300 GB VelociRaptor for Gaming PC. Which one should I buy?

I've recently built myself a gaming pc and it runs great, but I'm thinking about upgrading the HD. I see that Western Digital has 3 different models of the 300GB VelociRaptor (WD3000BLFS ,WD3000HLFS, and the WD3000GLFS). One of them has a higher "average latency" than the other two, but other than that I can't seem to find the difference. Does anyone have any advice on which one to get? Is a higher latency or lower latency time better? I think I know the answer to that one, but I'm not positive. Any advice will be greatly appreciated.

I would say don't get a Velociraptor. They are really expensive for what it's worth. If you have $$$ to blow, I'd upgrade the GPU or CPU. I'd stick with WD 640 GB HDD (if you want more speed, put them in RAID 0).

That's just my opinion, but I don't think they are worth the price.

Thank you all for your advices. I have never done a "raid 0" or even a raid at all before. Where can I get some easy to understand instructions on what a raid is and how to do it? I really feel like an idiot because I'm not sure what a SSD (is that like a solid state drive?) is either. What is SSD? How much does it cost?
The VelociRaptor I was looking at was about $200, so not as expensive as some might think. Does that change anything?

Raid on Vista goes like this:

Go in Bios, set drives to raid.

Start computer Press CTRL I "with intel chipset"

Make raid volume, new volume, save exit.

Install windows.

enjoy.


With XP you need the raid drivers on a floppy or a thumb drive.

2 WD $640s cost me $170 with overnight shipping. The speed is amazing!!!

Okay, I am going to throw a monkey wrench into everyones RAID 0 theories.

The Raptors are expensive. But, they have very, very fast seek times.
For most people, gamers included, you will notice a bigger difference the Raptor makes because of the fast seek times, not the higher sustained thru-put of a RAID 0 array.

RAID 0 will net you more sustained throughput, but at slower seek times. So, if you are loading/moving a large file, you will notice a big improvement with RAID 0. If you are doing things that require many smaller files to be accessed, like playing a game, you will notice a much bigger improvement with a Raptor. New game levels load faster on a RAID set, gameplay moving onward through the level will be better on a Raptor.

So, you make up your mind what you need.
I run 2 -100 gig Maxtors in RAID 0, and I am happy with it.
But my next new drives will be Raptors.
The fast seek time is what most people will benefit from, not the overall sustained thru-put of a RAIDed set.

But, in all respect, the information has to come from the drive first before it ends up in memory. I have PC's at work with Raptors, and as I said, I have a RAID 0, though it is using older drives on my home PC. I can tell the difference.
Raptors are overpriced, but they are very fast. Maybe on my next build, I'll just RAID 2 of them, ha ha.

Roadrunner, you're obviously correct if the scenario you're drawing considers files that are perfectly organized on separate parts of the disk platter. In reality, data is spread across the platters in (an essentially) random fashion as files are deleted and new files are written over the ones marked for deletion. The area of performance where a raptor can outpace any high-throughput RAID-0 array (consisting of drives with slower access times) is when a person is just using their computer NORMALLY. Loading applications, writing small files, programs that constantly write small files to the hard drive (programs like AIM that log stuff to an html file), games that load maps, loading the operating system (at startup), defragging, virus and spyware scans... In all of these situations, there isn't a continuous stream of data from the platters that can be read at high speed. The data is spread out and the head will have to move across the disk. The faster it can do this (which is measured by access times), the greater the improvement in these kinds of files accesses. Consequently, the raptor can show much greater real-world performance gains. The improvement gap widens between raptors and standard 7200 rpm hard drives as the number of I/O operations per second increases.

I can attest to the fact that a RAID-0 array doesn't increase performance quite as much as one would expect. I have two 16MB 250GB WD Caviars in RAID-0. The performance increase over just one of them I feel is not all that significant. It's noticeable when transferring files across my network sometimes. Otherwise, it's a pretty small performance increase. I'm sure higher increases can be obtained from a decent hardware-based RAID solution, especially those with their own RAM buffers, but buying one of those for at least $100 would defeat the purpose of saving money with a RAID-0 solution of two cheaper drives.

Okay, tried that and here is what I got...
Transfer Rate-
Min: 58.5
Max: 107.8
Average: 93.9

Access time: 14.4 .......that is really slow...... there is why I see such a difference.

Burst rate: 90.8

CPUusage 6%

I have a 320 gig seagate SATA II drive around here somewhere, I am going to hook it up and test it as well.

Maybe it's time for some new drives, period?

As you can see here http://faq.storagereview.com/tiki- [...] iveVsRaid0 the review was written in 2006, when drives were slower then they are now, and when we didn't have the CPU's that we have now. CPU's of today dont bottleneck like they did in 2006. Now if you have a good core 2 duo, you will notice a huge performance with raid 0.

Everyone tries to argue with ancient reviews on old hardware and I went from a WD 500G HDD with 52MB/s to 2 640 WD in raid 0 with 181MB/s on my e8400@ 4.05 and the difference is night and day, on everything I run or open.

Why dont you post your HD Tune scores heres mine.

@roadrunner197069: If your main application is benchmarking with HDTACH or HDtune, then I will concede that raid-0 does, indeed win. If, on the other hand, your main application is browsing the internet, programming, office applications, and other things like that, then you need to benchmark using those applications. That is difficult to do, since everybody does something different, and it changes from moment to moment.

Storage review did an early review of the velociraptor in april, 2008.
http://www.storagereview.com/WD3000BLFS.sr?page=0%2C7

The velociraptor is included in their performance database:
http://www.storagereview.com/Testbed4Compare.sr

It shows up very well in the SR Office drivemark2006 benchmard, which is probably the closest thing to what we do every day.

Only the MTRON SSD drive beats it.

My 3 cents: You are better off with a velociraptor OR SSD for your primary drive than RAID. If you don't mind reinstalling your system when a striped raid fails, then by all means go with it. However a single stand alone drive is not prone to data corruption as much as a simple striped raid.

Throughput matters the most on larger files. Seek and Access Time matters most with large quantities of small files (like Windows). Throughput and seek time both need to be good if you have a small quantity of ram and your system pages a lot. I would go with Velociraptor based on warranty, and speed it provides over conventional 3.5" drives, with the disk space and cost compared to solid state.

Make your own decisions once you feel you have been properly informed.

you should get 2 150 Gig VRaptors in raid 0 that will only cost you like $350ish then put the saved money into a 1TB for storage. I am going to get 2 Intel x25-m SSDs to put a raid on. They are way too much money but I have my priorities strait so all my money goes to my PC where it belongs.

With XP you need to make a raid driver disk. "Read your mobo manual"

Both drives "should be the exact same"

OK TO END ALL THIS, this guy is looking to increase performance, so...the best way to do that is(drumroll)

http://www.tigerdirect.com/applica [...] CatId=3801

throw 2 of those in RAID0 and it will beat ANYTHING you can think of, even THREE yes thats right THREE velociraptors in Raid0 (if that's possible)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EwjNcMwVyxk video is of the I-ram which uses RAM actual computer ram like flash memory... with a Sata interface, the SSD comes in a close second, while the raptor is left in the dust....




Conclusion-if your looking for performance, not cost, so with the SSD and use ur current HD as storage/backup, the 64 gigs should be more then enough for your OS/games, and depending on your current HD 250+ will hold all your movies/music/programs(other then games), a single SSD will always beat a conventional "spin up" hard drive.