is it worth it...

FieryGoose

FieryGoose

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i wanted to get some opinions of how good the wd raptor was, does it speed up load times? I am thinking about getting a 36gb one if i get one cause it's all i can afford... if any of you guys have any reccomendations of what i could get that would increase my preformance for about $120 that would be greatly appreciated.:cheers:
 
Any reccomendations would be really great since i might get the hdd today , i don't really want to spend my money on something that might not even do anything different than my 60gb 7,200rpm. Also if anyone has any recommendations on a good hs/f for my athon 64 3500 that fits on a neo 2 plt. mobo that would be great!
 
DO NOT get the 36GB raptor, it's NOT worth it. The 74GB is, costs more though. The 1st gen raptor is not much faster than today's 7200RPM drives, only the 2nd gen is good.
 
yes it is... damn fast though! My loading times have nearly halved :D
 
[Matt] said:
yes it is... damn fast though! My loading times have nearly halved :D
Click to expand...
so you think that it's probably the best buy for a item in the $120 range?
 
any good?

does anyone know if THISis a good fan controller for the price, if there are any others for around the same price ($25) then please tell me?
 
i couldn't edit my last thread but i forgot to ask if a ide hard drive can work with a sata hard drive?
 
*bump* i know it may seem like im spamming my own thread, and u can make fun of me for it ;) but i really need to know if an IDE hardrive can work with a SATA harddrive... any help would be extremely helpful.
 
yes they can both be installed in the same system.
 
define "work with"....

it is a different cable.... think of it in terms of SCSI and IDE.... completely different interface.

only difference between is there are hardware work-arounds to plug old parallel IDE hard drives (standard 40 pin conenctor) onto the tiny SATA connectors if your motherboard has lots of these and you've run out of normal IDE connectors.

If this helps: I'm running my OS and gaming on a 74Gb SATA Raptor, my media off a 300Gb SATA Sabre, downloads&data (apps, drivers, documents, photos) on 200Gb standard PIDE (IDE) drive and another spare 200Gb drive for temp files and shared/duplicate data.... plus 2 x 250Gb Firewire (IEEE1394 interface) external drives.

All of these IDE and SATA drive "work with" each other in the same system.... but I wouldn't recommend spanning any of the SATA ones with the IDE ones in a RAID set or anything along those lines....
 
What do you mean by raid? Also i'm looking for a ok heatsink/fan for my 3500+ for around $30, does anyone have any suggestions?
 
Cant go wrong with the thermalright xp-90 for a cooler...
 
the raptor hdds are still fast even without raid though right? Cause raid seems sort of complicated, i also have a 60gb ide and if i get the raptor it will be sata which would make it so it doesn't work... im confused?
Does the xp-90 need a fan or does it just run alone? (i think it does use a fan but just making sure).
 
*bump* im interested in the harddrive thing, i wanted to add to my question, would 2 7200rpm hdds on a raid be as fast as a raptor alone?
 
You'd be better off just with the Raptor, it has a 10,000rpm spin time.
Raid 0 is better known as "striping", The data is split into 4 blocks, block 1 is written to the first drive, block 2 to the second, block 3 to first and block 4 to second.
These days it is not much faster than a good SATA drive, and if windows or your other O/S screws up the data on both drives is useless.
RAID 1 is mirroring, the exact same data is written to both drives, so if one drive goes down, windows takes the data automatically from the other working drive.
You could have any number of combinations upto RAID 54.

But your better off with a good SATA drive, rather than spend the £200+ on a 76gb raptor, after all 76gb is nothing these days and you'd soon fill that up with games, programs etc.
And even if you just put the windows install on it, the games would have to be run from another faster drive or your still losing out.
 
well what i was thinking of doing is installing windows on my 60gb hdd which is not very fast as well as put all sorts of non-gaming crap on it and then use the 36.7gb raptor strictly for gaming would that work ok?

Also another question i had is would i have to install windows on both hdd's to make my games run or what?

I didn't even use up the 60gb with all my music, games, apps, xp, etc. so i don't think i'll have a problem with running out of space for my crap especially with an extra 36.7gb of space.
 
