7200.11, 7K1000, Caviar GP....dang which one is the best performer?

**kris23** · Nov 3, 2007, 03:59 AM

yea, with all the different models of hard drives, which one do i get? ive been looking at reviews and ive seen that the 7200.11 is a pretty poor performer in general apps..... though it has the best read/write scores of any drive today...

then theres the Caviar GP that seems to be a good cheap TB drive with middle pack performance and is better than the 7200.11 in daily tasks

the Hitachi 7K1000 series has been shown as the best performer in games and is the most widely distributed drive with traits from the above.... they have boot times slower than the GP and generate more heat than the rest of them.

what drive should i choose for best performance?

i dont think i know everything about these drives, especially the 7200.11 drives. while there are reviews on ES.2 drives, i found out that they use different firmware that is geared for server and workstation applications where multiple processes are ran at once. and the 7200.11 is designed for home and gaming supposedly so im looking for some confirming information.

ChaosMinionX · Nov 3, 2007, 05:45 PM

Raptors are faster for games

**kris23** · Nov 3, 2007, 11:53 PM

that i know lol but im not looking for midget sized capacity or expensive raptor raid. besides, the Caviar RE2 750GB and 7K1000 drives seem to best the raptors at games as well.

H3X4D3C1M4L · Nov 4, 2007, 02:30 AM

The Raptors may lower level load time but they don't make games run any faster from a framerate standpoint, not to any appreciable level anyway.

The GP drives would be good for a machine that's on a lot and if you're looking to save on power (though hard drives seem to be the smallest power hogs these days). They don't perform 100% as well as the Hitachi or 7200.11, but they're quieter and use less power and are cheaper. That's the tradeoff. In addition I've seen no one complain about the GP drives except idiots who think they're supposed to outperform other drives.

If you want something a tad faster and don't mind extra power use and heat production and possibly noise, you can hardly go wrong with a 7200.11 Seagate. 5 year warranty is hard to beat and they're solid performers.

I personally don't like Hitachi's drives. They've had a bad track record and their drive uses 5 platters (unlike the 4 Seagate uses IIRC), meaning more heat, more power, more chance of failure etc.

My personal first choice would be a GP drive because they're insane values and still perform 85 - 95% as well as the other drives. Second choice would be a Seagate 7200.11

**kris23** · Nov 4, 2007, 03:14 AM

yea, i personally like seagates more than any other drive really, none i have used failed me yet. my sister uses a 7200.7 drive, i used a 7200.7 drive, now im using a 7200.10 drive and id like to get a 7200.11 as well.

i know latency and spin-up times were a problem with the GP drives and that may cause some skipping with games that auto-load and auto-save....

so i guess ill get the 7200.11 drives!

now next question, 2x500GB or 1 1TB drives? is RAID on the x38 boards good? the 2x500GB drives are equal in price to the 1TB at a different place anyway.

Judas · Nov 4, 2007, 05:35 PM

i REALLY like the Seagate 7200.11's.... in raid 0.... not even a raptor seems to match it in a similare configuartion... plus the space is an obvious bonus....

i'm starting to work myself up to around the 250gb of space.. and of course that's without any games or extra programs installed...

**kris23** · Nov 4, 2007, 08:38 PM

you're using the 7200.11s Judas?

Judas · Nov 6, 2007, 12:21 AM

i've got a few yes...

PangingJr · Nov 6, 2007, 12:37 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Judas

i've got a few yes...

have you tried more than 2 drives in RAID0 yet?

Judas · Nov 6, 2007, 05:23 PM

Yes, tried 4 the other day... but i didn't have them long enough to do any thorough benching on..

AND they were on an intel ICHR8 chipset.... quite a nice boost over the 7 series

Judas · Nov 6, 2007, 05:26 PM

oh btw,

as soon as my back ordered Gigabyte GA-x38-DQ6 arrives.... i should "possibly" have 6 of them 320gb version in raid 0.... but we'll see... i'm kinda swamped atm

PangingJr · Nov 6, 2007, 05:27 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Judas

Yes, tried 5 the other day... but i didn't have them long enough to do any thorough benching on..

AND they were on an intel ICHR8 chipset.... quite a nice boost over the 7 series

you mean ICH9R on your Gigabyte X38 board, correct?

Judas · Nov 6, 2007, 05:50 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by PangingJr

you mean ICH9R on your Gigabyte X38 board, correct?

bah.. sorry i ment ICHR8 with 4 drives... sorry using a different keyboard and didn't notice i had Put "5" in there.

jp306 · Nov 6, 2007, 06:02 PM

I use 2 Hitachi 7K500(320GB) drives in Raid 0 and am very happy with them. I got them because of gaming performance(I'm a gamer

) They do run a little warmer than my WD Caviar 250GB drive does, but I have a 120mm fan blowing on them, keeping them nice and cool.

