# WD Raptor vs. Seagate 7200.11



## DanishDevil (Mar 21, 2008)

I have a Western Digital Raptor 10,000RPM 74GB 8mb Cache, and a Seagate 7200.11 7,200RPM 32mb Cache, and I wanted to share my Sandra Read Benchmark results with you.

Here is the Seagate:







And the Raptor:






Any ideas to why my Raptor's benching so low?


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## intel igent (Mar 21, 2008)

your access time looks faster, as for the other thing (transfer rate?) it prolly has to do with the seagate having quadruple the cache


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## farlex85 (Mar 21, 2008)

Yea, raptors are faster at access times but are slower than the perpindicular recording drives in transfer rates. The 74gb is slower than the 150gb too, b/c of its smaller cache.


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## jbunch07 (Mar 21, 2008)

intel igent said:


> your access time looks faster, as for the other thing (transfer rate?) it prolly has to do with the seagate having quadruple the cache



i would say intel is right but not really sure...


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## DanishDevil (Mar 21, 2008)

That's what I figured, and that's why I'm glad I went with a 32mb cache drive versus getting a WD (they only go up to 16mb I believe at the moment).  Too bad their price dropped $30 since I bought it a few weeks ago 

Mussels swears that my Raptor should be indexing in the high 60s or 70s, though.


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## jbunch07 (Mar 21, 2008)

maybe he thought it was a 16mb cache version


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## intel igent (Mar 21, 2008)

if you bought your drive a few weeks ago it should be 16mb cache if you got 8mb cache they sold you old stock, id go back and swap it for a newer (16mb cache) model should be a tad quicker in transfer rates 

a larger hard drive will be faster cuz it has more platters or something like that  may be better to ask Dan or bta about that


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## DanishDevil (Mar 21, 2008)

I do know that more platters = more power consumption and more heat.  As far as speed, I'm not sure.

And I bought this Raptor years ago.  I was just justifying to myself why it wasn't worth keeping (I want a quieter PC), and someone saw that my Raptor benched lower than it should.


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## newtekie1 (Mar 21, 2008)

The 8MB Raptors were fast for their times, but the 16MB Raptors had several improvements that increase their speed, it is more than just a cache thing.

The 8MB cache Raptors(Model # ending in GD) used a Parallel ATA to Serial ATA bridge, they also lacked NCQ, the used TCQ instead which isn't really supported by any SATA controllers it is a SCSI thing.

The 16MB cache Raptors(Model # ending in ADFD/AHFD/ADFS) used a native SATA Interface, and NCQ.  This really increased the speeds of the drives.

The Raptors have great burst speeds and seek speeds, but the larger 7200.11 have faster sustained read speeds.


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## Wile E (Mar 22, 2008)

newtekie1 said:


> The 8MB Raptors were fast for their times, but the 16MB Raptors had several improvements that increase their speed, it is more than just a cache thing.
> 
> The 8MB cache Raptors(Model # ending in GD) used a Parallel ATA to Serial ATA bridge, they also lacked NCQ, the used TCQ instead which isn't really supported by any SATA controllers it is a SCSI thing.
> 
> ...


Which is all true, but despite that, every raptor I've ever seen, even the 36GB 8MB cache models sustain more than 57MB/s. Then again, that's using HD Tach, so that may explain the different results.

@DanishDevil - Can you run HD Tach on the drives?


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## imperialreign (Mar 22, 2008)

All and good, but part of the reason I prefer the Barracuda's is their higher cache size.  Raptor's are great for quick accessing (like gaming, etc), but the Barracuda's tend to be best all-around, IMO.


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## DanishDevil (Mar 22, 2008)

Wile E said:


> Which is all true, but despite that, every raptor I've ever seen, even the 36GB 8MB cache models sustain more than 57MB/s. Then again, that's using HD Tach, so that may explain the different results.
> 
> @DanishDevil - Can you run HD Tach on the drives?



Gaah I just pulled the drive.  I'll run it later when I get my Cosmos S.


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## Wile E (Mar 22, 2008)

DanishDevil said:


> Gaah I just pulled the drive.  I'll run it later when I get my Cosmos S.



