# 36gb raptor... worth it for an OS drive?



## hat (May 21, 2010)

It'll be my 18th birthday soon, which means I'll be old enough to use ebay, which means I might, one day, come across another cheap raptor (probably a 36gb). I was thinking... would it be worth it to have the 36gb raptor strictly for the OS and programs, and use my 150gb raptor strictly for games (this would eliminate issues with reconfiguring everyfuckingthing, and redownloading from steam every time I refired my OS), and my 500gb for storage?


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## cdawall (May 21, 2010)

i ran several in raid they werent anything special


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## hat (May 21, 2010)

I'm not looking for RAID, just a seperate drive for the OS. My points are:
1. A raptor is faster than an average drive
2. It would be nice to have a seperate drive (my current 150gb raptor) just for games, so I don't have to reconfigure everything
3. Things should speed up a bit if I put my OS on it's own hard drive and put my games on the other


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## erocker (May 21, 2010)

No. Any newer 7200 rpm drive being sold retail currently is faster than that drive.


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## xBruce88x (May 21, 2010)

and to avoid the steam issue, you could just copy the steam folder over to an external drive. when you re-install windows download steam, then copy the steam folder into it. worked for me last time i installed windows.


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## erocker (May 21, 2010)

36gb raptor:






1TB Seagate 7200.12


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## n-ster (May 21, 2010)

access time is the raptor's strength...

I'd go with a cheap ssd if I were you


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## erocker (May 21, 2010)

The difference is not noticeable whatsoever. Plus, they are old and outdated.


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## n-ster (May 21, 2010)

I know, I was just saying lol... and what's your budget?


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## hat (May 21, 2010)

I won't be buying a 1TB drive, lol. I only need something small for my system drive. I won't be going SSD either, as that's way out of my price range.

I just need something small that will fit an OS and my programs, and something cheap.

This won't be happeneing for a while (mid-June), but I'm weighing my options now...


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## slyfox2151 (May 21, 2010)

the raptor 36.6gb drive is terible. 

Full stop dont waste ur money,

 i had 2 in raid 0 as my OS drive .... was slow grab a $80-150 SSD, even if it dosnt have TRIM, there still fast.



you need low latency drives for the OS not high throughput.


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## n-ster (May 21, 2010)

Have you thought about upgrade your rig instead of getting an OS drive?


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## RejZoR (May 21, 2010)

36GB raptor is worth it if you get it for free or for ridiculously low price. And only because of low access times. Sequential is pretty low for today's standards.


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## AsRock (May 21, 2010)

xBruce88x said:


> and to avoid the steam issue, you could just copy the steam folder over to an external drive. when you re-install windows download steam, then copy the steam folder into it. worked for me last time i installed windows.



You dont need to do that even just back the steam folder up and run it when the system is ready again.  No need to reinstall steam.


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## hat (May 21, 2010)

n-ster said:


> Have you thought about upgrade your rig instead of getting an OS drive?



Nah. My rig is pretty solid all around, I don't want to change anything else. I just wanted a seperate OS drive.


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## Deleted member 3 (May 21, 2010)

Get a seperate storage drive for your games instead. Use the current Raptor for the OS. It's not like the games will load noticably faster from a Raptor or anything.


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## hat (May 21, 2010)

Ah, but faster is faster, and that's what we at TPU are all about 

What about the 74GB raptor? There's one on ebay for $45


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## PaulieG (May 21, 2010)

hat said:


> Ah, but faster is faster, and that's what we at TPU are all about
> 
> What about the 74GB raptor? There's one on ebay for $45



Thing is, those old Raptors are not faster than most any current generation of drive. Hell, a WD Black of any size will kill that Raptor in write/read. Now maybe if you are talking about a Velociraptor, then you are at least talking about one of the faster platter drives available. 

If you check ebay, you can pick up a WD 640 Black for roughly the same price as a 74GB Raptor. It will be faster and give you more storage.


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## hat (May 21, 2010)

My 150gb raptor x barely beats my 500gb caviar blue in speed in crystalmark, but I thought access time was better for the OS?

