New hard drive advice!

py2006

I was thinking of getting one of them 10000rpm drives, specifically the western digital raptor 150gb one.

I currently have a Spinpoint 500gb 7200rpm one but I would like to change it as I am told that the raptor drive loads windows and games etc much faster.

Can anybody wise soul advise me here? Also I hear alot of people mentioning raid which I am not entirely sure what it is?

Cheers in advance!

Shiminay

All I hear from people is that those Raptors are noisy and don't really offer that big an improvement. Way I see it, if you're serious about getting Windows and apps to run really fast, you'll want an SSD

As for RAID - have a look here. Basically, you can link different numbers of disks together to act as one, or to be an exact mirror of each other or to do all of the above!

sebastianlieken

these newer hdd's with the 32mb cashe r sposed to be unreal

RoyalMarine

sebastianlieken wrote: »

these newer hdd's with the 32mb cashe r sposed to be unreal

+1 to those. i bought 2 1tb 32mb drives a few weeks back and have to admit, they run almost the same as the raptor but with less noise.

then again, with a decent case harddrives arnt that loud anyway.

but for sheer value of it, the raptor's are not worth it.

py2006

sebastianlieken wrote: »

these newer hdd's with the 32mb cashe r sposed to be unreal

The one I have could be one of them, I am not sure!

py2006

Kharn wrote: »

All I hear from people is that those Raptors are noisy and don't really offer that big an improvement. Way I see it, if you're serious about getting Windows and apps to run really fast, you'll want an SSD

As for RAID - have a look here. Basically, you can link different numbers of disks together to act as one, or to be an exact mirror of each other or to do all of the above!

Oooh a bit pricey! I doubt I will be getting one of them! I didn't think of asking wikipedia about raids!

alansweeney100

I have two raptors and they're great hard drives, noisy as hell tho! so noisy in fact I had to splash out on two of these!
http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=SY-000-GJ

Not cheap I tell ya, but very effective.
As for RAID 0, I used nvidias raid software with my mobo BFG 680i SLI and it was useless, less than 10% improvement. The IT guy at work reckons RAID is only any use in configurations of 6 or 8 or more drives and even then you need to use a dedicated hardware RAID card to control it.
Software RAID is poo, not worth the effort.

Don't be put off raptors tho, with the correct silencers they're a great drive, Kharn is correct tho, SSD are the way everything is going to go. Don't know how long its going to take the likes of Dixons & PC world to start stocking PC's with SSD's 3years mayb?? Its all very new and expensive now tho

Flaccus

The new Samsung F1 drives are supposed to set the standard.

http://www.tomshardware.com/2007/11/21/samsung_overtakes_with_a_bang/

Bought 2 of these 1tb's on Komplett. not a bad price either.
Aand pretty quiet too.

sebastianlieken

hey, ive been lookin to get a new hdd as an upgrade to my rig aswell. definatly wanna go with one of these 32mb cashe drives. Samsung or the Seagate.My primary concern is SPEED, i dont care about the capacity differenve of 250Gb, and I dont really care about the price differance either. all i want is the fastest drive. my gut is tellin me to go with the samsung, but a few test seem to how that the seagate is faster. my secondary concern is noise. which make has a better rep?

and flaccus....the sig! :O....holy ****!

yoyo

sebastianlieken wrote: »

hey, ive been lookin to get a new hdd as an upgrade to my rig aswell. definatly wanna go with one of these 32mb cashe drives. Samsung or the Seagate.My primary concern is SPEED, i dont care about the capacity differenve of 250Gb, and I dont really care about the price differance either. all i want is the fastest drive. my gut is tellin me to go with the samsung, but a few test seem to how that the seagate is faster. my secondary concern is noise. which make has a better rep?

and flaccus....the sig! :O....holy ****!

For the noise bit, I have 2x500gig samsungs, they are silent operators! My 500gig Seagate however is a good bit noisier (you can certainly hear it slightly when its reading/writing at times)... Id go with the Samsung myself, both have sinmular specs so should perform the same, Samsung having higer capacity, thats my opinion anyway...

Nick

Flaccus

I moved from Seagate 7200.10 750gigs to Samsung F1 1TB's.
I can tell you the speed increase is very noticeable running a defrag or virusscan. But the Seagate was quieter. The Samsungs make an audible humming noise unless you use rubber grommets to mount them. However having said that the seek noise is unobtrusive. Please ignore the newegg reviews where people have been complaining about receiving bad F1's due the Samsung utilty HUTIL showing errors. Samsung have said this is not compatible and working on a new version of the utility.

SmoothCriminal

I have a Samsung 500gb which is very quiet! I am not sure if it is fast or not as I have no frain of reference!

DonalN

quick question; these F1s - are they SATA1 compatible? how do I find out? My mobo doesn't do sata2.

luckylucky

DonalN wrote: »

quick question; these F1s - are they SATA1 compatible? how do I find out? My mobo doesn't do sata2.

My motherboard is an Asus P4C800-E deluxe. It first came out about 5 years ago or so I think. Excuse my ignorance but I'm also wondering what kind of hard drive I could get for this. At the minute I have a crappy old Maxtor diamond one. My main priorities are speed and to have it as future proof as possible (I will probably be upgrading my motherboard within the next 2 years), secondary consideration is noise, not too bothered about capacity.

Edit: I've done a bit more googling. Would I be correct in saying that I probably could buy a Sata 2 disk and just set the jumper to the Sata 1 speed to work with my current motherboard.

The Seagate Barracuda range appear to be backward compatible if I understand what I'm reading on the Seagate site right.

extra-ordinary_

IMHO raptors are not worth the price premium, noise, and heat, for such a tiny performance gain.

DirkVoodoo

My 74GB raptor is giving me some headaches. I'm getting some darn awful low frequency resonance in my Lian Li v1000.

nibble

DirkVoodoo wrote: »

My 74GB raptor is giving me some headaches. I'm getting some darn awful low frequency resonance in my Lian Li v1000.

You could try decoupling it from the case somehow, I use rubber bands to suspend my hitachi's. Only thing would be that the 10,000rpm disks run hot and cooling would be an issue, maybe a low rpm fan blowing on them would sort that. But you'll never get rid of seek noise even decoupled.

Conar

I got a raptor a while back and the thing nearly deafened me.
I changed chassis to a P182 with the silicon mounts and I don't hear it at all.
I'd definitely recommend using them if you get one.

DirkVoodoo

Yeah, the cooling is the real trick. I may have to look into inventing super-conducting rubber bands.

Personally I would stick with the Samsung 7200 rpm drives with 16MB cache.