an old 4 gig Quantum drive I had years ago! Ok, I am getting a 10mb higher xfer and a much random access speed BUT it's soooooo noisy!!! Added to that I also got some Seagate 7200.10 320GB drives. Nice and quiet (2 for the price of one raptor) and if I raid them; double the read speed of the raptor but still got the higher random access...

Anyways, will I grow to appreciate the noisy Raptor's quicker random access or have I bought 1 just before they pass their sell by date?

Cuddlesworth

No idea, with around 8*140cfm fans I cant really hear mine so I just enjoy the sheer speed.

L31mr0d

Did you want a quiet machine or a fast machine? Sad to say but until they release viable solid state HDDs, the trade off for speed is noise. If you bought a raptor then you should of known before hand that it isn't quiet. In my P180 I can barely hear my 2 Raptors running.

If you don't like that raptor then sell it on adverts, give me a heads up first though Otherwise ask yourself why you bought it in the first place if you are more concerned with noise than performance.

BlackWizard

Ive a P180 too. Raptor isn't noticeable to the untrained ear.

GPU is probably the one that can be heard through all of the noise.

Mythago

L31mr0d wrote:

Did you want a quiet machine or a fast machine? Sad to say but until they release viable solid state HDDs, the trade off for speed is noise. If you bought a raptor then you should of known before hand that it isn't quiet. In my P180 I can barely hear my 2 Raptors running.

If you don't like that raptor then sell it on adverts, give me a heads up first though Otherwise ask yourself why you bought it in the first place if you are more concerned with noise than performance.

TBH it was a late night ebay purchase (alcohol has a lot to answer for), but at least it was relatively cheap. The drive is fine until it starts seeking, thats when it starts chirping like a demented robin? I'd gotten used to not really noticing my drives.

Will live with it for another week or so and then decide what to do with it. The Seagate drives I just installed are half as loud as the Raptor but with 134MB/s average read in RAID 0. But their just for storage so don't really want to stripe them.

Anyway, gonna stuff the PC in the corner under the desk and hopefully the 1/2 inch of wood will damper the noise sufficiently

L31mr0d

Or... download the HDD feature tool. It works with pretty much every ATA drive out there (i.e. PATA and SATA)

Burn it to a disk and boot into it. You can set the seek noise to low on your raptor. Run a benchmark like HDtach before you run it, then lower the seek noise and run it again, it will lower your access times but the drive will not be noticably slower (only in synthethic benchs will you see a difference) I noticed a big difference on the noise level of one of my maxtors when when I lowered the noise.

Cuddlesworth

L31mr0d wrote:

Or... download the HDD feature tool. It works with pretty much every ATA drive out there (i.e. PATA and SATA)

Burn it to a disk and boot into it. You can set the seek noise to low on your raptor. Run a benchmark like HDtach before you run it, then lower the seek noise and run it again, it will lower your access times but the drive will not be noticably slower (only in synthethic benchs will you see a difference) I noticed a big difference on the noise level of one of my maxtors when when I lowered the noise.

You keep saying this but FFS it negates all of the reasons for buying a raptor. Its like buying a sports car that can do 200mph and limiting it to 40 because you don't like the noise. Either live with it, or buy a slower/quieter hard-drive/car.

L31mr0d

Have you ever used this Tool? if you had you'd know that the seek noise reduction is considerable whereas the performance decrease is negligible. Plus the guy wants his raptor to be quiet, i'm giving him options, and he can always simple turn the seek noise back up again if he feels he needs the extra performance at a later date.

Your analogy is spurious. As he won't be limiting it so significantly that he will notice a difference. A better analogy would be that if you where only driving a sports car on 80mph roads, and by limiting it to, say 100mph, could reduce the engine noise of it, wouldn't it be the smart thing to do as you'd never really notice the reduction in speed, as you'd only be traveling at 80mph anyway.

Personally I don't use it because the noise doesn't bother me and I have music on all the time while i'm on the computer, but if you are working on a computer and need quiet to concentrate, its a simple feature to enable to save you the headache.

Mythago

Actually the whole loud vs quiet argument might be overshadowed by the "it conflicts with my system" argument. Getting random freeze ups, which are apparently common'ish when Raptors are connected to ULi based controllers!?:rolleyes: Particularly on CFx-3200 & A8R32-MVP's

Lately everything I touch just spirals in complication. But, as for retarding the seek speed I would do it with a Maxtor but it really does seem a little immoral on a Raptor But thanks for the option.

Alkers

You could get one of those anti-vibration socket things and mount it in a 5.5" bay?

Mythago

You could get one of those anti-vibration socket things and mount it in a 5.5" bay?