As a side note, if anyone has one of these old 36GB raptors laying around, would you consider selling it to me for $20/$25?


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## Deleted member 3 (May 21, 2010)

hat said:


> Ah, but faster is faster, and that's what we at TPU are all about
> 
> What about the 74GB raptor? There's one on ebay for $45



Then get SSD's. Faster is not faster if you don't notice it.


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## hat (May 21, 2010)

SSDs are expensive..


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## Deleted member 3 (May 21, 2010)

hat said:


> SSDs are expensive..



Ah, but faster is faster, and that's what we at TPU are all about


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## hat (May 21, 2010)




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## francis511 (May 22, 2010)

There`s no harm in it. I use a 74g raptor in the exact configuration you mentioned on my gaming rig. It helps a bit with boot-up times. There are a lot of better options these days tho` if you can afford them.


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## cdawall (May 22, 2010)

like i said i had the 36GB raptors they are a waste of money my 320GB seagate was faster all around drive. save a couple of bucks and dont waste it on the raptor and get a SSD

and SSD's aren't expensive i got my pair of 32GB supertalent SSD's for $50 total for both drives almost a year ago just shop around and get a good drive


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## ShiBDiB (May 22, 2010)

Unless ur willing to drop cash on an above average SSD.. wasting money on an "OS only drive" is well.. wasting money


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## erocker (May 22, 2010)

Here you go, faster and bigger than those Raptor's. Seagate Barracuda 7200.12 ST3250318AS 250GB 7200 R...


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## Cecil (May 22, 2010)

Western Digital Caviar Blue WD3200AAKS 320GB 7200 ...
Best for the price. $45 shipped new for 320gb dual platter 16Mb.

Plus, if you dont need the space, you can short stroke it to match or beat the Raptors access times.

I have about 7 36gb Raptors, and each only do ~55Mb/s average with 8-9ms access. Thats really crappy compaired to the 320Gb AAKS.


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## n-ster (May 22, 2010)

Am I really the only one that believes the money would be spent elsewhere in his system?


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## RejZoR (May 22, 2010)

Cecil said:


> Western Digital Caviar Blue WD3200AAKS 320GB 7200 ...
> Best for the price. $45 shipped new for 320gb dual platter 16Mb.
> 
> Plus, if you dont need the space, you can short stroke it to match or beat the Raptors access times.
> ...



If you're going that route it's better to take single platter then. Like Samsung F3 500GB single platter. But for this system i'd start with RAM. It's the cheapest and would make the biggest difference. Program run faster and HDD would be less saturated by virtual memory requests meaning the HDD would perfom bettter as well to some degree. If that's not enough, he can then think about HDD upgrades. Just a thougt.


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## hat (May 22, 2010)

How about this?
Seagate Barracuda 7200.10 ST380815AS 80GB 7200 RPM...

It's the drive I used in my aunt's build. It seemed decent enough. What's the difference between the .10 and the .12 drives?

As said before, I'm not looking for space, just a place to drop an OS.


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## TIGR (May 22, 2010)

The 7200.12 drives are the twelfth generation of Seagate drives and have a higher areal density than the 7200.10 models. If all else is equal, higher density equals better performance. IIRC:

*7200.10*: 188GB/platter
*7200.11*: 250GB/platter
*7200.12*: 500GB/platter

I have owned every Raptor and Velociraptor WD has made and tested them back to back, _objectively_ (it is important to bear in mind how much we _want_ there to be a performance boost so we can distance ourselves from placebo effect), with standard high-density 7200rpm drives. Few people want to hear this, but in general OS usage, you won't notice a difference. You'll hear owners of the Raptor/Velociraptor drives _swear_ there is a definite difference, and they truly believe it. Low access times certainly make a difference in the feel of a system, but unless you're making access time hundreds or thousands of times lower (as with SSDs), the net effect is, overall, barely if at all noticeable (varies from application to application).


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## hat (May 22, 2010)

If it's 250gb/platter, than how is the 80gb drive a 7200.10 :-?

