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  • Athlonite - Saturday, March 24, 2007 - link

    both raptor drives are SATA and all the other drives are Pata i know for a fact the seagate baracuda 7200.7 comes in a sata II form coz i have two of them in raid 0 i'd pit the against your single raptor any day of the week as i said like comaring apples with peas
  • peufeu - Monday, May 9, 2005 - link

    Stop benchmarking copies of 1 MB files !
    Linux, with reiserfs4 :
    My crap laptop harddrive does about 16 MB/second raw bandwidth. It does 15 MB/second reading 20 KBytes files. Not that bad.
    I'd like to see the raptor benchmarked with reiser4. I'm pretty sure it can sustain at least 80% of its peak bandwidth with 1kbyte files...
  • jferdina - Sunday, August 22, 2004 - link

    here is a link:
    http://www.buildsilentpc.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t...
  • jferdina - Sunday, August 22, 2004 - link

    I want to WARN you all of Seagate Barracuda 7200.7

    I just bought one for 1 day and I am terribly disappointed.

    Unlike the seagate barracuda 7200.7 that was tested by AnandTech, the newer version is EXTREMELY noisy. It is the most noisiest HD that I have ever had.

    The reason is Seagate got into a lawsuit problem with Convolve. Apparently Seagate steals their technology, and at least for now they have to remove it. The technology is 'Automatic Acoustic Management' (AAM).

    But for those of you who are tricked, like me, there is some information that may give a hope, AAM is still there but they set it in "performance" mode by default on current firmware. But hardware.fr claimed they had firmware 3.16 and could change the setting.

    So MAYBE IF they can settle the lawsuit, Seagate would provide firmware upgrade to solve this problem.

    Anandtech, please change your review about Seagate since the information is already old because it is very frustrating for customers that wishes to find an accurate info, gets the completely opposite result from what informed.
  • Fietsventje - Wednesday, June 16, 2004 - link

    I didn't read all of the comments, but I would like to say that I, like some others here, would like to see what impact a RAID0-array has on these benchmarks. Could finally resolve the ever-lasting discussion (at least, for myself) about the influence of a RAID-0-setup to general performance.

    Greetz,
    Fietsventje
  • skyce - Monday, June 14, 2004 - link

    I would really like to see a comparison of one 74GB SATA Raptor 10k to two new Raptors in Raid0. I'm building a system over the next couple months and would like to have this drive in my system, but am somewhat reluctant to fork over another $200 for a second drive for Raid0, as Wesley suggested in his High End System Guide (May 26th).
  • HelzBelz - Monday, June 14, 2004 - link


    ... and also, it just so happens that I've just received the exact same hardware (see previous post), but for 2 different systems (upgrades for other people).

    i.e. 2x 80GB ATA WD 8Meg w/ Highpoint 370 PCI RAID Card, and one 74GB SATA Raptor 10k...

    Perhaps we could then compare results !?

    Regards,

    HelzBelz

  • HelzBelz - Monday, June 14, 2004 - link


    Perhaps this has already been suggested, but here it goes:

    - What about a RAID0 test of some pair of less expensive drives VS a Single Raptor ?

    i.e. For "about the same money", I've often been asked: "Which of the abobe is better / faster ?"

    For example, one could compare the performance of a "2x WD 80GB 8MB cache RAID0" setup, versus a Single 74GB Raptor 10k drive; since either way, you're paying about the same total price...

    Just a thought,

    HelzBelz

  • artifex - Sunday, June 13, 2004 - link

    I'd like to get a MTBF comparison, not just some data on warranties, too. Or better yet, it would be cool for Anandtech to actually set up a system to run the test drives continuously until they start failing.

    Why? Our local Fry's often has drives like the PATA version of a Hitachi 200GB on sale for $50 after rebates, but if they burn up or crash in half the time as a $100 drive, I'd much rather get the $100 drive. This is particularly important for applications like adding drives to PVRs, where it's not easy to remap around known bad sectors after they're found, and at least one manufacturer's low level formatting utility won't work with Nforce-based IDE, so remapping at the lower level is out also.