NP. I think the low looking read speeds might just be benchmark program differences.


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## DanishDevil (Mar 22, 2008)

They very well may be.


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## jbunch07 (Mar 22, 2008)

quick question
would it be better to run a single new age 150gb 16mb cache raptor 
or a 7200 32mb cache raid 0?


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## Wile E (Mar 22, 2008)

jbunch07 said:


> quick question
> would it be better to run a single new age 150gb 16mb cache raptor
> or a 7200 32mb cache raid 0?



7200 32MB cache RAID0. No question. lol.


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## DanishDevil (Mar 22, 2008)

Yeah.  The 32mbs of cache and NCQ really helps.  OMG I would love another one of these in Raid 0.  Oh jeez I'm fantasizing LMAO.


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## Wile E (Mar 22, 2008)

DanishDevil said:


> Yeah.  The 32mbs of cache and NCQ really helps.  OMG I would love another one of these in Raid 0.  Oh jeez I'm fantasizing LMAO.



ebay the Raptor, then use that to put towards another Baracuda.


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## DanishDevil (Mar 22, 2008)

Hehe.  I could.  It'd only be like a $50 upgrade.  Jesus.  1.5TB in raid 0 at those speeds... brb.  Gotta jerk it.


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## jbunch07 (Mar 22, 2008)

Wile E said:


> 7200 32MB cache RAID0. No question. lol.



haha thats what i though just wanted to make sure
im going to do that in my new sys then!
thnx


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## DanishDevil (Mar 22, 2008)

jbunch07 said:


> haha thats what i though just wanted to make sure
> im going to do that in my new sys then!
> thnx



They'll be *WAY* quieter than the Raptors, too.


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## jbunch07 (Mar 22, 2008)

DanishDevil said:


> They'll be *WAY* quieter than the Raptors, too.



very true...good call!


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## DanishDevil (Mar 22, 2008)

Grab 'em off Newegg for $150 shipped while you can if you're building soon.  I paid $170 + tax and shipping for mine 3 weeks ago.


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## ktr (Mar 22, 2008)

The age of raptors are over. WD needs to make a perpendicular 10k hdd


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## jbunch07 (Mar 22, 2008)

thanks ill check them out but i have to get the MB first...


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## Wile E (Mar 22, 2008)

ktr said:


> The age of raptors are over. WD needs to make a perpendicular 10k hdd



That would be awesome. Or at least release their 15k drives on the SATA interface. That would be awesome as well.


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## DanishDevil (Mar 22, 2008)

WD needs to start putting 32mb of cache on their drives, too.  I wanted to stay with WD since I've owned nothing but them and never had problems, but I figured there had to be some reason for twice the cache, and I'm so glad I did 

It amazes me though.  All this speed and WAY less noise.  I can hear the Raptor clicking from across the room.  I can hear the Seagate from my seat if I know it's reading something and I *try* to tune my ear to it.  I  7200.11!


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## imperialreign (Mar 22, 2008)

DanishDevil said:


> WD needs to start putting 32mb of cache on their drives, too.  I wanted to stay with WD since I've owned nothing but them and never had problems, but I figured there had to be some reason for twice the cache, and I'm so glad I did
> 
> It amazes me though.  All this speed and WAY less noise.  I can hear the Raptor clicking from across the room.  I can hear the Seagate from my seat if I know it's reading something and I *try* to tune my ear to it.  I  7200.11!





WD Raptor series is a niche market, IMO.  TBH, I prefer Seagates, but I'm currently running 3 WD HDD's, and yes, I love the 7200 as well with my 320GB, even though she's only 16MB cache.


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## ktr (Mar 22, 2008)

Wile E said:


> That would be awesome. Or at least release their 15k drives on the SATA interface. That would be awesome as well.



http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822116059

***drool***



180mb/s transfer rate, 2ms latency...raid 0 two of them on a good controller and get 300+ transfer speeds!


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## DanishDevil (Mar 22, 2008)

Can you say noise, heat, power, and a REALLY expensive SAS controller? 