Maybe I should use my 150gb raptor as a system drive and use one of these drives for games? Or maybe I should just leave it, heh


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## TIGR (May 22, 2010)

hat said:


> If it's 250gb/platter, than how is the 80gb drive a 7200.10 :-?
> 
> Maybe I should use my 150gb raptor as a system drive and use one of these drives for games? Or maybe I should just leave it, heh



I've never checked into it but always assumed they just don't use the entire platter for the lower-capacity models. Perhaps someone more in the know can shine some light on this. I do believe that the areal density is the same across the entire series.


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## Cecil (May 22, 2010)

http://yertech.blogspot.com/search/label/HDD Platter Capacity Model Lists

I dont even see where he said what his system is, so cant comment on other parts without knowing what they are.


As for the seagate drives, they have too high of a failure rate for me to ever recomend. Ive never had a bad WD drive, and currently have 7 36gb raptors, 2 74gb raptors, 2 150gb raptor Xs, 1 320AAKS, 2 500AAKS, 2 640 blacks, 2 500 greens, and a 640 black 64mb SATA3. All get lots of use, and none has had a single bad spot. And that doesnt count all the 80s, 250s, and 750s I used to have.

Of all the drives Ive had, I have to say the 500AAKSs in RAID 0 was the best. Short stroked to 300Gb would pull over 200Mb/s with sub 9ms access time.

You can see a comparison I did here,
http://forums.extremeoverclocking.com/showthread.php?t=340340


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## hat (May 22, 2010)

System specs dropdown menu, lol.


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## Cecil (May 22, 2010)

hat said:


> System specs dropdown menu, lol.



Ah ok, never noticed that.

Your system isnt the best, but its not bad. Id say just use the 150 for the OS, and the 500 for your games and apps. 

Id also suggest selling your CPU, and putting $40ish or so with it towards a PHii 550 or 555.


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## hat (May 22, 2010)

My 500gb drive is my storage drive. It's not used for games or apps, it just sits there and does nothing.

Aha, here's an idea... a bigger storage drive and use my 500gb for games. I've already got 404GB full (GB. not GiB)

How's this
Western Digital Caviar Green WD10EARS 1TB 5400 RPM...

I've heard that it's faster than most 7200RPM drives, even though it's only 5400rpm, due to being Advanced Format..


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## Cecil (May 22, 2010)

hat said:


> My 500gb drive is my storage drive. It's not used for games or apps, it just sits there and does nothing.
> 
> Aha, here's an idea... a bigger storage drive and use my 500gb for games. I've already got 404GB full (GB. not GiB)
> 
> ...



Id go with the 640Gb black 64mb SATA3 drive, $80 shipped on newegg.
http://forums.extremeoverclocking.com/showthread.php?t=341887

I personally dont trust 1tb drives. There seems to be more failures for 1tb+ drives then others (more space on them that can go bad, so makes sence) and thats just a lot of data to possibly lose at once. I have two 500Gb green drives in an external RAID1 for my important stuff.


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## boulard83 (May 22, 2010)

+1, dont waste money on a raptor. 

Get an SSD for your OS and use your 150gb for games. This is what im doing roght now.


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## hat (May 22, 2010)

Well, with this new stroage drive idea in mind, I would rather go with a slow, energy efficient drive, since it be for storage... sucking down less power, creating less heat, and making less noise.


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## hat (May 22, 2010)

Cecil said:


> I personally dont trust 1tb drives. There seems to be more failures for 1tb+ drives then others (more space on them that can go bad, so makes sence) and thats just a lot of data to possibly lose at once. I have two 500Gb green drives in an external RAID1 for my important stuff.



Got anything to back this claim up? Not trolling, this really interests me, and could throw a monkey-wrench into my plans.


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## Cecil (May 22, 2010)

hat said:


> Well, with this new stroage drive idea in mind, I would rather go with a slow, energy efficient drive, since it be for storage... sucking down less power, creating less heat, and making less noise.



The 640Black is compleatly silent, and hasnt once gone over 27C with no air flow on it. The black line are the only ones that carry a 5 year warranty from WD (asside from raptors and REs I think) and they made the steps to make sure they last that long.


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## Cecil (May 22, 2010)

hat said:


> Got anything to back this claim up? Not trolling, this really interests me, and could throw a monkey-wrench into my plans.



