New HDD RAPTOR. 1st time.

[Tatsujin]

With Windows 7 OEM around the corner, I was recommended by other people to do a fresh install. I'm seeking some advice on RAPTOR HDD's. So anything would be helpful. I'm going to install Windows 7 on a fresh HDD and will not split that driver to any partitions. So far, these are the ones I've been looking at:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822136322

Well, only one so far. The other one is same features but 150GB and its like 50 dollars less. Why not add 50 more dollars to get 150GB more? Pretty good deal. The other HDDs I'm going to be purchasing for internal work stuff, music and what not are:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822136351

Which is honestly, for 110 dollars 1.5TB from WD is a big damn steal. Price will probably drop even less by the beginning of next year.

Main focus should be on Windows 7 and the new HDD. I have no experience at all with Raptor drivers but I heard they are best used for install your OS on them. The 15000RPM one only had WD listed as 800 dollars which is too fucking insane to purchase. That thing should be like 300 or 400 dollars.

[vuzedome]

For se7en, SSD is the way to go!!

[Tatsujin]

For se7en, SSD is the way to go!!

se7en? .... What's that?

[Slysoft]

Raptor drives aren't worth the cost unless you're loaded. All it will do is lower your boot time from 20 seconds to 10 seconds, and cost 3-4x more. Also since they are still moving parts, the raptors die faster because they work harder. If you're in the market for fast drives, go ssd. It's the way of the future.

[mgz]

With Windows 7 OEM around the corner, I was recommended by other people to do a fresh install. I'm seeking some advice on RAPTOR HDD's. So anything would be helpful. I'm going to install Windows 7 on a fresh HDD and will not split that driver to any partitions. So far, these are the ones I've been looking at:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822136322

Well, only one so far. The other one is same features but 150GB and its like 50 dollars less. Why not add 50 more dollars to get 150GB more? Pretty good deal. The other HDDs I'm going to be purchasing for internal work stuff, music and what not are:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822136351

Which is honestly, for 110 dollars 1.5TB from WD is a big damn steal. Price will probably drop even less by the beginning of next year.

Main focus should be on Windows 7 and the new HDD. I have no experience at all with Raptor drivers but I heard they are best used for install your OS on them. The 15000RPM one only had WD listed as 800 dollars which is too fucking insane to purchase. That thing should be like 300 or 400 dollars.

eh i grabbed a 74 gig raptor drive for my OS and games giant HDDs for all my other stuff

[Tatsujin]

Raptor drives aren't worth the cost unless you're loaded. All it will do is lower your boot time from 20 seconds to 10 seconds, and cost 3-4x more. Also since they are still moving parts, the raptors die faster because they work harder. If you're in the market for fast drives, go ssd. It's the way of the future.

Link ... I'm not understanding anything your saying.

[fohfoh]

Raptor drives are no longer worth the cost unless you're loaded. All it will do is lower your boot time from 20 seconds to 10 seconds, and cost 3-4x more. Also since they are still moving parts, the raptors die faster because they work harder. If you're in the market for fast drives, go ssd. It's the way of the future.

Fix'd

But yes. 100 bucks for a 73GB isn't too bad since SSD is still higher in price. But seriously, don't bother with any higher. Not cost effective. Spend the extra on lower speed HDDs to store your stuff.

[Drew]

I wouldn't buy into to the SSD craze just yet. The disks are still too small, have too many problems, and are way too expensive. Wait a few years. I wouldn't get a Raptor either. They're over-priced, and a lot of Green or 7200rpm drives get close enough performance-wise, in addition to being 4 to 12 times larger.

Get one of the 1TB or 1.5TB drives. You won't regret it.

[Tatsujin]

I wouldn't buy into to the SSD craze just yet. The disks are still too small, have too many problems, and are way too expensive. Wait a few years. I wouldn't get a Raptor either. They're over-priced, and a lot of Green or 7200rpm drives get close enough performance-wise, in addition to being 4 to 12 times larger.