It *would *be wicked fast, though


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## Wile E (Mar 22, 2008)

DanishDevil said:


> Can you say noise, heat, power, and a REALLY expensive SAS controller?
> 
> It *would *be wicked fast, though


Yeah, but we were talking if they would release them on the SATA interface. :drool:


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## DanishDevil (Mar 22, 2008)

Ah, true.  They would be the new Raptors


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## 0V3CHKiN (Mar 22, 2008)

I would be scared to RAID 0 750GB drives unless I had 1/0 set up.


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## DanishDevil (Mar 23, 2008)

I'll have my external Seagate Freeagent 500GB be my backup.  But I won't have two of these for a while, seeing as I still need a new motherboard, PSU, and possibly RAM and Vista/XP 64, not to mention all the fans and watercooling stuff I need


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## Steevo (Mar 23, 2008)

Wile E said:


> That would be awesome. Or at least release their 15k drives on the SATA interface. That would be awesome as well.



Bah. 15K 300GB Hitachi SAS drives FTW. Even if you use a offloading PCI-e controller card there is no other drive that will touch it for read, write or seek for the capacity and money factor. 


For the comment  about heat. Every HDD makes heat and after reading Google's very in depth and comprehensive coverage report of drive mortality and the broad spectrum of possible causes it seems that heat plays very little into the life expectancy of a drive. It is a good read and if you take the time to digest the full spectrum of information covered you will see that the old idea that many of us have is not based on truth but more on our assumptions or a very small cross section of experience compared to the thousands of drives Google runs and tracks.


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## DanishDevil (Mar 23, 2008)

Yeah, but how much is the SAS controller card?  Pretty expensive, right?


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## Steevo (Mar 23, 2008)

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16816102117

Promise SAS PCI Express card $136
Hitachi 300GB 15K drive $625 from other places online.

3.4ms seek
160+Mbps sustained peak non cached read, 74 is the lowest.
16MB Buffer

Two Raptors RAID 0 for 300GB @ 169.99 each

average seek time in RAID 5ms-7ms
Sustained uncached read 90Mbps peak 40 Lowest.


The raptor numbers are guesses, but if you want better performance for the money SAS is the way to go.


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## DanishDevil (Mar 23, 2008)

Wow the price of those controllers has gone down!  I remember they used to be like $600 last time I looked.  If you want ultimate performance, that's definitely the way to go.


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## WarEagleAU (Mar 23, 2008)

Wow, Ive got to get me a seagate then. I got this WD but I hear it being accessed and its brand spanking new!!!


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## DanishDevil (Mar 23, 2008)

Well, now that I actually pulled my raptor, I can hear it being accessed, but it's still NOTHING compared to the Raptor.

I'll do an HDTach on both of them once I install XP.  I made myself a partition for it, at least.


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## ktr (Mar 23, 2008)

My 320gb seagates are silent too. I cannot really hear them spinning, but I do hear them accessing (all hard drives can be heard to).


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## DanishDevil (Mar 23, 2008)

Yeah, absolutely no spin noise on the 7200.11, and accessing is a dull click versus the Raptor's clankety clank and tick tick tick.

Rubber mounts will diminish the accessing noise, right?


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## AsRock (Mar 23, 2008)

A old friend of mine
http://home.comcast.net/~asrock/smokins_Raptor2oldWDs.jpg

And my brothers
http://home.comcast.net/~asrock/bros_raptor.jpg

both in the 70's


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## DanishDevil (Mar 23, 2008)

Those are the 150GB Raptors, though.  Those are native SATA with 16mb Cache and NCQ.  Mine's 8mb cache native IDE without NCQ.

Besides, file transfer's as fast on my Seagate, so I'll sacrifice some access time for noise.


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## Wile E (Mar 23, 2008)

Steevo said:


> Bah. 15K 300GB Hitachi SAS drives FTW. Even if you use a offloading PCI-e controller card there is no other drive that will touch it for read, write or seek for the capacity and money factor.
> 
> 
> For the comment  about heat. Every HDD makes heat and after reading Google's very in depth and comprehensive coverage report of drive mortality and the broad spectrum of possible causes it seems that heat plays very little into the life expectancy of a drive. It is a good read and if you take the time to digest the full spectrum of information covered you will see that the old idea that many of us have is not based on truth but more on our assumptions or a very small cross section of experience compared to the thousands of drives Google runs and tracks.