PangingJr · Nov 6, 2007, 06:05 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Judas

bah.. sorry i ment ICHR8 with 4 drives... sorry using a different keyboard and didn't notice i had Put "5" in there.

not ICHR8,

you mean ICH8R, Judas.

Judas · Nov 6, 2007, 06:32 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by PangingJr

not ICHR8,

you mean ICH8R, Judas.

er... yeah... sorry..

lol

haven't had a good sleep... kinda tired.. kinda super loaded atm (mentally with work)

ChaosMinionX · Nov 7, 2007, 08:36 AM

Kris what you really need to invest in is a 36GB SSD from Supertalent for your OS; and run 4x Raptors in Raid0 on an Areca 1210 PCIE RAID controller for games

And on a serious note beyond my love/use of Raptors, I would highly suggest the WD CaviarSE's I have 4 500GB drives in my rig and their performance beyond seek time is very close to the raptors I have, I wouldnt be able to tell you a thing about their acoustics though, I cant even hear my raptors over the fans.

Dyre Straits · Nov 7, 2007, 10:36 AM

The October issue of PC Format has an extensive article benchmarking several HDDs. Among them are several variations of Caviar, Raptors, Deskstars, Barracudas, and a Samsung Spinpoint.

Surprisingly, the Samsung THD501LJ took the Gold Award! This is a 500 GB HDD and is also the cheapest of the lot.

I just picked up a 320 GB Hitachi on Sunday and put my Vista installation onto it. That gained me .3 points on my Vista Performance score.

I wish I could somehow duplicate the benchmarks these guys ran on all of the HDDs. There are twelve drives all total: 3 DeskStars; 2 Barracudas; 4 Caviars; 2 Raptors; and 1 Spinpoint. Even the tester was surprised at the outcome.

ChaosMinionX · Nov 7, 2007, 08:35 PM

Well in terms of overall performance, with seek times and read rates out of the picture. The Samsungs are very nice drives with balanced specs. 7200rpm drives will fair better in read/write/copy balance where the 10k and beyond drives do much better on access times and read rates.

PangingJr · Nov 8, 2007, 07:58 AM

i buy disk drives that i think the drives won't cause any problem when i use them, and if thay do i will be able to get a replacement drives more easier and quicker,
so i can only based my buying decision on for the disk drives are my past experience and past evidence. so for me, in these days, it has to be Seagate's.
yours can be different though.

Judas · Nov 8, 2007, 05:17 PM

from the reviews i've seen..

the Seagate 7200.11 has been suspected of being a enterprise class hardrive built into a desktop model... the power usage and performance is top notch..... and the transactions are the through the roof in comparison to any other drive out there... It's only a few specific actions that show pretty poor performance in some cases.... but overall.. read and write and burst speeds are incredible. And the noise is saposed to be the best as well. (not to mention heat)

**kris23** · Nov 8, 2007, 11:21 PM

so between the 7200.11s and ES.2s, which ones would you recommend? im planning on building a system with stability and am trying to get the coolest running stuff i can without losing performance..... is there any difference with the ES.2s that you know?

Specs:

Intel Xeon X3220 G0 stepping
ASUS P5K3 Deluxe WIFI-AP@n
2GB Corsair 1800Mhz DDR3 7-7-7-20 with Intel XMP
G92 Nvidia 8800GT/GTS
and 2x500GB 7200.11 or ES.2

Judas · Nov 13, 2007, 05:56 AM

Kris23

personally,

Seagate while for me, quite a few years ago had a horrible history.....

but in the last 4 years... i've been gaining incredible trust in them....

NOW

in the last 2 years, i'm basically soleing using seagate hardrives for all the "stability" and MIRROR RAID arrays i've been building, however the added bonus is that they are running very fast... overall performance is great..... 5 YEAR warranty is nothing to Sneer at.

Personally i'm sticking with seagate.