Already mounted on vibration dampers, but so far putting the case on the floor under the desk(where it really belongs) has improved the situation a wee bit. But reckon I'll probably off-load the Raptor in the new year & stick in some RAID 0 SATA2 drives instead.

Richard Dower

Raptors ROCK in RAID 0, i find everything super fast but as you say it can be rather "clicky/noisey", moreso when doing large file transfers.

But the kudos alone of having Raptors should override any concerns.

Anti

Yes, they are worth it !!

gline

they are worth it if using them in raid 0 for the speed

i wouldnt bother with 1 though

go for scsi hdds, then you'll know what noisey hdd's is all about

but for noise.. raptors do suck, so if it annoys you - get rid of it, i wouldnt bother with any of those "tools" to slow it down, bit of a waste of time if you ask me

tuxy

gline wrote:

they are worth it if using them in raid 0 for the speed

I always thought raid 0 was a waste of money in a desktop system after reading this article http://www.anandtech.com/storage/showdoc.aspx?i=2101&p=1
But it is an old articale at this stage.
What has changed in the last few years to make it wothwhile?

Anti

Mythago wrote:

Are they? Asking because I've bought one (150gb) and to be honest it's loud & while faster than the Seagate 7200.7 it replaces, I just can't get over how noisy it is! Reminds me of an old 4 gig Quantum drive I had years ago! Ok, I am getting a 10mb higher xfer and a much random access speed BUT it's soooooo noisy!!! Added to that I also got some Seagate 7200.10 320GB drives. Nice and quiet (2 for the price of one raptor) and if I raid them; double the read speed of the raptor but still got the higher random access...

Anyways, will I grow to appreciate the noisy Raptor's quicker random access or have I bought 1 just before they pass their sell by date?

No, you wont.

I have had 36/74 raptorraids, up to 4 drives.

And i have eventrieda dual cheetah raid.

Th performance was amazing. But thenoise and heat is un-real.

I wont run a raptor raid again. a normal 250gb rair +0 will be just as usefull.

Flaccus

gline - what speed ?
I don't know why people run these things in Raid0 when for everyday use there is no noticeable gain in performance. Maybe 10%. Of course benchmarks will always say different.

Have a read
http://faq.storagereview.com/SingleDriveVsRaid0

Richard Dower

Well i got another speed bump using the Intel Matrix Storage drivers 6.2.1.1002, i'm now at 140MB/s according to HD Tach.

Belive me, a single Raptor vs. RAID it's MILES ahead in everyday usage...you try copying a large 500MB file and see how long it takes on a single drive vs. RAID.

I find everyday usage much snappier.

Flaccus

Actually, that is about the only thing they are useful for. Other then that I don't find Raid0 any faster in windows, or gaming. I think reviews show this.

140mb/s is obviously burst mode. Hard drives today have barely broken the ata66 spec for transfer rates, seeing as your drive is always going to be limited by the motor speed and not the interface speed.

Richard Dower

140MB/s is my average read speed, my burst is 247MB/s...this is slow because the Raptors are not native SATAII (300MBps) drives, so a true SATAII drive will display a higher burst speed.

Flaccus

That's impressive. Although I still think synthetic benchmarks for Raid0 do not translate into real world performance. I suppose if you could fine tune your raid setup for your usage profile, but I have never found Raid0 to be any use really, at least not for improving gaming performance, and the risk of data loss is too high.

For me - hard drives are the biggest bottlneck in my system. It's a pity the inhibitor for speed is the physical drives themselves and not the interface. 300MB/s SataII is a bit pointless, when even the fastest Raptor can't even sustain 100MB/s.

Alkers

Richard Dower wrote:

140MB/s is my average read speed, my burst is 247MB/s...this is slow because the Raptors are not native SATAII (300MBps) drives, so a true SATAII drive will display a higher burst speed.

That seems very fast, see how it compares to others here: http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=2055032999

Richard Dower

Posted my results, HD Tune 2.52...but i also use HD Tach which gives different results.

Dempsey

Raptors in RAID 0 are brilliant

unkel

L31mr0d wrote:

Have you ever used this Tool? if you had you'd know that the seek noise reduction is considerable whereas the performance decrease is negligible

Indeed. Thanks a lot, L31mr0d for your link to that Hitachi tool. I use a Raptor (the only component I can hear in my silent and passive rig) because it is ultra-reliable. I do not play games

Implementing your link made a noticeable difference, thanks again!

Oh, and I've done many experiments with RAID0 over the last 2 or 3 years (still have a RAID0 backup) and I can honestly say it made feck all difference in speed...