I'd rather have it in a SATA interface, just for compatibility/simplicity sake.


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## ktr (Mar 23, 2008)

Steevo said:


> Even if you use a offloading PCI-e controller card



Most quality boards (aka expensive) have they HDD controller connect directly to the north bridge, just like PCI-E. 



Wile E said:


> I'd rather have it in a SATA interface, just for compatibility/simplicity sake.



SAS left; SATA right...

SAS is SATA with SCSI speeds.


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## DanishDevil (Mar 23, 2008)

SAS = Serial Attached SCSI


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## ex_reven (Mar 23, 2008)

ktr said:


> http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822116059
> 
> ***drool***
> 
> ...



Because we all so badly need to be able to access our porn collection faster


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## oily_17 (Mar 23, 2008)

DanishDevil said:


> I'll do an HDTach on both of them once I install XP.



My old 74GB Raptor 8mb cache got 65+ for average reads and 7.7 for access times with HDTach.Can't remember the burst but not really that important.


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## Tau (Mar 25, 2008)

jbunch07 said:


> quick question
> would it be better to run a single new age 150gb 16mb cache raptor
> or a 7200 32mb cache raid 0?



Will smoke even raided raptors.


Raptors are largly a waste of money and are mostly hype (IMO)

They offer minimal speed icnreases and dramatically increased heat output, as well as space loss.

For the same money you could probobly buy a pair of 250's and raid them.  they would be faster, and store more 

I only have a 150GB raptor in my HTPC because it was free, i only have installs on it (no data storage on the box, its all on another computer), and i figured it might be a bit faster than a 120GB IDE drive....


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## VulkanBros (Mar 25, 2008)

Try this : 
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822152102

2 of these 1 TB 32 MB cache baby´s in RAID 0 beats everything.....

Look at the conclusion : Tom´s Hardware


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## DanishDevil (Mar 25, 2008)

Or these:

http://forums.techpowerup.com/showthread.php?t=56093

For less than the price of a Raptor!  Then buy another later!


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## freaksavior (Mar 26, 2008)

i thought you may like this.







7200.10 in raid 




7200.11 single


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## DanishDevil (Mar 26, 2008)

Wow.  That's pretty damn legit for a single drive!  I'd rather see sustained than burst, but that's still impressive.


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## CarolinaKSU (Mar 26, 2008)

I'm picking up 2 of these today.. free shipping FTW 

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822148288


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## DanishDevil (Mar 26, 2008)

You'll enjoy them!  You putting them in RAID0?  If you do, PLEASE post some HDTach screens!


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## lemonadesoda (Mar 26, 2008)

It's important to remember that WD Raptors WERE the speed demons. But that time is well over.  While they have great access speeds, they arent the best at pulling huge amounts of data on/off.

The raptors still have their place: e.g. in RAID and for "transactional use", e.g. databases.

But for the typical desktop/workstation, the performance winner today IMO is the Samsung F1 series. Fast, quiet, low power.

I was a Seagate man for many years since they (like raptors) were the best in class. (I think it was the .7 series where they were winning all benchmarks on launch).

But today, I've moved over to the F1's. Great price. Great performance.  RAID two F1's and you will be hitting an interface bottleneck. Impressive.


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## Wile E (Mar 26, 2008)

freaksavior said:


> i thought you may like this.
> 
> http://i99.photobucket.com/albums/l294/freaksavior/raid.jpg
> 
> ...


Holy shnikeys!!! I'm buying some 7200.11's.

Anybody wanna buy a couple of 320GB 7200.10's? lol


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## DanishDevil (Mar 26, 2008)

Haha.  That's why I almost want to stop posting this kinda stuff.  Now I'm trying to get rid of my raptor lmao.

