hey... im building a pc, budget = $2300 probly something around that. should i spend the money and buy a raptor drive, if so which one. im not sure if they are worth lots of people have them their is a lack of praise for them =( it will be a gaming/performance pc so should i invest in them.?

The hard drive is one of the slowest equipment in the modern computer, so the faster ´hard drive you get the better.

Raptor is the fastest, but it's expensive, it's somewhat louder than not so fast competitors, and it has relative small storage capasity...

With same money you can buy: faster cpu, gpu, more memory etc... But if you want to have fastest that you can get, or if you use aplications that use a lot hard drive, go for it. You have a big budget, so the price should not be a problem.
You don't get higher framerates, but somewhat better loading, startin, saving etc. times...

Windows might load a second or two faster and you might shave a fraction of a second off your save times but with the heat, and noise generated and the expense per gig you would be much better off going with a couple of big 7200rpm drives.

When the Raptor was released it was significantly faster than any other drive which made it a name for itself but since then 7200rpm drives have been catching up. Your not going to see a large enough performance increase to justify the cost.

a raptor can be likened to top performing cpu/gpu/memory/etc... the performance increase they bring isnt always worth the price premium they come with, compared other more mainstream parts

if cost becomes an issue (as it does seem), you may be better off going with a current 7200... otherwise, the 36, 74, and 150GB ADFD revision raptors all offer the same performance between one another (just differing in total capacities and cost primarily)

Raptors are only worth it if you get 2 for raid and then
OH
MY
F#%&$*%
GOODNESS

They are *FAST*

Else just get 2 normal hdds and raid them.

I find it very strange to see how many yes's there are and no people stating why. All the people that have posted say it's not worth it. I agree. I'll use the space way more than the speed. Here in SA I can get the 750GB drives for cheaper than the 150GB Raptors. That's 5 times the size for less money!!!

i had chosen yes actually, that they are worth it, IMO anyhow (if the cost or capacity isnt limiting you too much)... seeing as how you cant get any faster without going into scsi territory, even when comparing raid of lesser hdds, and ssds arent practical yet either

Yeah, there is always the IF factor. I just think in general I really wouldn't care to buy one if I can get 5 times the capacity for the same price or even less. You can get 2 320GB drives and put them in raid and it'll still work out cheaper and with doubled the size...

If all your other components are high end already why not get a high end HDD?

Dude you don't understand speed, space is for pirates.

2 raptors running in raid, your load times will be cut in less than half you will never have to sit through a load screen again. TRUST ME.

Raptors are worth it if you get 2 of them they are faster than anything else you get and if you actually ever see them working you will know why, you cannot explain how much better they are. IF you can afford 2 then GET THEM. Otherwise 1 is not worth the mula but 2 together are worth it. No matter what anyone says, a 7200 rpm will not come anywhere near a raptor. some aspects of the drive may be newer and better but a raptor is MUCH faster.

If you can afford to get 2 which it seem you can dont evenhesitate, but if you can only get one then forget about it.

Oh and to the darthmaul guy if you buy from berklands then what do you expect, get direct from rectron or bethesda, e-comp even but their service sucks and they are generally idiots.

yeah, capacity has never been a raptors strong point... as far as raid for performance reasons, it is overhyped to be honest (particularly for the average, even enthusiast user)... that article THG did on raid being faster only suited synthetic benchmarks, but no practical uses at all (such as gaming, maybe they didnt want to upset anyone?)... having had 4 36GB raptors in raid 0, and then investing in a single 74GB a few years later, there was only a speed improvement, when it came to anything i did (i dont transfer large files constantly, or deal with constant nonstop disk thrashing)

so, raid aside.... if affordable capacity is the main reason for purchasing, raptors dont have much place, but for performance reasons, they definetly do

Are you sure it is not just your raid controller? cause from what i have seen they are WAAAAAAAAY better. I will bet money on your motherboard sucking away the advantage if you say that raid did not help. Also the old raptors are not as good as the new ones. just cause the platter spins fast does not mean the hard drive is as good. Cost per meg does not matter when you have a delete button.

RIGHT. I'd rather spend my monies on a VERY nice 30" (bigger maybe, depending on how much of the budget is left) screen and an 8800GTX, some after market cooling, a quad to OC like mad, big sound and a decent gaming keyboard, mouse and headset. Those kinds of things, not a way overpriced harddrive just to gain a couple of seconds of load time...

