Curse

Tommy · Nov 09, 2006, 06:43 PM // 18:43

I have read many great view about the WD 10KRPM HD. I am considering getting one of them for christmas. but before i place my order in newegg. i wanna ask if anybody in forum actually own this HD. there any of you really do. I wanna ask you if it really worth the money and how good the HD really is. I currently alreayd own a 320HD and a 250HD HD. i just need a fast drive to install my window and applications. THX in advance

Mushroom · Nov 09, 2006, 07:49 PM // 19:49

The 10k drives are mostly used in situations where drive performance is critical. Video capture and editing, servers, and things like this. Most of the times I use them in systems, we use a 10k drive for the boot drive, then 7.2k drives for storage and non-critical programs (Word, and things that are not used often or where the speed is not of a benefit).

If you are going to use a 10k drive, make sure that it has really good cooling. Those drives run really hot, and will fail fairly quickly (around 1 year) if they are not properly cooled.

Lurid · Nov 09, 2006, 08:18 PM // 20:18

Yep, they can deffinately run hot. I personally reccomend the new 7200.10 Perpendicular HDDs. 250GB and 320GB flavors IIRC, and a single one vs a single raptor is almost on par, but is cheaper and runs cooler.

MegaMouse · Nov 10, 2006, 03:06 AM // 03:06

I have 2 raptors in a raid 1 configuration Mirrored for data security). They can and do run a bit on the hot side, but a fan in front of them can help out rather nicely. These are the fastest drives available for the consumer desktop at the moment (scsi is too expensive and not many consumer level mother boards support them). I am quite happy with them and will recommend them to anyone that asks. Make sure you get the correct one for your system (sata or EIDE). Also make sure that you get the newer ones with the 16meg cache.
Mega Mouse

Rakeris · Nov 10, 2006, 05:12 AM // 05:12

I have one as well, it's very nice. Mine has always ran cool (or maybe it's the double case fan in front of it...), and I love it, windows/linux boots noticably faster, and the loading times on some games is shorter. I've had it for about a year now.

Tommy · Nov 10, 2006, 05:52 AM // 05:52

I want the 150GB one for a single drive setup, i am not a big fan of raid since i dont even have a floppy anymore

.. i have good cooling<3x120MM fans> but my question is that will the new Drive improve my gaming experience? If it does by how much?

cannonfodder · Nov 10, 2006, 06:19 AM // 06:19

They are fast drives, and your games will load a little faster but it won't be that noticiable, I would rather recommend something like a samsung spinpoint, seagate barracuda, for the price you pay for a 150gig raptor you could get 2 decent sata/sataII drives.

I have raptors in my other 2 PC's, and they are fast, but also very noisey, that is also another thing to take into consideration, my seagate is virtually as fast but is deathly quiet, and if i'm honest doesn't seem that much slower. Raptors were originally meant for use as server drives, hence why WD concentrated on pure speed rather than noise reduction..

vaxmor · Nov 10, 2006, 07:42 AM // 07:42

I have a raprot, its godlike. But, Id only buy one if your system if fast - no point putting it in a crappy 1/2GB onboard gfx P4 system. It will only be an efficient upgrade if you have a fast system that can really take advantage of it. otherwise spend your money on upgrading something more vital.

Mushroom · Nov 10, 2006, 03:38 PM // 15:38

Quote:

Originally Posted by Tommy

I want the 150GB one for a single drive setup, i am not a big fan of raid since i dont even have a floppy anymore

.. i have good cooling<3x120MM fans> but my question is that will the new Drive improve my gaming experience? If it does by how much?

Other then loading a bit faster, you will probably not notice any difference.

Games rarely get an advantage of 10k drives, because they are not incredibly intensive in read-write functions. They spend far more of their time rendering graphics or sending-recieveing data through the internet.

The reason I put them in servers and AV recording systems is that they can take advantage of them. These tasks are very heavy in reading-writing data, and every little bit helps. Not much sucks worse then getting to the end of a 2 hour video render, only to have the buffer run out of data and screw it up.

MegaMouse · Nov 11, 2006, 11:58 AM // 11:58

To tell the truth I dont think that Western Digital offers the Raptors in a 150 gig trim. The only ones that I am sure of are the 32 and 74 gig versions. I am not saying it isn't out there I just haven't seen any. If you need the storage space that a 150 giog hard drive offers put a seccond drive in with the raptor and use it just for storage duties. Use tha Raptor as your main C drive with windows loaded onto it.

Mega Mouse

cannonfodder · Nov 11, 2006, 12:19 PM // 12:19

Quote:

Originally Posted by MegaMouse

To tell the truth I dont think that Western Digital offers the Raptors in a 150 gig trim. The only ones that I am sure of are the 32 and 74 gig versions. I am not saying it isn't out there I just haven't seen any. If you need the storage space that a 150 giog hard drive offers put a seccond drive in with the raptor and use it just for storage duties. Use tha Raptor as your main C drive with windows loaded onto it.