I think I'm gonna start selling my stuff before I post about how great my new stuff it 

The Samsungs were an option for me, and I have to say that part of me does regret not going with them.  They do seem to be a bit better than the Seagates, but I kinda wanted to go either WD or Seagate.  I'm still pretty happy with my purchase.


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## Durhamranger (Apr 5, 2008)

Think u`ll like this..... 7xRaptor 150Gb Drives,Areca 1231dml card.....


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## DanishDevil (Apr 5, 2008)

That is pretty sweet.  No way I'm spending that much, though.


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## mrhuggles (Apr 12, 2008)

hmm, i dont understand, people like the 7200.11's but, the 250gb 16mb cache 7200.10 revision 3.AAC drive benches much higher, am i missing something? [250gb for a single platter]

is it just the risk in buying one? i guess most of the revisions suck


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## DanishDevil (Apr 12, 2008)

Not sure.  I'm no HDD expert.  That's why I posted these results.


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## mrhuggles (Apr 12, 2008)

this is mine, a single drive, my windows boot drive [why it bottoms out every once in a while i guess]


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## Steevo (Apr 12, 2008)

RAID 5, PCI bus limited. 3 320GB Drives.


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## kenkickr (Apr 13, 2008)

Here is some Raptor Raid 0 benchies from my system.


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## Durhamranger (Apr 13, 2008)

Jus tryin to work out Freaksaviours results normally regardless on which drives u use,Raid 0 
scales with the number ov drives used in the array,ie: Sequential read speed should roughly double with 2 drives,hence why my benchmarks are so high :ie 7 drives in the array......

cya

Ranger


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## jonmcc33 (May 5, 2008)

farlex85 said:


> Yea, raptors are faster at access times but are slower than the perpindicular recording drives in transfer rates. The 74gb is slower than the 150gb too, b/c of its smaller cache.



http://anandtech.com/storage/showdoc.aspx?i=3303

Seems to have high transfer rates if you ask me.


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## Wile E (May 5, 2008)

That's the VelociRaptor, not the standard Raptor.


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## malware (May 7, 2008)

My brand new two 500GB Seagate Barracudas 7200.11 32MB cache in striped RAID0 (32kb). 



 



Model number: ST3500320AS
Firmware: SD15
Date code: 08411 (11 April 2008)
Made in Thailand


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## D4S4 (May 7, 2008)

DanishDevil said:


> I do know that more platters = more power consumption and more heat.  As far as speed, I'm not sure.



Why don't they make disk-level raid0 for disks with multiple platters? 2 platters = 4 r/w surfaces -> 4 bits read/written at the same time!


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## Deleted member 3 (May 7, 2008)

Cache is irrelevant here. It's simple because the Seagate has far bigger platters. The Raptor has lower access times which is what makes them so nice. How often do you actually read/write hundreds of megabytes at once? Windows does no such thing, access time matters more in most cases.


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## AsRock (May 7, 2008)

DanTheBanjoman said:


> Cache is irrelevant here. It's simple because the Seagate has far bigger platters. The Raptor has lower access times which is what makes them so nice. How often do you actually read/write hundreds of megabytes at once? Windows does no such thing, access time matters more in most cases.



But a lot of games have files compressed into one like a zip \ rar you could say.  And a lot of them are like near 200MB and some 1GB+.

EDIT:  Oops forgot to add.. If they cound in being large files the same way i do not know but i would of thought so.


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## D4S4 (May 7, 2008)

DanTheBanjoman said:


> Cache is irrelevant here. It's simple because the Seagate has far bigger platters. The Raptor has lower access times which is what makes them so nice. How often do you actually read/write hundreds of megabytes at once? Windows does no such thing, access time matters more in most cases.



+1

That will be proven once someone upgrades to flash disk with <1ms access time.


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## niko084 (May 8, 2008)

I don't have the test graphs but a friend of mine just ran 2 150gb Raptor 16mb NCQ drives in raid 0 against 2 WD RE 250gb 16mb drives, and under "fake" raid the RE's were BARELY slower in seek times even, on a hardware raid controller this was very different.

So goes to show if you want enterprise, don't cheap it out on the last line.


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