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Well, seeing as how I got a board finally that has onboard SATA RAID I may be dishing out the dough for a pair of the 36GB Raptors... Will I see a significant change in gaming and day to day stuff? At least one to justify the cost? Or would I be best off just getting a pair of regular SATA drives and raiding them? Anybody have a comparison of raid raptors vs. raid normals? If anybody has a crispy deal on a pair of raptors I might bite anyways.. lol.. Appreciate the info..

eGo

I have a friend that has a Raptor. Just a single drive but the difference is noticeable but not like significant if that makes any sense. He went from a 7200 RPM UATA133 8MB cache drive to a 36GB Raptor and when I have been doing various fixes on it and testing, load times were faster. RAIDing them may make it have a bigger increase but I can't say.

seek time is blazing fast, youll have to play around with your cluster size to optimnize for what you want to do

raid with the raptors are great.

Greg

Ive got a raptor 36gb When you see how fast windows installs you will know.

Ok, I'm gathering from all the hype I may as well go ahead and get a pair of them.. heh.. Now to see if this mobo will support the full 150MBps or if it's limited by the PCI bus like some others are. Albatron KX18D PRO II

i use a single 74gb raptor as my system and apps drive...much faster boot times and apps load quicker. not sure how much faster RAID would make it for you. i would recommend trying a single raptor and see if you're happy with that before unloading all the $$$ into a fancy RAID setup that may not be justified for you.

.02

I too am using a 74 gb SATA HDD http://www.newegg.com/app/ViewProductDe ... 160&depa=1

I debate getting yet another one (same), doing the RAID with two but I'm still OK with one and everything I've got is so far taking up 37 gbs.

I can't think that two with less space could be faster than one larger, equal HDD so yes, try one first and see. It's fast, WinXP Pro SP2 (fresh install) loaded in what seemed like 5-10 minutes, much faster than usual.

It's also very quiet and cool running compared to my older SCSI HDDs which I'm presently not using.

umh... I don't what difference it makes if windows gets installed 5-10 mins faster with certain type of hd.

you only do installation once. (?)


benefit of SATA/RAID might come in really hard video,audio use and on server use.


for gaming purposes I wouldn't spend money on hd technology. graphics gard and processor
speed are more critical aspects for it.

and of course having decent display.

....well, perhaps the AMD 64 3500+ had something to do with its speed too

Jukkis-

the raptor drives make a great upgrade for overall "feel" of speed when used as a boot and app drive. the seek times are awesome, making files/apps open much faster. of course, the fast transfer speeds are nice (making Windows installations and boot times faster)...but the overall performance gain from the lower seeks is worth it.

for storage, yes, stick with standard 7200rpm drives on sale.

.02

The ONLY way one would know the real difference between HDD types is to try each on the same PC, something that most probably never do.

Years ago in my old system, I upgraded from a normal older 5400 rpm Maxtor EIDE HDD to what was then the fastest SCSI HDD on the market (not cheap either btw). The difference in "felt speed" was very noticable and it did well in actual HDD speed tests too.

One could probably find HDD speed tests online on this very subject via google using the same PC if still in doubt and wanting more proof.

Using one drive seems to be the way to go if you dont use any apps that demand a lot of data quickly. I am using two 7200 rpm sata drives in a raid 0 config and enjoy the fact that I can boot up and get online in under 30 seconds. Loading times on games like painkiller and doom 3 were cut in half too. I also would have liked to get some raptors but couldnt afford a pair of them so I opted for the slower drives. Sandra 2005 gives me a data transfer rate of 87 mbps. If you use apps like photoshop that have to move a lot of data around quickly then an array is the way to go. You said your mobo supported raid, is that raid 0 or 1, or both? Your right about the bus speed, your data transfer rate is limited to the bus speed. Two 7200 rpm drives in a raid array will be far faster than one raptor. Two raptors in a 0 array???? Cluster and stripe will make a huge difference also. I found that 16 and 4 work the best for me.