Cuddlesworth

unkel wrote:

I use a Raptor (the only component I can hear in my silent and passive rig) because it is ultra-reliable. I do not play games

Really? I have had 3 die on me in 2 years.

Flaccus

unkel wrote:

Oh, and I've done many experiments with RAID0 over the last 2 or 3 years (still have a RAID0 backup) and I can honestly say it made feck all difference in speed...

I agree. It makes feck all difference, but people keep posting stupid comments like Raptors in Raid0 are brilliant. Of course they are if you are just running synthetic benchmarks, and I guess if you have your raid prfofile setup so that it matches the file sizes you typically deal with it can help when you are doing a lot of file copying. But for general use and gaming it has been shown time and time again in numerous reviews that the marginal gains are not worth the risk of loosing data. But roll on the raid0 is brilliant comments.

Dempsey

Flaccus wrote:

I agree. It makes feck all difference, but people keep posting stupid comments like Raptors in Raid0 are brilliant. Of course they are if you are just running synthetic benchmarks, and I guess if you have your raid prfofile setup so that it matches the file sizes you typically deal with it can help when you are doing a lot of file copying. But for general use and gaming it has been shown time and time again in numerous reviews that the marginal gains are not worth the risk of loosing data. But roll on the raid0 is brilliant comments.

Im wasnt talking about synthetic benchmarks.

I'm comparing it to real world performances to other setup's. There is a difference and I notice it without any benchmarks

Flaccus

Well congrats, because the people who review hard drives for a living don't.
http://faq.storagereview.com/SingleDriveVsRaid0

Anandtech pretty much says there is no place for Raid0 on a desktop pc.

These guys examined it, and decided it was useful for moving large files, loading large programs (some games I suppose), and XP boots up faster.
But for everything else which is what I am on about, it is hardly noticeable, but you increase the chances of data loss.

http://www.fastsilicon.com/content/view/110/27/1/1/

Maybe you are editing 2 or 300 meg photoshop files ?
But until I see proof from someone that Raid0 makes things faster in general day to day use, then I will agree with what people who have run the numbers have said. And I did try Raid0 myself, and didn't really notice any difference.

B00MSTICK

Yes there's a difference but Im still not sure its worth the extra expense. It might take a few extra seconds to get booted into the OS but that time can be used for putting on the kettle/putting the bread in the toaster/whatever.

I find any other difference is minimal.

So to answer the OP's q, I'd say no.

Dempsey

Flaccus wrote:

Well congrats, because the people who review hard drives for a living don't.
http://faq.storagereview.com/SingleDriveVsRaid0

Anandtech pretty much says there is no place for Raid0 on a desktop pc.

These guys examined it, and decided it was useful for moving large files, loading large programs (some games I suppose), and XP boots up faster.
But for everything else which is what I am on about, it is hardly noticeable, but you increase the chances of data loss.

http://www.fastsilicon.com/content/view/110/27/1/1/

Maybe you are editing 2 or 300 meg photoshop files ?
But until I see proof from someone that Raid0 makes things faster in general day to day use, then I will agree with what people who have run the numbers have said. And I did try Raid0 myself, and didn't really notice any difference.

I have read all those reviews before. Anandtech were referring to normal desktop users, e.g. MS Office, a game or 2, Internet. Im not a normal desktop user and my opinion is probably affected heavily by the programs I use.

I do use Audio/Video programs/encoding quite abit, so thats probably where my opinion is coming from. Sorry for not saying this the first time

Flaccus

No worries mate. Yeah....I guess it would be big help moving around large files. I am just a regular user / gamer. Only have 1 raptor at the moment anyway.

Dempsey

Plus I went from Raptors in RAID 0 to Seagate .10's in RAID 5, and it was quite a shock to my system and I havent done any A/V stuff yet!

Cuddlesworth

Ahh yes, had a video editing/photo shoop rig once with raid 0 160gig drives. Was pretty fast I thought, untill I played around with a 15k 74gig SCSI drive with a Raid5 array for storage. There is always something better around the corner.......

That being said, anybody else played with raided 10k 2.5inch Vertical SAS drives yet. Making me really consider not upgrading for a while just to save up for a pci-ex controller and 3 of them. Would finally stop any slowdown in my system.

Btw, last format I got rid of raid 0 raptors, now one is for games other Windows and a swap file. Found it useless for me, and they died too many times for me.

unkel

krazy_8s wrote:

Really? I have had 3 die on me in 2 years.

Bloody hell! I'd say you've been very unlucky. Anyway you were covered by the nice 5 year warranty, surely?

Raptors are generally considered to be of similar reliability to SCSI drives, way ahead of your ordinary 7200RPM SATA drive - hence WDs confidence to give a lengthy warranty on them