Will a single Raptor be better than striped SATAIIs? Will striped Raptors be a huge boost, enough to warrant the expense? Should I wait for a reasonably priced PMR drive of non monsterous storage size (doubt they'll even make em "small") and stripe with 2 of these? I don't care about data integrity, only interested in speed.

Doing games, video editing, cad stuff on this machine. Price is an object, but if the extra expense really gains a big boost, then I'm for it, within reason. That is, if I can get a 50% boost for double the cost, it's probably worth it to me.

6/15/2006 2:17:15 PM

price range? how much space ideally would you want

6/15/2006 2:18:45 PM

I think 75gb should be sufficient for the OS disk.

6/15/2006 2:20:45 PM

ideally i'd put a smaller raptor ~36gb (raid them if money isn't an issue) as your OS drive and keep all of the data being manipulated off of that drive

then raid 2 large drives for the data manipulation - if you do any sort of encoding or similar activity then i'd also have an extra drive to output the data on so the same drive(s) aren't reading/writing "simultaneously" or output it to the OS drive

6/15/2006 2:25:08 PM

Quote :

"if you do any sort of encoding or similar activity then i'd also have an extra drive to output the data on so the same drive(s) aren't reading/writing "simultaneously" or output it to the OS drive"

so tell me this: i have a 74GB Raptor for my primary drive (with OS programs etc on it). I use DVD Shrink + Nero to encode and backup my DVDs. I have the temporary file store location for the DVD Shrink output files set to go to a 250GB SATA data drive. Is this what you mean?

6/15/2006 2:32:15 PM

right - you don't want to have the files you are inputting for an encode and the files you are outputting to be on the same drive ideally - the time it takes to complete will go up by more than 2x usually

6/15/2006 2:34:38 PM

raid shows little improvement on desktops.

Quote :

"The Raptor-X's performance is even good enough to beat a RAID 0 array consisting of two modern 7,200 RPM drives"

from THG

Just get the 74GB raptor if you're that concerned about it.

[Edited on June 15, 2006 at 2:38 PM. Reason : added refererence]

6/15/2006 2:34:50 PM

Ok, so I just read about this

http://www.pcworld.com/reviews/article/0,aid,125556,00.asp#

The PMR based drive outperforming or almost equally the Raptor. They don't give a good explanation and I guess the reader is left to assume that the difference is PMR. But those are just large file writes, etc. For day to day OS tasks and the things I mentioned, does this drive still compare? And like I mentioned, it seems like 10k drives + PMR will really scream, but I can't find anything googling indicating if this will happen or not.

6/15/2006 2:38:25 PM

The only place you will see any real world difference is going to be in the Video Encoding. If you don't do much of it, or it's a hobby type thing, then stick with one Raptor drive for boot, and a big ass storage drive.

6/15/2006 2:44:22 PM

Quote :

"right - you don't want to have the files you are inputting for an encode and the files you are outputting to be on the same drive ideally - the time it takes to complete will go up by more than 2x usually"

but the files im "inputting" are on the actual DVD. so im my case it doesn't matter where i output the DVD shrink temporary files right?

6/15/2006 2:51:42 PM

it sounds to me like the application is ripping the files from the dvd to your harddrive - encoding them then outputting them back onto your hdd - then you are burning the files from your hdd

but that's based off of some assumptions from what i read of what you are doing

6/15/2006 3:00:14 PM

So from a dvd ripping standpoint. Is it faster to just do a straight rip to a hard drive. Then do an encoding...or is dvd shrink basically doing this behind the scenes for you when you do a rip/encode in a single step. Does using the optional analysis step for improved quality make a difference?

6/15/2006 4:03:05 PM

Quote :

"it sounds to me like the application is ripping the files from the dvd to your harddrive - encoding them then outputting them back onto your hdd - then you are burning the files from your hdd"

thats right. so i should use different hard drives? ie have the dvd files ripped to one drive, then have them output to a different drive?

6/15/2006 4:09:23 PM

always

6/15/2006 4:13:20 PM

if you got $350 go with SCSI if you want speed. you can do a heck of a lot (non-SCSI) for $200

[Edited on June 15, 2006 at 11:06 PM. Reason : .]

6/15/2006 11:05:32 PM

remember a dvd takes a long while to encode, even on a modern day computer. At speeds nearign 40-50 or higher mb a second a hard drive can write lets say on average 30mb a second. therefore in one minute the hard drive can write or read (speeds are about the same) 1.8 gb of data. Most dvds are on average arent going to be bigger than 8 gb in size, the data your writing back as the image is around 4.5gb (theoryretical time to move all the data above 12.5gb at 30mb a second is 7minutes). So unless your reencodign your dvds in 8 minutes or less I doubt the hard drive is a SIGNIFICANT bottleneck. Im not saying that you wont see a few seconds, but i doubt it will be significally significnt, unless your trying to see the last few seconds of that new porn dvd and your slow encoding is slowing up you bursting your load.

The best way to improve your speed for dvd ripping would be to get a dvd firmware with RIPLOCK removed. This makes the driver noiser, but allows for ripping at the drives maxiumum speed...Most are limited to 4 or 8x if i remember correctly. Even at this speed unless you are ripping then encoding it may not make MUCH of a difference.



[Edited on June 18, 2006 at 10:11 AM. Reason : dd]

6/18/2006 10:01:03 AM

True story, Raptor's are awesome. Best single component upgrade I've ever done. Felt like a bigger upgrade than cpu, motherboard, memory.

6/18/2006 10:57:11 AM

Quote :

"The best way to improve your speed for dvd ripping would be to get a dvd firmware with RIPLOCK removed. This makes the driver noiser, but allows for ripping at the drives maxiumum speed...Most are limited to 4 or 8x if i remember correctly. Even at this speed unless you are ripping then encoding it may not make MUCH of a difference."

I did this and it seemed to be quite a bit faster sometimes, other times, not so much. And probably not surprisingly, my drive started acting real flakey after that, refusing to start burning disks. Switching back to the stock firmware didn't fix it. Works fine for CDs, but DVDs it usually takes me 5-10 attempts now to get it to burn - data or iso/video. meh

6/23/2006 1:08:15 PM

Quote :

"True story, Raptor's are awesome. Best single component upgrade I've ever done. Felt like a bigger upgrade than cpu, motherboard, memory."

i second this

6/24/2006 2:36:05 AM