Just looking at reviews on newegg and other sites. I know newegg reviews suck, but with HDDs it either works or it doesnt. So if you see one with a lot of failure reviews, chances are its worth avoiding.


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## hat (May 22, 2010)

Reading newegg reviews is like going to 4chan... rarely anything useful there


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## Cecil (May 22, 2010)

hat said:


> Reading newegg reviews is like going to 4chan... rarely anything useful there



True, but there are also lots of reports on the manufacturers forums for the same drive models. 
Thats why I dont like seagate so much, is there are so many of their drives that have huge failure rates. Some are ok, but I just dont trust them personally.


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## hat (May 22, 2010)

Using google, I've read that the seagate 7200.11 drives have "incredible failure rates", and "The drives were all made by Westen Digital. We had over a 40% failure rate".

So... everyone sucks?


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## Cecil (May 22, 2010)

hat said:


> Using google, I've read that the seagate 7200.11 drives have "incredible failure rates", and "The drives were all made by Westen Digital. We had over a 40% failure rate".
> 
> So... everyone sucks?



Where do you see WD made them? That would be very strange, since they are compeating companies.


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## TIGR (May 22, 2010)

hat said:


> Using google, I've read that the seagate 7200.11 drives have "incredible failure rates", and "The drives were all made by Westen Digital. We had over a 40% failure rate".
> 
> So... everyone sucks?



A 40% failure rate for how many of which models over what period of time? And—how was "failure" defined? These details need to be available for the otherwise ambiguous statements you found on Google to be meaningful.

When it comes to hard drives:

*1*. There is a lot of bias and blind brand loyalty out there.
*2*. People tend not to realize how little their personal hard drive experiences natter (I don't care if you own twenty ten-year old WDs that have never failed, and five Seagates that failed within a year—that's terrible luck but it doesn't matter in the scheme of things).
*3*. Owners of drives that fail often lose a lot more than just a piece of computer hardware, which can make an otherwise objective and reasonable person rather emotional/irrational when reviewing drives and their manufacturers.

So when looking around for info, check sources, remember bias, and keep in mind that, when dealing with such high-precision, mass produced, mechanical devices as hard drives, a few, a few dozen, or even a few hundred failures means nothing in the scheme of things.

Also, WD does not make drives for Seagate (or at least, I'll be damned surprised if it turns out they do).


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## lemode (May 22, 2010)

TIGR said:


> A 40% failure rate for how many of which models over what period of time? And—how was "failure" defined? These details need to be available for the otherwise ambiguous statements you found on Google to be meaningful.
> 
> When it comes to hard drives:
> 
> ...



well put


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## boulard83 (May 23, 2010)

TIGR said:


> A 40% failure rate for how many of which models over what period of time? And—how was "failure" defined? These details need to be available for the otherwise ambiguous statements you found on Google to be meaningful.
> 
> When it comes to hard drives:
> 
> ...




A HUGE +1 on this !


And ill repaet my best opinion for the OP. get yourself a vertex 60g for your OS and use your VR for games.


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## hat (May 23, 2010)

Cecil said:


> Where do you see WD made them? That would be very strange, since they are compeating companies.



Just some results on google. Look for "seagate failure rate" and "western digital failure rate" without the quotes.


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## RejZoR (May 23, 2010)

Lol, WD is NOT manufacturing drives for Seagate and vice versa. They are competing companies that they both build their own drives in their own factories.

Besides, why would anyone decide for a drive that is known to fail more in general? Which Barracuda's 7200.11 and 12 certainly do. But then again Samsung F1 drives are not exactly known to die too often, yet mine is on a road there...


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## m1dg3t (May 23, 2010)

I think Raptor's are not worth the $$$ as the new drive's are quite fast as is with these 32/64 caches and SATA 3.0/6.0. SSD is great but still too much $$$ IMHO

You could always get 2 HDD's and RAID for better performance.... 

I have always had good luck with WD


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## TIGR (May 23, 2010)

RejZoR said:


> ....a drive that is known to fail more in general? Which Barracuda's 7200.11 and 12 certainly do. But then again Samsung F1 drives are not exactly known to die too often, yet mine is on a road there...