Get one of the 1TB or 1.5TB drives. You won't regret it.

I'll just do that since I'm hearing about all these crazy things. Save myself some money, get more space.

[Natheria]

Raptor drives aren't worth the cost unless you're loaded. All it will do is lower your boot time from 20 seconds to 10 seconds, and cost 3-4x more. Also since they are still moving parts, the raptors die faster because they work harder. If you're in the market for fast drives, go ssd. It's the way of the future.

Link ... I'm not understanding anything your saying.

SSD is a Solid State Drive. It's really like a big flash drive and is as Sly said 'the way of the future' since it has no moving parts and can read/write a hell of a lot faster than any HDD. The tech is still relatively new however, a lot more money per gig, and still have some bugs in the tech they need to work on (the biggest one being that write times get a lot slower once you fill the drive up and then it has to re-write huge 512k blocks of memory every time you want to change a small 4k Word document).

The raptors really aren't worth the money anymore. I would just settle for a cheaper 7200rpm model with more space like everyone else said and stay away from the 10-15k's. I'm going to be using a 500gig Barracuda 7200.12 i was using for storage on my old machine for my new boot drive and later buy 1.5TB drives for storage.

[fohfoh]

The Greens are ok. I was seriously looking into one. But yeah...

[psyren]

[Sticks]

WD Caviar Black (1TB is sold out at newegg, surprise surprise)
2x platter 640GB (320GB each platter) should be fast enough, check benchmarks on the web, they're everywhere.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822136319

Then shortstroke it.  

[Tatsujin]

WD Caviar Black (1TB is sold out at newegg, surprise surprise)
2x platter 640GB (320GB each platter) should be fast enough, check benchmarks on the web, they're everywhere.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822136319

Then shortstroke it.  

add 10-15 more dollars, thats 1TB, dump a little bit more and get 1.5TB. I'll do the 1.5TB ones. Need-mooar-spaacceee-dot.

[Rozzly]

WD Caviar Black (1TB is sold out at newegg, surprise surprise)
2x platter 640GB (320GB each platter) should be fast enough, check benchmarks on the web, they're everywhere.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822136319

Then shortstroke it.  

add 10-15 more dollars, thats 1TB, dump a little bit more and get 1.5TB. I'll do the 1.5TB ones. Need-mooar-spaacceee-dot.

For my new build, i just stuck with the caviar black 1tb from WD. I did some research and APPARENTLY the 1.5TB and 2TB drives are dying extremely fast.

[Tatsujin]

WD Caviar Black (1TB is sold out at newegg, surprise surprise)
2x platter 640GB (320GB each platter) should be fast enough, check benchmarks on the web, they're everywhere.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822136319

Then shortstroke it.  

add 10-15 more dollars, thats 1TB, dump a little bit more and get 1.5TB. I'll do the 1.5TB ones. Need-mooar-spaacceee-dot.

For my new build, i just stuck with the caviar black 1tb from WD. I did some research and APPARENTLY the 1.5TB and 2TB drives are dying extremely fast.

!!!!!!!! Where tho' proofs!

[Rozzly]

WD Caviar Black (1TB is sold out at newegg, surprise surprise)
2x platter 640GB (320GB each platter) should be fast enough, check benchmarks on the web, they're everywhere.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822136319

Then shortstroke it.  

add 10-15 more dollars, thats 1TB, dump a little bit more and get 1.5TB. I'll do the 1.5TB ones. Need-mooar-spaacceee-dot.

For my new build, i just stuck with the caviar black 1tb from WD. I did some research and APPARENTLY the 1.5TB and 2TB drives are dying extremely fast.

!!!!!!!! Where tho' proofs!