    I'm also hoping for thermal comparisons; in small form factor enclosures this is just as important as noise.
  • MadAd - Saturday, June 12, 2004 - link

    IMO you are missing a very important 'real world' test that has always interested me on machines through years.

    Test: Tester starts stopwatch as power button us pressed. Tester stops stopwatch at the point that the desktop appears ready for use...... Record Time Taken. Thats it!

    The funny thing is youve probably not realised how much you run this 'test' and its a valid one insofar as everyone needs to boot up at some point - just please, do us a favor, time it and chart it? :)

    Thanks
  • MikhailT - Wednesday, June 9, 2004 - link

    For a gamer, it would be a better idea to get a single 74gb raptor instead of raid0 with 2x36 raptors. I don't think there will be any difference between both situation. Raid0 might have data failure issue over long term no?
  • ElFenix - Wednesday, June 9, 2004 - link

    I'd like to see the SATA version of the 7200.7 myself, SR generally feels that the SATA version is somewhat faster than the PATA version.

    Also, about the Hitachis... they tend to 'meow' at you every once in a while... supposedly that increases their reliability, but when i'm going for silence it isn't wanted. When silence is key i'll go with the ultra-quiet, reliable, non-meowing, still fast, and dirt cheap ($0.35/gig) 7200.7
  • T8000 - Tuesday, June 8, 2004 - link

    #36, it is nice to know you did get a performance boost, but I would like to ask what drive you had before and if you bought the 74 GB Raptor.

    This is important, because there is a large performance difference between the latest 7200 RPM drives and the early sub 20 GB ones.

    Also, SCSI drives are famous for their loud whining noise, so a lot of people I heard would not even use a SCSI drive if it would be free, unless they become more silent, so this may be a good reason why SCSI drives are not used much in workstations.
  • Tostada - Tuesday, June 8, 2004 - link

    The SATA Hitachi Deskstar 7K250 (which has 8MB cache and a 3-year warranty) is generally cheaper, faster, and quieter than every comparable drive. Well, the Samsung is a little quieter. The Hitachi 7K250 is about as fast as a Raptor 36G, though. In my experience, the only practical drives to buy these days are:

    Samsung for ATA
    Hitachi 7K250 for SATA
    Raptor 740GD for SATA if you want the absolute best performance.

    Look at NewEgg's current price of the Hitachi 7K250 SATA line with 8MB cache and 3-year warranty:
    80GB = $74.00 delivered
    160GB = $103.50 delivered
    250GB = $194.00 delivered

    Raptor 740GD = $200.00 delivered

    The Raptor 740GD is 25% faster in some situations. Still, in most systems I would prefer to spend $200 for a RAID of two 160GB Hitachi's instead of a single 74GB Raptor.

    I see many people still recommending WD's non-Raptor drives, which just don't keep up. Here's some stats from StorageReview.

    High-End DriveMark 2002:
    Raptor 740GD: 585 IO/sec
    Raptor 360GD: 467 IO/sec
    Hitachi 7K250: 442 IO/sec
    WD800JB: 375 IO/sec

    StorageReview Gaming DriveMark 2002:
    Raptor 740GD: 749 IO/sec
    Raptor 360GD: 588 IO/sec
    Hitachi 7K250: 588 IO/sec
    WD800JB: 477 IO/sec

    WB99 Max Read Transfer Rate:
    Raptor 740GD: 71.8 MB/sec
    Raptor 360GD: 57.4 MB/sec
    Hitachi 7K250: 60.4 MB/sec
    WD800JB: 49.3 MB/sec

    Idle Noise:
    Raptor 740GD: 42.3 dB/A
    Raptor 360GD: 43.1 dB/A
    Hitachi 7K250: 41.5 dB/A
    WD800JB: 45.0 dB/A
  • tmhartsr - Tuesday, June 8, 2004 - link