Do you have a source for the claim that Seagate 7200.11 and 7200.12 models have an above-average failure rate, and that Samsung F1 drives have a below-average failure rate?


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## slyfox2151 (May 23, 2010)

the 7200.11 s are a bad series, just google it.

both of my 7200.11s died.


there death rate is above avg compared to other drives.

http://www.obsessable.com/news/2009...ution-to-7200-11-hard-drive-failure-epidemic/
http://arstechnica.com/civis/viewtopic.php?f=11&t=84100
http://groups.google.com/group/comp...storage/browse_thread/thread/68e216a6cc2bf3f1



now i dont care what brand you choose, i just advice you to steer clear of the 7200.11 drives, the .12s seem to be ok.

WD and samsung seem to be decent brands and the seagate 7200.10s and 12s are fine.


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## Deleted member 74752 (May 23, 2010)

Let me state right off the bat that I am a bencher first. It has been my experience with ssd's that they shine in one benchmark only...PCM05. Everything else it has little effect in the outcome. One thing I can tell you is a couple of BSOD's will corrupt a ssd...that is why most bencher's don't use them on a regular basis. When you have like up to four ssd's in a Raid config, the scenario gets even worse. This is the reason we use good hdd's such as WD Blacks. Is a faster boot time to desktop really worth the effort? How big of a hurry are we really in where ten more seconds are going to murder us lol...I'm just saying...


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## TIGR (May 23, 2010)

slyfox2151 said:


> the 7200.11 s are a bad series, just google it.
> 
> both of my 7200.11s died.
> 
> ...



Looks like there was a firmware issue that has since been cleared up. With respect, the links you posted provide anecdotal, statistically meaningless information. Advising people to steer clear of the 7200.11s on that basis is not justified.

The only study of hard drive reliability I've heard of that was done on a large enough scale to be meaningful was done by Google, and their report (Failure Trends in a Large Disk Drive Population) omitted specific brands and models.


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## cdawall (May 23, 2010)

rickss69 said:


> Let me state right off the bat that I am a bencher first. It has been my experience with ssd's that they shine in one benchmark only...PCM05. Everything else it has little effect in the outcome. One thing I can tell you is a couple of BSOD's will corrupt a ssd...that is why most bencher's don't use them on a regular basis. When you have like up to four ssd's in a Raid config, the scenario gets even worse. This is the reason we use good hdd's such as WD Blacks. Is a faster boot time to desktop really worth the effort? How big of a hurry are we really in where ten more seconds are going to murder us lol...I'm just saying...



i bench on SSD's never had a BSOD take one out


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## Deleted member 74752 (May 23, 2010)

cdawall said:


> i bench on SSD's never had a BSOD take one out



You sir, are in the minority then...


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## cdawall (May 23, 2010)

rickss69 said:


> You sir, are in the minority then...



had more issues with standard drives then my ssds run damn near everything all the raptors 36/74/150/300 had OS issues the same as the SSD's same with the 7200.11 and WD drives


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## Cecil (May 23, 2010)

On my daily rig, Ive had to reinstall Windows every couple months with my SSD after trying to bench with it. Never had that issue with platter drives, even on my actual bench rigs where they are pushed far more. Ill just wake up one day turn on the PC, and Windows splash screen will crash. Then I got to boot up another OS, run sanitary erase, and redo everything. Gets old. 

A slimmed down OS on a good platter drive (or two in raid) will feel just about as fast as an SSD.


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## TIGR (May 23, 2010)

Cecil said:


> A slimmed down OS on a good platter drive (or two in raid) will feel just about as fast as an SSD.



Assuming you mean a good, stutter-free SSD, it'd be hard to make an OS feel as fast on an HDD (or any number of HDDs in RAID) as on an SSD, so I assume you're putting a lot of emphasis on the "just about as fast" qualifier. What do you mean by slimmed down?