Actually, I cant speak for every brand when I say this. By putting "APPARENTLY" in caps, I meant it as something I've just heard floating around the web from various sites. But there was an article that talked about it which I cant seem to find. Basically it was discussing how the newer / larger HD's were having driver issues and problems with the disk platters.
After reading that I went on over to newegg in search of a 1.5tb and saw that the reviews pretty much reflected that.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822148337
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822136344

At the time, I took it as a matter of, "i'm not wasting my chances, il stick with a 1tb." Of course its been a few months, and at the time, 2tb's were just being talked about and were overly expensive so I'm not sure how well those are doing.

[Stsin]

Been using 750gig Caviar Blacks since I put together my last system.  No problems whatsoever and the speed is worth it.  But if I did more research, probably would have spent more for the 1TB.  Reason is that they use denser platters, which gives a slight performance increase  .. 1ms?  Well, they were sold out anyways.

But if already have a system full of green drives, I still think the Raptor is a viable option for a substantial speed increase.  If using it just for the OS and some apps, you really don't need it that big.  Because if happen to get a much larger one, probably will end up filling it with junk, defeating the purpose of having a clean efficient OS drive.

Unless SSDs changed the last few months, I'd wait on them.  Their performance is of the future, but I wonder if it's worth the extra maintenance.  Firmware upgrades requiring another bootable OS to install, plus need to back up the data each time.  Performance drops as it gets filled....but just deleting doesn't work so well.  And many reports of people not getting the full potential out of them, unless with constant tweaking and maintenance...and some just can't seem to get it to work optimally.  They are the best if want the cutting edge.

But with a Raptor you just connect and forget.  And as an OS drive, might have to do a defrag once in a blue moon.

[Tatsujin]

Been using 750gig Caviar Blacks since I put together my last system.  No problems whatsoever and the speed is worth it.  But if I did more research, probably would have spent more for the 1TB.  Reason is that they use denser platters, which gives a slight performance increase  .. 1ms?  Well, they were sold out anyways.

But if already have a system full of green drives, I still think the Raptor is a viable option for a substantial speed increase.  If using it just for the OS and some apps, you really don't need it that big.  Because if happen to get a much larger one, probably will end up filling it with junk, defeating the purpose of having a clean efficient OS drive.

Unless SSDs changed the last few months, I'd wait on them.  Their performance is of the future, but I wonder if it's worth the extra maintenance.  Firmware upgrades requiring another bootable OS to install, plus need to back up the data each time.  Performance drops as it gets filled....but just deleting doesn't work so well.  And many reports of people not getting the full potential out of them, unless with constant tweaking and maintenance...and some just can't seem to get it to work optimally.  They are the best if want the cutting edge.

But with a Raptor you just connect and forget.  And as an OS drive, might have to do a defrag once in a blue moon.

Okay .... I am going to agree, and switching sides to RAPTORS now. Sorry everyone.  :'( He does have a point. I want a clean HDD to work just for OS and installed applications.

[fohfoh]

Been using 750gig Caviar Blacks since I put together my last system.  No problems whatsoever and the speed is worth it.  But if I did more research, probably would have spent more for the 1TB.  Reason is that they use denser platters, which gives a slight performance increase  .. 1ms?  Well, they were sold out anyways.

But if already have a system full of green drives, I still think the Raptor is a viable option for a substantial speed increase.  If using it just for the OS and some apps, you really don't need it that big.  Because if happen to get a much larger one, probably will end up filling it with junk, defeating the purpose of having a clean efficient OS drive.

Unless SSDs changed the last few months, I'd wait on them.  Their performance is of the future, but I wonder if it's worth the extra maintenance.  Firmware upgrades requiring another bootable OS to install, plus need to back up the data each time.  Performance drops as it gets filled....but just deleting doesn't work so well.  And many reports of people not getting the full potential out of them, unless with constant tweaking and maintenance...and some just can't seem to get it to work optimally.  They are the best if want the cutting edge.

But with a Raptor you just connect and forget.  And as an OS drive, might have to do a defrag once in a blue moon.

You are very eloquent my friend. I agree with everything you said.