**kris23** · Nov 15, 2007, 02:03 AM

dual 7200.11 drives ordered

H3X4D3C1M4L · Nov 21, 2007, 04:06 AM

For the record as it was mentioned above, the GP shouldn't cause skipping issues in games that write to the disk constantly or read from it.... the game wouldn't even be aware of the drive's head movement being any different from any other drive

Nov 3, 2007, 03:59 AM	#1
kris23 Going Insane..... Join Date: Dec 2006 Location: Los Angeles Posts: 6,018 Rep Power: 131 System Specs	7200.11, 7K1000, Caviar GP....dang which one is the best performer? yea, with all the different models of hard drives, which one do i get? ive been looking at reviews and ive seen that the 7200.11 is a pretty poor performer in general apps..... though it has the best read/write scores of any drive today... then theres the Caviar GP that seems to be a good cheap TB drive with middle pack performance and is better than the 7200.11 in daily tasks the Hitachi 7K1000 series has been shown as the best performer in games and is the most widely distributed drive with traits from the above.... they have boot times slower than the GP and generate more heat than the rest of them. what drive should i choose for best performance? i dont think i know everything about these drives, especially the 7200.11 drives. while there are reviews on ES.2 drives, i found out that they use different firmware that is geared for server and workstation applications where multiple processes are ran at once. and the 7200.11 is designed for home and gaming supposedly so im looking for some confirming information. __________________ Hardwareheaven Super-Moderator Building a new computer system and not sure where to start? Click Here! last updated (5/18/11) Rosewill FUTURE case replaces CM 690 II with its greater interior length. Building a PC: Step by Step Guide Written by Kristopher Pedemonte and Nathan Marks-Forder Edited by Allan Campbell Questions or Comments? feel free to post them in the forums!

Nov 3, 2007, 05:45 PM	#2
ChaosMinionX USB 3 dot oh Join Date: Nov 2006 Location: Boston, MA Posts: 1,911 Rep Power: 47 System Specs	Raptors are faster for games __________________ ::Heatware:: How you can help DriverHeaven by using Digg!

Nov 3, 2007, 11:53 PM	Thread Starter #3
kris23 Going Insane..... Join Date: Dec 2006 Location: Los Angeles Posts: 6,018 Rep Power: 131 System Specs	that i know lol but im not looking for midget sized capacity or expensive raptor raid. besides, the Caviar RE2 750GB and 7K1000 drives seem to best the raptors at games as well. __________________ Hardwareheaven Super-Moderator Building a new computer system and not sure where to start? Click Here! last updated (5/18/11) Rosewill FUTURE case replaces CM 690 II with its greater interior length. Building a PC: Step by Step Guide Written by Kristopher Pedemonte and Nathan Marks-Forder Edited by Allan Campbell Questions or Comments? feel free to post them in the forums!

Nov 4, 2007, 03:14 AM	Thread Starter #5
kris23 Going Insane..... Join Date: Dec 2006 Location: Los Angeles Posts: 6,018 Rep Power: 131 System Specs	yea, i personally like seagates more than any other drive really, none i have used failed me yet. my sister uses a 7200.7 drive, i used a 7200.7 drive, now im using a 7200.10 drive and id like to get a 7200.11 as well. i know latency and spin-up times were a problem with the GP drives and that may cause some skipping with games that auto-load and auto-save.... so i guess ill get the 7200.11 drives! now next question, 2x500GB or 1 1TB drives? is RAID on the x38 boards good? the 2x500GB drives are equal in price to the 1TB at a different place anyway. __________________ Hardwareheaven Super-Moderator Building a new computer system and not sure where to start? Click Here! last updated (5/18/11) Rosewill FUTURE case replaces CM 690 II with its greater interior length. Building a PC: Step by Step Guide Written by Kristopher Pedemonte and Nathan Marks-Forder Edited by Allan Campbell Questions or Comments? feel free to post them in the forums!

Nov 4, 2007, 08:38 PM	Thread Starter #7
kris23 Going Insane..... Join Date: Dec 2006 Location: Los Angeles Posts: 6,018 Rep Power: 131 System Specs	you're using the 7200.11s Judas? __________________ Hardwareheaven Super-Moderator Building a new computer system and not sure where to start? Click Here! last updated (5/18/11) Rosewill FUTURE case replaces CM 690 II with its greater interior length. Building a PC: Step by Step Guide Written by Kristopher Pedemonte and Nathan Marks-Forder Edited by Allan Campbell Questions or Comments? feel free to post them in the forums!

Nov 4, 2007, 02:30 AM	#4
H3X4D3C1M4L DriverHeaven Extreme Member Join Date: May 2005 Posts: 6,794 Rep Power: 0	The Raptors may lower level load time but they don't make games run any faster from a framerate standpoint, not to any appreciable level anyway. The GP drives would be good for a machine that's on a lot and if you're looking to save on power (though hard drives seem to be the smallest power hogs these days). They don't perform 100% as well as the Hitachi or 7200.11, but they're quieter and use less power and are cheaper. That's the tradeoff. In addition I've seen no one complain about the GP drives except idiots who think they're supposed to outperform other drives. If you want something a tad faster and don't mind extra power use and heat production and possibly noise, you can hardly go wrong with a 7200.11 Seagate. 5 year warranty is hard to beat and they're solid performers. I personally don't like Hitachi's drives. They've had a bad track record and their drive uses 5 platters (unlike the 4 Seagate uses IIRC), meaning more heat, more power, more chance of failure etc. My personal first choice would be a GP drive because they're insane values and still perform 85 - 95% as well as the other drives. Second choice would be a Seagate 7200.11