And who the hell are you calling me a pirate just because I have alot of space? Have you ever worked with REALLY big audio/video files? Yes I know the raptors would be nice for those as well but they are not big enough.

I have used a raptor for 2 years as a boot drive. It works fast and is loud which is cool. With 11 case fans heat is not a problem. Raid is not really needed for a personal computer in my opinion. You can always use a 7200 rpm as a second drive.

the controllers were on numerous older boards with raid (dont remember specifics), a couple nforce2s, an nforce4, promise fasttrak s150 tx4 (only a 33mhz pci card, so 2 raptors already saturated it), recent ecs intel chipset (dont know the controller), different stripe and cluster sizes... but they all were pretty similar, both on and off of raid... at least where it mattered (windows boot times aside, how often do you really need to restart though), i will say windows is slightly more responsive though in raid 0, so thats a plus

as far as the older raptors sucking... no command cueing, 8mb cache, 36GB platter, GD revision, hotter noisier more power hungry running in raid... newer one ncq, 16mb cache, 74GB platter, ADFD revision, quieter, and cooler, less power hungry (because it wasnt running in raid)... they were 3-4 years older, but even with 4 of them being in raid, it should make some difference above the single faster raptor... too many other articles pointing to the contrary though for average uses (the average user)

i used to be a heavy advocate of raid 0 (for everything disk related even "you want faster, just go raid, because the benchmarks say so" )... up until i started paying attention to it, dissecting it beyond just benchmarks... to find out how much i was imagining things, and wasnt... raid can help (no doubt there), but for certain things it just really doesnt... and for those things, you are simply better off going without it... the average user for example, wont be able to see much difference at all, even for gaming (its very game specific at that point too though)... games arent designed for raid, some games see no benefit, or very little, current FPS show very little benefit for example (i know enough people want to claim the contrary to that though)... strategy games however may show a large benefit to loading (completely different game design)

I have heard arguments from both sides of the house. I am currently running a Raptor 150 and a 750GB secondary HD for storage. The performance that I experienced from the raptor was a drastic change for me but of course mileage will very. I guess the question is what kind of computer user are you? Do you just turn on your computer, play a game then turn it off, or are you the user that surfs the internet a lot (raptors do make a difference with accessing and manipulating lots of small files such as cache) or do you edit photos that aren't over a gig each? I could go on about these uses but you get the point; they all increase the computer experience beyond just gaming and they make a well rounded computer, so just add one and get a large drive for storage. If in the future you want more performance then get another raptor and raid. Oh and by the way, I think the cost of the raptor is more because of the progress in that area, just look at the 36GB raptor, I bought one when the radeon 9800 was the hot thing, now the radeon is worthless in new games but the raptor is still good, just a little small. As for the noise, with a good case and one drive I can sleep 2 feet away with no problems.

I have one Raptor and am thinking of getting a second. I think its pretty fast on its own but here are some "problems" I am thinking about if I do that.

1.) To get best performance I would have to raid them, not a problem with my mobo but raiding brings a new set of issues.

2.) If raided striped, if one fails all your stuff is lost

3.) If you have boot problems or your OS gets corrupt like when I'm trying out OC settings the raid control starts to get in the way.

4.) If you install Vista or any other OS for testing or dual boot again the raid controller gets in the way unless it has support for it.

5.) If you have XP loaded as C: with the raptor as your boot drive and attempt to load Vista or any other OS, that OS will not install on the Raptor but on your other slower drives. This can be fixed by partioning the Raptor before doing the upgrade and installing Vista or whatever on a second partition of the Raptor but again...Who thinks of this BEFORE hand????

To many issues so I haven't decided...., I would have to have extra cash and be really bored to tackle all these problems.

You took the words out of my mouth. The slight speed difference is not worth the price premium nowadays.

Mmm...interesting topic this. I'm also looking to upgrade my HHD to something with good performance and have been considering a raptor for a while.

Can I just ask though, what would be the real world difference in running a raptor as opposed to a cheaper drive in say boot up, and load up games. Are we talking 1 or 2 seconds? If I was looking to get the fastest drive I could for around £100 would the 75Gb raptor be far superior to anything else? Or is there something that would be slightly (1 or 2 seconds) slower but at a better price/performance? I'm looking to use the speed for games, computer boot up and general usage and file copying.