Review: Allan "Zardon" Campbell

 

So what have we learned? Well for one we now know this drive is exceptionally fast and capable of sustaining high throughput, but as we all know running all the benchmarks you can get on a hard drive wont always give the full picture, therefore to present a "real world view", I ran the drives through some compressing of archives, and copying of files - mp3s, PSD documents and an all round workover in windows. My views are that this drive is ideal for an OS drive, the access times really make a difference in boot up, (up to 33% faster booting for my system), and when decompressing, copying or moving files, this drive is just lightining fast. Most tasks are around 30% faster than the Western Digital 80 JB SE drive I tested and trust me this is noticeable.

Although SCSI is still the fastest interface, with drives like this at hand the SATA interface no longer has to prove its case, installation is simple, and performance is higher than any IDE drive ive used. Certainly the prices are alot higher with this drive currently costing around the same price as a 160 gig parallel ATA drive (around £90) so you have to balance the loss in storage with the speed you are gaining. If you already have alot of storage and want to inject some speed into your rig, then move your current drive into a file storage device and put one of these babies into your system as the OS drive. What about a game drive? Speed differences will be noticeable, especially on loading times which can make you want to pull your hair out.

Now for the all important noise levels, I dont know about you but as im getting older, im finding noise more and more intolerable, and ive spent quite a bit of money in making my system the quietest possible, from vantec stealth case fans to insulation on the case, so im pretty picky about what components I use. Unfortunately, this drive ISNT quiet, but its not unbearable either, the worst noise levels I heard were running the HDtach tests - so much so the first time I ran it I thought there was a problem. But for the speed you boot into your OS, I can live with the audible whirring, its quieter than the loudest 7,200rpm OEM maxtor, so most people wont have an issue with it. Temperatures also seem fine, its not running hot in my case even after a heavy workout, just lukewarm to the touch, reassuring.

At a later date, ill be getting another of these drives and putting them into a striped raid to test the increased speeds and obvious benefits, when I do, this article will be updated, but for now I hope this has been a taster of how adding a raptor can add bite to your rig.

It certainly isnt in theory the best value for money, but what price do you put on having the fastest transfers and access times? My wallet has limits just like yours, but after using this drive, ill not be putting my OS on anything else - I just dont have the time.

 

Addition to Review - Two drives in Raid (9/2/2004)

Well as promised in the original review - I have appended this article and added a second identical Raptor drive into raid 0 (striped). The results below are quite spectacular as you will see.

 

Click image for full sized view

 

As you can see from the drive rating above, all figures have increased with the index figure increasing from 38268 to 66283. A massive increase.

 

Again the results are very impressive with figures in single drive Western Digital Raptor - 80.8mb max, 37.1 min and average 50.6 mb/s increasing to Raid 0 figures of 98.7 Max, 54.0 Min and average 80.5mb. We are now seeing peak burst rates of well over 100 MB/s.

The figures speak for themselves, and certainly while the new Raptor 74gig drive is slightly faster, two of the 36 gig drives in raid will ourperform its big brother. But more importantly is this difference noticeable? the simple answer is "yes", boot times are incredible with my system booting in half the time compared to a single IDE 7,200 drive and most programs load 2-3 times as fast.

For those of you in the UK overclockers.co.uk at time of going to press are offering the 36.7 gig drives for £72.50 each with the 74gb version coming in at £154. Worth every penny if lightining fast load and access times are a must.

 

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