Mega Mouse

No, there are 150g raptors, perhaps if you just used google you may have found that out

linky = http://www.overclockers.co.uk/acatal...ital_SATA.html

Mushroom · Nov 11, 2006, 06:46 PM // 18:46

Of course, if you want the ultimate in speed, why settle for a mere 10k SATA drive?If you want the ultimate, you can get the Seagate Cheetah ST3300655SS.

This is a 300 GB, 15k SAS (Serial Attached SCSI) drive, with a 16mb cache. And they are only $1,500. That is double the capacity of the 150 GB Raptor, and 50% faster as well.

MegaMouse · Nov 11, 2006, 07:11 PM // 19:11

As I said I haven't heard of the 150 gig raptors. Thanks for the info cannonfodder, when I got my first pair of Raptors all they made were the 32 and 74 gig units, but it is nice to know that they have the larger ones. As far as SCSI drives you must have a motherboard that will support that type of drive, and as I said in an earlier post most motherboards for the consumer do not support SCSI. You would have to either get an add-in card and hope it will boot from it, or get a server motherboard. The cost of SCSI drives is very prohibitive also so I cannot in good faith recommend them to anyone. As far as the raptors go I will highly recommend any of the sizes that are currently available. mMine are 2 years old and I have had no problems with them yet. They have been very reliable for me and this is after several rebuilds of my desktop (can't realy call it a desktop due to the fact that I use a full tower server case, this puppy is over 26 inches tall and has 14 bays: 6 internal for Hard drives 2 external 3.5" spots and 6 5.25 optical drive holes. It is the largest tower that anyone can get and I love it) and several reinstalations of Windows.

Mega Mouse

Mushroom · Nov 11, 2006, 07:26 PM // 19:26

I was talking about SAS, not conventional SCSI. And yes, they are more pricey. I have seen SAS controller cards in the $200-250 range. And 74 GB 15k SAS drives run around $325.

Of course, if you want to go all-out, Tyan just released a motherboard with SAS built in. It is a quad Opteron board, so you can run 4 dual core Opteron chips (8 cores total), and blow everybody away. And the board is a deal, at around $1,550.

If you are more "budget minded", the Asus DSBF-D has SAS on-board, for just over $611. But it uses an LGA 771 Xeon processor, so that will set you back a bit. A dual core 3.73 GHz Xeon CPU is only around $1,100.

And of course, I am writing this and the previous post semi-tongue in cheek. But it does show how far you can go if you really want to be "bleeding edge". While most people talk about "Dual Core" and the upcomming "quad core", some of us are already working with "Oct core" (and more).

And yes, by the middle of next year, the first 20k SAS drives are expected to be out. Most estimates are that the 150 GB Seagate Cheetah 20k SAS will run around $2,750.

Tommy · Nov 12, 2006, 02:57 AM // 02:57

just trying to buy myself something nice within 220 for x-mas

.. not planning for a major upgrade yet

.. anymore input for the 10k WD drives

?

MegaMouse · Nov 12, 2006, 03:13 AM // 03:13

As I said the SATA interface and the SAS interface are not compatible and they are out of the price range that most of us can even think about affording. Not to mention that you will have to have a SERVER motherboard or a SAS addin card to use them. The best bet for the poster of this thread is to get the 150 gig Raptor (I did some research and the reason that I didn't know about them is that they are rather new). That should handle his storage needs and give him the speed he wants. Plus they can be used with any retail motherboard that has a SATA controler.

Mega Mouse

awesome sauce · Nov 12, 2006, 03:57 AM // 03:57

If you really want a fast drive for windows, consider this one: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16815168001

Only 4 gb max (8 gb for a ton of money), but its the fastest "hard drive" out there.
Users report about 10 second windows bootup time. It's worth it if you have the money for this beast.

Tommy · Nov 12, 2006, 05:26 AM // 05:26

i actually have a friend with the Gigabye i-ram with 4GB DDR400 on it. It can boot up window instantly, but i want it to help me with gaming experience also

.

Alias_X · Nov 12, 2006, 05:37 AM // 05:37

That gigabye ram drive add on looks awesome!

MegaMouse · Nov 12, 2006, 03:23 PM // 15:23

I have seen the reports on the Gigabyte ram drives. They look interesting but the limitation will be how much ram you can afford to put into it. They are very fast but in order to keep windows on it you will have to keep power to the unit (I think that Gigabyte has an external power brick for the unit). Nice setup but not enough storage to be a serious replacement for a standard Hard Drive.

Mega Mouse