    Recently upgraded my primary desktop to Raptor 10K. Actual improvement in everyday system performance and quickness is very noticable! An excellent practical measure of disk performance is writing/restoring a Ghost Image between two of these various drives. The difference is strikingly clear in this real world measure. I think disk performance has been much overlooked recently and deserves much more attention. Also that SCSI 320 should always be included in these comparisions. SCSI 320 is under-utilized in high end systems? Also what effect will new PCI Express boards have on HD performance and development?
  • Kravahn - Tuesday, June 8, 2004 - link

    A little clarification... I'm used to seeing frank recommendations on AnandTech, and this was more than ambiguous. It should have said... 'if you want the best performance possible, the latest Raptor is for you; with that in mind, nearly equivalent performance, and certainly more bang for the buck can be had with the current 8MB PATA iterations tested here.'
  • Kravahn - Tuesday, June 8, 2004 - link

    Another point regarding final analyses... a 10% increase in performance is definitely notable, but when that 10%increase relates to a 39 second vs. a 42 second load time, it becomes negligible. It seems silly to me to pay more money for less storage to save three seconds. The geek in me loves the numbers, but as a reseller it's hard for me to sell a product just because it's a little faster, especially when my customer would be sacrificing 50G of storage. I think the summary should include a bit of reality and not just factual conclusions.
  • Mackintire - Monday, June 7, 2004 - link

  • demonbug - Monday, June 7, 2004 - link

    First of all, great HD performance comparison - I just have a nitpick. My only comment is in regards to the game loading test. You must have one quick thumb on the stopwatch to measure down to the ten-thousandth of a second as you show on the graphs. I know, probably comes from averaging, but come on - round it to the nearest tenth, or hundredth at least (if you think you were really that quick with the stopwatch). Didn't they ever teach you about significant digits in school?
  • GOSHARKS - Monday, June 7, 2004 - link

    discussion regarding the article in the forums:
    http://forums.anandtech.com/messageview.cfm?catid=...

    i have to say that the article really suprised me and the results are quite INTERESTING
  • T8000 - Monday, June 7, 2004 - link

    One point I did not see in the review was the partition information.

    This may be important, because smaller partitions usually perform better, because of their smaller allocation table and possibly even a smaller cluster size.

    It would be best to use a drive image that fits on all drives and load it on each drive for testing, to make sure smaller drives are not given an advantage over bigger drives and fragmentation is the same for all drives.

    Did you use this method?
  • broberts - Monday, June 7, 2004 - link

    It would be nice if you included the actual model numbers of the tested drives.

    Perhaps I'm missing something but ISTM that comparing benchmarks of SATA drives against those running at PATA-100 is questionable. Especially since most of the numbers reported are within 5% of each other. Why weren't SATA models of the 8MB/7200 drives used?
  • jrphoenix - Monday, June 7, 2004 - link

    I have submitted my request to Anand. I would like to see the new Seagate and Hitachi drives. The new 7200 rpm Seagates (shipping this month) support NCQ and are supposedly quicker than the raptors at a lower price!!! :)
  • Crassus - Monday, June 7, 2004 - link

    Anand,

    I would have liked to see also the performance of 2 Raptors of both generations in RAID 0, at least with the integrated controllers (ICH5 etc.).
  • Nighteye2 - Monday, June 7, 2004 - link

    It's good to see this test, but why are the raptors the only SATA drives? It would be good to add in a SATA WD 7200 RPM 8 MB drive (80 GB, 120 GB, or another size)
  • trexpesto - Monday, June 7, 2004 - link

    Since with buying technology part of the equation is how long to hold off, it would be cool to get a head's up on stuff in the pipeline like the NCQ/TCQ drives.
    http://www.seagate.com/cda/newsinfo/newsroom/relea...
  • Apologiliac - Monday, June 7, 2004 - link

    I was startled how quiet the seagate was, because i was wating for it to turn on (?...!) I was also laughing out loud after the new raptor played because it immediately followed by gangsters paradise by weird al on my playlist :p
  • deathwalker - Monday, June 7, 2004 - link

    I am somewhat dissapointed that this review did not include at least a couple of competing SATA drives...such as maybe a Seagate and Maxtor drive. The majority of the community already assumes the advantages of SATA over PATA!!
  • Blain - Monday, June 7, 2004 - link

    A 75GXP? You gotta be kiddin'
    Why not run the other drives against a new Hitachi?