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## Cecil (May 23, 2010)

TIGR said:


> Assuming you mean a good, stutter-free SSD, it'd be hard to make an OS feel as fast on an HDD (or any number of HDDs in RAID) as on an SSD, so I assume you're putting a lot of emphasis on the "just about as fast" qualifier. What do you mean by slimmed down?



I dont see an SSD in your sig, have you tried it? I had two 64Gb STs that are the same as the vertex in RAID0, and that was no different then just one of them. And they really arent as fast as people make them out to be. OS boot time is a couple seconds faster, and shut down is a lot faster. Other then that, with daily use, I feel no difference. We are talking the time difference from nearly instant (ssd) to the blink of an eye (hdd) when opening up apps. 

Sure games will load faster, or anything large like that, but you cant really fit many games on an SSD without spending a small fortune on one. Mainly people get one for the OS, and have a HDD for games and storage anyway, which defeats the purpose. 

By slimmed down, I mean slimmed down. Cut away at the junk you dont need with vlite or something, and it will be a lot faster. I have a windows 7 64bit install at just a touch over 5gb that has every major feature working. Games, movies, media center, IE, so on all works fine.

The more you cut down, and the less services you have running, the more free ram you have. You can then make a fairly large ramdisk thats 100X faster then an SSD for your temp and tmp folders, your web browser, and whatever else.



My daily win7 SSD PC takes ~25-30 seconds to boot from the time I push the power button. My bench setups (running hardware from sockets 754, 939, 478) use a 200Mb install of XP 32bit on a 36gb raptor, and it takes ~10 seconds to boot from the time I push the button. So, the more you cut, the faster it will be.


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## Deleted member 74752 (May 23, 2010)

^ Yep Yep ^


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## cdawall (May 23, 2010)

and my 200mb XP 32bit install takes longer to post than it does to load windows on my SSD's what are you trying to prove cause my SSD is faster than a pair of 36GB raptors in raid been there done that


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## Cecil (May 23, 2010)

cdawall said:


> and my 200mb XP 32bit install takes longer to post than it does to load windows on my SSD's what are you trying to prove cause my SSD is faster than a pair of 36GB raptors in raid been there done that



Something must be wrong with it then. 

I can shoot a video of both my setups booting. The bench takes about 10 seconds from the time I push the power button, my daily takes close to 30.

When did I ever say raptors were faster? My point is, there is no point in an SSD If you want a faster OS without the cost. You can slim the OS and make a ramdisk.


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## TIGR (May 23, 2010)

Cecil said:


> I dont see an SSD in your sig, have you tried it?
> 
> ...



There are no SSDs in my rigs because I see them as a waste of money at current prices. So it's ironic that I am arguing _for_ their performance benefits (search the forum, you'll see I am most often on the other side of this debate), but to answer your question, I've gone through dozens of SSDs (three in the customer rig next to me right now ). I bench and use them both as single drives and in RAID for testing and for customer rigs. While game load times (depending on the game and configuration) can be as fast or faster with HDD RAID than it is with a single SSD, you said "slimmed down *OS* on a good platter drive (or two in raid) will feel just about as fast as an SSD." Perhaps you didn't mean the OS itself and meant to say games can be as fast on HDD RAID as they are with SSDs.

And it's true that if you use SSDs for a while, the performance difference goes to the back of your mind. But if you test HDDs and SSDs back to back on a regular basis as I do, you will be constantly reminded. All my rigs are HDD RAID but at almost any given time I have a customer build with an SSD or SSDs in it, and I go back and forth between them constantly. I would not say the OSs on mine feels "just about as fast" as the SSD rigs—they are significantly more "snappy." I don't believe they're worth the cost, but as an objective systems integrator, I won't deny how noticeable their performance can be.

For what it's worth, I use Windows 7 x64 and various linux distros on all my own rigs (customers usually get Windows 7 x64). All builds including my own are optimized for performance.

Point is, you simply cannot simulate the overall feel of good SSDs with any number of HDDs in RAID. Getting the read/write speeds is easy with RAID—but even with many drives short stroked in RAID 0, you won't do much if any better than a Raptor/Velociraptor in latency, and latency is what provides that snappy feel that so separates HDDs and SSDs.


