Right now I'm running 2 ide hard drives. One seagate and one western digital caviar. I was thinking of upgrading to a Raptor with SATA I. Is this a worthwhile upgrade? How much difference would it make?
36GB raptor - next to no difference 74GB - If you keep your disks fairly well defragged, you probably won't notice a difference 150GB - should be notably faster, but I'm just guessing based off of reviews. It also depends what you're looking to speed up - it may "feel" a bit faster, but it probably won't have a big influence on loading times. Honestly, I wouldn't bother... they're way too expensive for the size, and most home users (gamers included) aren't going to notice a huge difference. My defragged 36GB Raptor feels no snappier than my defragged 300GB Maxtor, and considering they're not too different in price...
i think you will notice the difference... dont get the 36 gig, get the 74 or 150. Even if it does apparently "feel" faster... thats what we want - as long as we think its faster.. then it is faster ... but i generally do think that the raptor is faster and you will be able to see load times change (especially loading windows...) thats my opinion anyway.
with older IDE drives the would be a small difference between them and the raptor but as with newer 300+gig drives with 16meg cashe there will be little increase. personally i'd rather go with a uber fast SATA drive like the hitachi's with huge space compared to a very expensive small capasity raptor.
dont bother getting a 36gb raptor... i notice a bit of difference but not enough to justify $130+ for it... if you want a quick one get the 150gb one.
Well right now it just takes awhile to load windows and such so i was just thinking this might help. I've decided to hold off on buying it for now, but might consider it in the future. it doesnt seem THAT outragously expensive and i dont need anything big as all my files are stored on my server on the other end of my gigabit network...the only thing i need on my hard drive is windows and the files to run programs. My server is only a p3 though with no sata or anything so that probably isnt the fastest for file access anyway even though with gigabit its basically just like a local ide. Any other thoughts are appretiated.
Moved my windows install from an 80Gb hitachi (8Mb cache) to a 74Gb raptor (WD740GD), boot time (from power button pressed to fully into windows) dropped from ~60s to 45s. YMMV Oh, and it seems to run cooler than my 250Gb maxtors as well, but then it is just above them...
Ive just built a system this morning and installed a 36gb raptor and the load time for windows is good (having only had 30gb drives in the past its a vast improvement) May help ive just jumped from 256mb of ram to 1gb too like
apparently sataII drives are pretty comparable in terms of sustained transfer rates to the raptors, it put me off buying a set of two 74gb raptors and buying one big ass 200gb sataII drie