    For crying out loud! :o
  • Z80 - Monday, June 7, 2004 - link

    Your review was right on target for my needs. I was considering upgrading my 120GB Maxtor to a new WD 74GB Raptor. Looks like I can save my money now or spend it on an upgrade that gives more bang for the buck. Thanks
  • SoBizarre - Monday, June 7, 2004 - link

    <<I wonder how these drives compare to my Seagate X15?

    Try the link below and cry... ;)

    http://storagereview.com/php/benchmark/compare_rtg...
  • mjz5 - Monday, June 7, 2004 - link

    would have been cool to see how long it takes to zip a folder with a 1000 of files..
  • araczynski - Monday, June 7, 2004 - link

    i don't quite see anything about the raptors that warrant the steep price jump, i see the typical milking of the wannabes.
  • BCinSC - Monday, June 7, 2004 - link

    I wonder how these drives compare to my Seagate X15?
  • Insomniac - Monday, June 7, 2004 - link

    Anand,

    Could we see some type of test that shows the impact of disk defragmenting? I know it isn't exactly a hard dive test, but it would be nice to see what, if any, performance improvement it adds and how the drives perform when "optimal". Thanks.
  • MIDIman - Monday, June 7, 2004 - link

    IMHO - This is a market that has already been taken in-depth by another very big website that has been alive for almost as long as anandtech. Redundancy is always good though.

    We'd definitely like to see RAID array comparisons. Its definitely a big buzz word nowadays.
  • Pollock - Monday, June 7, 2004 - link

    I really could have used this article last week in deciding whether or not the 80GB Seagate for $40 last week was fast and reliable...=(
  • 00aStrOgUy00 - Monday, June 7, 2004 - link

    I think this article was a bit lacking.
    I would have liked to see how the raptors stacked up to regular 7200RPM drives with denser platters, like the barracuda 200GB one that uses 100Gb platters, especially when the 200GB one that uses 100GB platters is stil far less expensive than either of the raptor drives.
    I would also like to see RAID performance compared to the raptor drives.
  • AnnihilatorX - Monday, June 7, 2004 - link

    We missed the most important test! File copy test. Say time taken to duplicate a 1GB file. It's basic but useful for those who are always dealing with large files.

    People who own high end harddisks tend to be either video editing enthuaists or server-owners. The tests covered general usage but did not well covering those areas. Harddisk and CPU limiting task such as volume batch encoding of videeo to a specific codec, say Xvid or DivX might be a useful benchmark. For servers random access time is important and might as well be tested.

    The tests we covered is not wrong, but fail as a target for really those would buy a high end harddisk. Common task such as surfing the net while compressing document; virus checking are basic usage of an average user, and mostly CPU limiting.

    While pure file copy test are likely to be harddisk limiting. The CPU ultilisation during file transfer process also indicates how good resources saving of the controllers are and has direct peoformance impact when CPU limit comes to the scene.
  • Reflex - Monday, June 7, 2004 - link

    I want to see a 'service' test of the venders much as is now done for motherboards. Hard drives and CD/DVD drives are by far the highest points of failure in a modern PC, it is important to know what happens when your drive fails. In the past this has been a serious sore point between myself and WD, it has often taken months for them to turn around a failed drive, and due to the extreme failure rates I have had with their drives after about a year, its a serious issue.

    Heat would also be a good test, it is the main reason that 10k RPM drives have stayed at the high end for so long.

    Murst: Most people reading this site would be using NTFS, and a few using FAT32. Under NTFS, fragmentation would not have any serious impact on performance due to properties of the file system and how it works. Unless your suggesting they test NFS and other Unix/Linux filesystems, I am not certain what other file systems you want tested. Most games are not tested under Win9x anymore, I don't see a point in testing other hardware on a 6 year old OS either...
  • SignalPST - Monday, June 7, 2004 - link

    Great review, I must say. But one thing that would certainly interest alot of people including myself would be using RAID. We know that using multiple hard drives in a RAID array is very popular among gamers and almost every motherboard out now supports RAID as well. I'm sure it'll be quite interesting to see 4 of 74GB Raptors in RAID 0 in future reviews! It would also be interesting to see the different effects of stripe sizes configurations.
  • Doormat - Monday, June 7, 2004 - link

    What about putting some meta-data in there? Like current street price, length of warranty, etc. Also temperature would be nice.