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## Cecil (May 23, 2010)

No, I meant the actual OS feels about the same. My HTPC has a WD640 AAKS drive for the OS. That one takes a little longer to boot since its not slimmed down, but browsing, opening apps and media stuff (mostly dvdfab, VLC, media player, media center, imgburn) all of it opens in the blink of an eye apposed to near instant on an SSD.


Im not saying SSDs are useless, or slower then HDDs. Im just saying there really is no need for them yet. Mostly RAID, as with RAID you lose TRIM and either have to keep up with weekly maitenence or sanitary erase them once in a while to keep them at about full speed. Thats why I sold one of my drives and am just using a single, so I can keep it in AHCI and not worry about it.


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## Cecil (May 23, 2010)

If someone is looking for the fastest feeling setup without breaking the bank, a small SSD with a slimmed OS and at least a 1gb ramdisk wins hands down. Thats what I have on my laptop (simple 60Gb Kingston V series SSD for $140). But again, the difference is such a small ammount, its hard to justify the price. But at the same time, its hard to justify the price of an i7 build as a daily rig apposed to many other cheaper options that are nearly as fast. So what it comes down to is what the person wants to spend.

The OP was talking about getting a 36Gb raptor for $25, so I highly doubt suggesting an SSD is a good option.


The place I think SSDs make the most difference is in laptops. Since laptop HDDs are very far behind 3.5 desktop drives.


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## boulard83 (May 23, 2010)

I really feel the difference for my OS with an SSD. Everything is instant, even opening something that normally take 4-5 sec to load takes less than 1-2sec with an SSD. 

I was running a Velocyraptor 150g for my OS and my X25-M is way faster. Boot from sleep in  less than 10sec i can surf web. 

Remember that for an OS you need an SSD that is fast for small random read/write and the X25-M are excellent at this !


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## Deleted member 74752 (May 23, 2010)

Something as simple as a browser change can give that feel as well.


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## Cecil (May 23, 2010)

Showing charts doesnt help. We've all seen the reviews, and on paper, they are faster. But actually using them, the difference is small. And its not cut and dry, that an SSD will take x number of seconds off. Its mostly percentages. Say a game level takes 30 seconds on a HDD, and 22 on an SSD. 8 seconds is a lot for some things, but for a level load time, its not a big deal. 

For the OS and normal apps people use every day (the stuff most people put on their SSDs) the difference is <1 second.


If you really want instant loading, try a ramdisk.


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## Cecil (May 23, 2010)

Here is a video of web browsing I did on my ramdisk. Quality sucks from my phone, but you can at least see how fast the web pages load. On just the SSD, some of these pages take seconds to load all the pictures and whatnot.
http://s864.photobucket.com/albums/...uild/?action=view&current=2gbRamDiskVideo.flv


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## TIGR (May 23, 2010)

Cecil said:


> Showing charts doesnt help. We've all seen the reviews, and on paper, they are faster. But actually using them, the difference is small. And its not cut and dry, that an SSD will take x number of seconds off. Its mostly percentages. Say a game level takes 30 seconds on a HDD, and 22 on an SSD. 8 seconds is a lot for some things, but for a level load time, its not a big deal.
> 
> For the OS and normal apps people use every day (the stuff most people put on their SSDs) the difference is <1 second.
> 
> ...



As someone who runs HDDs and SSDs back to back more or less daily, I feel the difference seems bigger in practice than it looks on paper. I feel the opposite is true for low-latency HDDs like Velociraptors, on the other hand. IMO that falls under "placebo effect." Often people fall for a placebo effect with RAID as well.

SSD performance boosts are not as cut and dry as percentages either. Every application, game, and OS is different and will benefit from low latency vs read/write speeds differently, based on file sizes, read vs write-intensive operations, etc.

Saying "the difference is <1 second" may be accurate, but take that <1 second and multiply it by thousands of operations, and it does change the feel of a system. You and I may not feel that SSDs are worth their current prices, but trying to convince anyone there isn't a noticeable difference probably means you're letting that cloud your perceptions. We don't have to buy them, but give credit where credit is due.