The 36GB Raptor is fast. The 74GB Raptor is faster and quieter. (improvements)

Having a Raptor will speed up your loads and boot time etc. I went from an old Caviar WD drive and it was a pretty big difference for me. That, plus having 1GB of memory and an A64 CPU (and nForce3 one chip solution, no individual SATA chipset) really makes booting/loading quick.

If you don't get a Raptor, then I'd recommend a hitachi SATA drive or the Seagate drive. WD's SATA drives are good too but those Hitachi drives are probably about the fastest 7,200RPM drive. ;)

Look up some reviews for the 7K250 Hitachi SATA drive.
 
You won't need an install of windows on both drives, just the drive your gonna designate as C:
As for getting a 36gb raptor, I can't see the point really, your looking for future expansion as well as what you have now.
Think of it this way, HL2 fills up about 4.2gb, So do most other games, or at least between 2-4 gb.
Ten games on your pc would be 40gb+ gone.
Then what about music, films, etc.
That 96gb or really 91gb, cos you lose about 5% of a HD when you format, is not gonna leave much for future additons.
Whereas a big 250gb SATA is gonna be big enough for a couple of years.
Just make sure you partition it using FDISK or partiton manager, cos one large 250gb partition will be slower than 2 x 125gb's, also it will take longer to defrag.
And if windows goes "belly up" on a 250gb un-partitioned drive, you lose everything, whereas you could have backed up all your precious data and downloads on a seaparate partition and lose nothing if the worst happens.
 
i think im gonna get the 74gb raptor just because of the obvious advantages and theres only a 50 doller price difference for twice the space, ill use it for games and i don't really know what else a fast harddrive is good for... i guess i'll use my 60gb for documents or homework stuff, i don't know. Thanks for all the help, also i want to make sure that a 430w true power antec power supply will be enough to power all my stuff?
 
Raptors are quick. If you're just going for one, then the 74Gb is the way to go.

You will be able to install the Raptor on the SATA channel and you will still have one SATA channel spare for any other devices, plus your four IDE channels for other devices (CD-ROM/R/RW / ZIP / LS120 / other hard drives).

I advise taking disconnecting the 60Gb initially. Only connect the SATA Raptor and your CD/DVD drive. Do you OS install and then reconnect the 60GB (it will then appear as your D:) and use the 60Gb drive to store data / media / etc.

With RAID, the main concepts are: parity, mirror, stripe.

Mirror = duplicate everything so you can read at roughly 2x the speed with 2 discs. Writing speed is roughly the same. One disc can fail and then it will just run as a standard disc. Pro: fast read speed, drive can fail and no data lost! Cons: halves your disc space (74Gb + 74Gb = 74Gb!!).

Stripe = spread the files out across 2 (or more!) discs. Files load and save at 2x the speed for 2 discs (or more x or more x!) . Pros: VERY fast, no space lost. Cons: if eitehr disc is lost, all data is lost.

Parity = more complicated RAID systems, involving the above stripe, but using a spare disc to secure the data. Pros: Most of the speed of a stripe set, less storage space wasted (74Gb + 74Gb + 74Gb=148Gb). Cons: more complicated controller required, more discs required (3 min).

I went from a 2 disc (200Gb Western Digital) RAID mirror to a Raptor 74Gb and didn't actually notice any real fall in performance. Access times are WAY quicker and load times are roughly the same.

Use your Raptor for your operating system (!!) and games mostly.
 
WRT to cooling, are you looking for quiet or COLD?

I used to have one of those steroid loaded multi-heatpipe jobs with a 7500rpm fan (!gulp!)..... even with ASUS Q-fan (at the idle speed of 4000rpm) it was loud and when gaming, it like having a washing machine on spin cycle in the room!

Now on one of the Coolermaster "Jet" fans.... a hell of a lot quieter at "idle" and keeps the "moderately" overclocked CPU plenty cool enough for prolonged gaming...
 
Just so you know you're far better of installing windows on the raptor as the C: drive and having the 2 other IDE drives as secondary storage for files/mp3 etc. Having windows and games on the raptor will speed things up considerably...
 
alright sounds good guys, thanks for all the help, now everything makes alot more sence. :cheers:
 
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