    I'd kinda like to see some RAID tests too, I'm looking at RAID 5 for a bunch big drives for a video on demand system.

    Speaking of, a big-drive comparison would be cool too. Where's that hitachi 400GB drive they announced a while ago?
  • Murst - Monday, June 7, 2004 - link

    Hmm,
    well, I'm pretty sure that there should be a significant difference in system performance when your system runs out of RAM. When virtual memory takes over, I have seen the performance of my computer drop significantly. I was hoping that a benchmark could be made showing just how large of a difference could be seen when virtual memory is a significant source of data for program execution. There should be a noticable difference in this performance between different drives.

    Also, it would be interesting to know if the file system on a drive makes a difference in performance. I have a feeling that if it does, it would be unnoticable, but nevertheless, unless its tested, we would never know for sure. I don't neccessairly mean the type of file system, either. Just as RAM can have different latency settings, so can a hard drive have different block sizes (and optimal block sizes).

    Again, I'm not positive if this would make a difference in performance, but I'm just trying to think of practical tests for hard drive performance.
  • Anand Lal Shimpi - Monday, June 7, 2004 - link

    Murst,

    Sorry, the last response must've been posted at the same time as yours :)

    Both the Winstone and SYSMark tests use multiple applications running at the same time, but I do understand the point you're trying to make.

    We do have a synthetic test that shows the benefit of defragging a hard drive, but I have yet to do significant investigation in to how that affects performance between drives other than it reduces it.

    Take care,
    Anand
  • Anand Lal Shimpi - Monday, June 7, 2004 - link

    Must,

    The drives being tested are secondary drives only for the game loading tests and the theoretical IPEAK tests. The remaining Winstone and SYSMark tests all use the drive as the only drive in the system.

    Take care,
    Anand
  • Murst - Monday, June 7, 2004 - link

    Hmm... let me clarify that. I believe that all of your tests were probably ran with no other programs executing. It would be interesting to see the difference in performance when a lot of page swapping is occurring (ie, fill up the page table by executing other programs and then run a benchmark).

    Oh, and I just thought of another issue... why not have a benchmark which evaluates a drop in performance of a drive with data that is, say, 60% fragmented as compared to mostly unfragmented data.
  • Murst - Monday, June 7, 2004 - link

    Its nice to see a hard drive comparison. I will be building a new comp soon and I always wondered if I'd see a difference between drives.

    I do, however, have one concern. It seems like the drives you used were secondary drives in the system, with the operating system working off a different drive. I have always assumed that the largest benefit of choosing a very fast drive was to minimize the access and read times of a page fault (as I generally do not spend much time at all waiting for something to load). It would seem that none of your tests take this into consideration.

    Thanks
  • Anand Lal Shimpi - Monday, June 7, 2004 - link

    #1 - You're correct, the mentions of command queuing were leftover from some early tests on a new SATA controller with support for the feature. Those tests didn't make it into the article, and I've updated it accordingly.

    Take care,
    Anand
  • jliechty - Monday, June 7, 2004 - link

    #1 - I was under that assumption also. I do recall hearing of a controller chip that supported TCQ being in the works (or perhaps already available), but the question remains whether that chip has been put in any controllers that are on the market at this time?

    Anyway, I'm glad that my preciousss... er... my Raptor didn't do too badly, though for what I do I probably could have kept my old WD Caviar Special Edition and not noticed much of a difference, except for my wallet being heavier. :-(
  • RyanVM - Monday, June 7, 2004 - link

    Doesn't the WD74GD require a controller which supports command queuing in order for that feature to be of actual use? And I was under the impression that no current SATA controllers support that function.

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