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## boulard83 (May 23, 2010)

Cecil said:


> Here is a video of web browsing I did on my ramdisk.



Web browsing is most likely to be connection related ... 

Yes a RamDisk is something really fast but for a "normal guy", getting an SSD is a good upgrade for an OS/APPS drive. +++ if he have an older HDD.


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## Cecil (May 24, 2010)

TIGR said:


> You and I may not feel that SSDs are worth their current prices, but trying to convince anyone there isn't a noticeable difference probably means you're letting that cloud your perceptions. We don't have to buy them, but give credit where credit is due.



I dont get why you are thinking Im saying there is no difference, or that they arent fast. Ive said there is a difference, its just not worth the cost for most people. The difference for opening daily apps really is minimal. Games and larger programs see an advantage, but you cant fit many on a 30-60Gb drive. The biggest advantage is much faster shut downs, and slightly faster start ups. 

My point from the start was, he cant afford an SSD (at least I assume so since he is asking for a $25 boot drive) but there are other methods to make a normal drive feel as fast as an SSD. Strip down the OS for faster boots (and less space taken up) and shut down extra services to free up more ram for a larger ramdisk.


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## Cecil (May 24, 2010)

boulard83 said:


> Web browsing is most likely to be connection related ...
> 
> Yes a RamDisk is something really fast but for a "normal guy", getting an SSD is a good upgrade for an OS/APPS drive. +++ if he have an older HDD.




Without the ramdisk and IE set to the SSD, some of those pages takes seconds to load. Dealnews being one of the longest ones to load. On the ramdisk it is way faster. The computer has to download all the images you are seing and store them somewhere. On a HDD or SSD, this can take a few seconds. On a ramdisk, its so fast, just about any page will load in under a second. 
As long as you arent running a really slow connection or have a slow LAN port / wireless card, the bottleneck isnt the connection.


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## boulard83 (May 24, 2010)

Everyone is running on ~10mb/s connection ( ~1.2mo/s ) i dont see how a ~100mb/s HDD or a 200mb/s SSD or a 7000mb/s Ramdisk can be faster on loading web page ... 

Gona be faster ONLY if the page is already on your temp files ! simple logic ... But a 200mb/s and 0.05ms SSD gona load it as fast as a Ramdisk since most of web page are kinda small.


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## erocker (May 24, 2010)

The subject of this thread is about a 36gb raptor being "worth it". Get back on topic.


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## boulard83 (May 24, 2010)

Im right on topic on my second last post. 



> Yes a RamDisk is something really fast but for a "normal guy", getting an SSD is a good upgrade for an OS/APPS drive. +++ if he have an older HDD.


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## Cecil (May 24, 2010)

boulard83 said:


> *Everyone is running on ~10mb/s connection* ( ~1.2mo/s ) i dont see how a ~100mb/s HDD or a 200mb/s SSD or a 7000mb/s Ramdisk can be faster on loading web page ...
> 
> Gona be faster ONLY if the page is already on your temp files ! simple logic ... But a 200mb/s and 0.05ms SSD gona load it as fast as a Ramdisk since most of web page are kinda small.





According to this,
http://www.internetworldstats.com/am/us.htm
In 2009 there were 227,xxx,xxx internet users, and only 69,xxx,xxx were broadband.

But thats not the point. 


When you open a page with a lot of pictures, links and so on (like dealnews) it writes those to your browsers temp folder, then reads from it. Having that folder on an SSD or HDD is going to read slower then a ramdisk. So the first time you go to a site, its going to take about the same for either because you are downloading all the info, but once its in your temp folder, coming back to that page will be way faster on a ramdisk.


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## erocker (May 24, 2010)

Don't make me repeat myself. There's other things a moderator can do besides saying "back on topic."


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## Cecil (May 24, 2010)

erocker said:


> Don't make me repeat myself. There's other things a moderator can do besides saying "back on topic."



If thats ment for me, I didnt see your post as I was typing mine at the time.

Back on topic, the OP is looking for a cheap solution, so that counts SSDs out. A slimmed down OS with vlite or whatever, cutting out un-needed services, and making a ramdisk is a free way of speeding up your system.


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