76GB Raptors or 250GB Caviars?

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Ok, I'm thinking about buying two new hard drives to put in a RAID 1 array, and am debating whether to go with the Western Digital Raptor or Caviar series SATA drives. I can get two 250 GB Caviar's for less than two 76 GB Raptors, but the Raptors are much faster (10,000 RPM) and space isn't a huge issue right now.

Any advice?

 

I only use the comp for playing games and watching movies. And for a guy like me, AFAIK a 10,000 rpm HDD does not have a significant advantage over 7,200 rpm (5,400 rpm HDDs no longer exist).
Is there a reason why you think the speed of data transfer rate of the HDDs matter? For me the more important issue is to have enough RAM. IMO go for space.

 

Huh? Two 250gb hard drives?! Why do you need so much storage. I have a 40gb hard drive and I have only managed to use about 20gb of that, even though I have a year's worth of digital baby photos stored.

 

@ Harbourboy

1 anime episode = 200 Mb
1 TV-serie episode = 200 Mb
1 movie = 1.4 Gb
1 MP3 album = 100 Mb
1 CD ISO = 800 Mb
1 DVD ISO = 5 GB

So try this:

- 1 season of X anime: 20 episodes. This not even including YZQ series. That's 20x200 Mb.

- 1 season of some TV-serie. Another 20x200 Mb.

- 1 movie. Let's say it's medium quality: 2000 Mb.

- 10 MP3 music albums if you are interested of them. That's 10x100 Mb.

- 3 CD ISOs if you are into games and want to download 1 particular game: 3x800 Mb.

- 1 DVD ISO of 1 game: 5000 Mb.

Total: 2(20x200)+2000+10x100+3x800+5000=40,000 MB, so guess your 40 Gb HDD is full now, and I haven't even included porn yet (~800 MB) and, of course, you must also install those games/applications.

 

Wow, you guys live in a whole different dimension from me. I don't put TV on my computer because I have, well, a TV for that. I don't put music on my computer because I have a stereo. I don't know what an ISO is, but I assume I don't have that either. Lucky thing to, because there's no way I could afford a zillion gb extra hard drive anyway.

 

The Raptors have extremely fast seek times, which is very important in a server role. For desktop use, your apps will "seem" more responsive, but the actual throughput isn't much more other quality drives.

I'd get the two WD's before I got a Raptor, and I'd use Raid0 instead of Raid1. Just keep the drives cool with some kind of cooling fan blowing right on them, and they'll do just fine.

 

@ejsmith - I want to do RAID1 for the fault tolerance. This machine will mainly be for your typical desktop apps and games, so no one thinks the increased seek time is worth it, I'll go for the larger capacity drives.

@HB - Two 250 GB drives in a RAID1 = 250 GB total available, as the other drive is just a copy. I currently have a 120 drive that's almost full...I'm a packrat, so I have tons of pictures, music, games, downloads, websites, videos (no porn...well, maybe a little), and various and sundry other things saved from over the years. I just don't want to worry about space for at least a few more years.

While on the topic of hard drives, is that NCQ (Native Command Queuing) technology worth buying in to now? Seagate has some drives with this feature.

 

I like Seagate HDDs a lot more than I like WD, Maxtor, or any of the others. Have you given the Seagate Barracuda series of SATA drives any thought? I don’t know too much about NCQ, but if you find a good Seagate HDD with it, just think of it as an added incentive.

 

I haven't had much experience with Seagate drives, but I haven't ruled them out. I've just had great luck with WD in the past.

NCQ sounds cool, but I don't think there's much application support for it yet. Of course, I don't plan on buying much more for my system for a while, so perhaps leaning towards the new technology wouldn't be a bad thing.

 

Shalladeth - I have a 120GB WD hard drive running with an IBM 40GB drive in my system, atm. WD drives are fine, with good performance. But if I were to replace it today it would be with one of the new Maxtor 10 drives. It is on all the list of preferred drives on every tech site that I have visited lately. With 16MB of cache and NCQ (native command queing), if you have, or upgrade later, to one of the new mainboards that support NCQ you could see a performance increase.

HB - 40GB? I use my 40GB IBM to house the 5000 mp3 files I've loaded onto my computer. And it's just about full. Time to upgrade that drive.

 

Ok, so the Maxtor 300GB 7200RPM SATA Hard Drive Model 6B300S0 looks pretty sweet. However, the Seagate 300GB 7200RPM SATA NCQ Hard Drive Model ST3300831AS is cheaper and has 5 year warranty as opposed to the Maxtor's 3 year warranty.

So, now it's 5 year warranty vs. 16 MB buffer...

 

Ah, yes, performance over durabilty. And that has always been pretty much the rub. The Seagates have a reputation for running smooth and quiet (although the only one I have ever owned died after a year), but are slower drives; the Maxtors have always been great performers, while having a reputation for a lack of durability.

But I have two Maxtors, and one is still running in a different system, and giving me no trouble at all. In fact, it is a 20GB HD running on an older computer - five years and still strong (the other is a 5GB drive and sitting in a drawer somewhere). But I would still go with the Maxtor 10, but that's just IMHO. The choice is yours.

 

I saw a 350GB Caviar reviewed recently, and apparently it had higher read/write times than a Raptor. So check the read/write speeds: they're far more important than sheer RPM. It's like GHZ in CPUs. The Athlon 64 FX-55 runs at 2.8GHZ, but since it does more instructions per clock cycle than the pure-clock speed Pentium 4 (because Intel knows people buy based on GHZ) it still beats Pentium 4 in every test I've ever seen, including the new 3.73 GHZ 64-bit P4. The point is that RPM can be very misleading.

NCQ is a technology wherein the commmands sent to the HDD are reeordered intelligently and dynamically. What this actually means is that if a NCQ HDD is given commands A, B, and C, if it can detour to C from A on it's way to B, it will. A normal HDD would have to do more rotations, meaning more seek time. It doesn't need support as the applications and hardware run as normal. The only place where things change is in the hard-drive.

 

Not every test. Here are a few benchmarks that show the P4 doing a bit better than the FX-55, at least in few different tests.

http://www.sharkyextreme.com/hardware/cpu/article.php/3261_3484631__4

 

Wow. I am shocked, to say the least. I mean, those tests say that the 3.4ghz 32bit P4 is superior to the FX-55. What the? Thanks for the link. Oh, BTW: The review of HDDs was for a 320GB Caviar, not a 350GB.