Nov 6, 2007, 06:02 PM	#14
jp306 DriverHeaven Addict Join Date: Dec 2002 Location: U.S.A. Posts: 309 Rep Power: 0 System Specs	I use 2 Hitachi 7K500(320GB) drives in Raid 0 and am very happy with them. I got them because of gaming performance(I'm a gamer ) They do run a little warmer than my WD Caviar 250GB drive does, but I have a 120mm fan blowing on them, keeping them nice and cool. __________________ "I told my psychiatrist that everyone hates me. He said I was being ridiculous - everyone hasn't met me yet." Rodney Dangerfield.

Nov 7, 2007, 08:36 AM	#17
ChaosMinionX USB 3 dot oh Join Date: Nov 2006 Location: Boston, MA Posts: 1,911 Rep Power: 47 System Specs	Kris what you really need to invest in is a 36GB SSD from Supertalent for your OS; and run 4x Raptors in Raid0 on an Areca 1210 PCIE RAID controller for games And on a serious note beyond my love/use of Raptors, I would highly suggest the WD CaviarSE's I have 4 500GB drives in my rig and their performance beyond seek time is very close to the raptors I have, I wouldnt be able to tell you a thing about their acoustics though, I cant even hear my raptors over the fans. __________________ ::Heatware:: How you can help DriverHeaven by using Digg!

Nov 7, 2007, 08:35 PM	#19
ChaosMinionX USB 3 dot oh Join Date: Nov 2006 Location: Boston, MA Posts: 1,911 Rep Power: 47 System Specs	Well in terms of overall performance, with seek times and read rates out of the picture. The Samsungs are very nice drives with balanced specs. 7200rpm drives will fair better in read/write/copy balance where the 10k and beyond drives do much better on access times and read rates. __________________ ::Heatware:: How you can help DriverHeaven by using Digg!

Nov 8, 2007, 07:58 AM	#20
PangingJr Member Join Date: Mar 2003 Posts: 5,989 Rep Power: 71	i buy disk drives that i think the drives won't cause any problem when i use them, and if thay do i will be able to get a replacement drives more easier and quicker, so i can only based my buying decision on for the disk drives are my past experience and past evidence. so for me, in these days, it has to be Seagate's. yours can be different though.

Nov 8, 2007, 11:21 PM	Thread Starter #22
kris23 Going Insane..... Join Date: Dec 2006 Location: Los Angeles Posts: 6,018 Rep Power: 131 System Specs	so between the 7200.11s and ES.2s, which ones would you recommend? im planning on building a system with stability and am trying to get the coolest running stuff i can without losing performance..... is there any difference with the ES.2s that you know? Specs: Intel Xeon X3220 G0 stepping ASUS P5K3 Deluxe WIFI-AP@n 2GB Corsair 1800Mhz DDR3 7-7-7-20 with Intel XMP G92 Nvidia 8800GT/GTS and 2x500GB 7200.11 or ES.2 __________________ Hardwareheaven Super-Moderator Building a new computer system and not sure where to start? Click Here! last updated (5/18/11) Rosewill FUTURE case replaces CM 690 II with its greater interior length. Building a PC: Step by Step Guide Written by Kristopher Pedemonte and Nathan Marks-Forder Edited by Allan Campbell Questions or Comments? feel free to post them in the forums!

Nov 15, 2007, 02:03 AM	Thread Starter #24
kris23 Going Insane..... Join Date: Dec 2006 Location: Los Angeles Posts: 6,018 Rep Power: 131 System Specs	dual 7200.11 drives ordered __________________ Hardwareheaven Super-Moderator Building a new computer system and not sure where to start? Click Here! last updated (5/18/11) Rosewill FUTURE case replaces CM 690 II with its greater interior length. Building a PC: Step by Step Guide Written by Kristopher Pedemonte and Nathan Marks-Forder Edited by Allan Campbell Questions or Comments? feel free to post them in the forums!

Nov 21, 2007, 04:06 AM	#25
H3X4D3C1M4L DriverHeaven Extreme Member Join Date: May 2005 Posts: 6,794 Rep Power: 0	For the record as it was mentioned above, the GP shouldn't cause skipping issues in games that write to the disk constantly or read from it.... the game wouldn't even be aware of the drive's head movement being any different from any other drive