To raptor... or not to raptor. I NEED SPACE!

[UPSLynx]

Hello everyone, I hope this message finds you well.

As many of you know, I've filled 500gb to the brim on my machine. HD animation renders and games with astronomical install sizes (GTA IV - 15GB) have pushed me to the limit. I need an upgrade.

i don't have a ton of funds to devote to it, currently trying to save money for a potential move to the west coast. Fortunately for me hard drives are rather cheap these days.

So I know I need lotsa space. With the tons of music and pictures/videos i have, as well as all of my animation work, I really might as well go for a 1tb drive - I REALLY need the space. I've got my eye on this one:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822136317

That should settle it, right? Well, I'm having second thoughts. See, I want to give Windows 7 a try, and I've been thinking to myself, before Win 7 is released I REALLY want to pick up a WD Raptor drive to install the OS to to maximize loading performance. It's something I've skimped on for far too long.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822136033

This is the cheapest/smallest one on newegg. I really want this drive before the release of win 7. See, if I buy the 1TB drive now, I'll put win7 on it. Which means by the time Win 7 is released, I'll have a mess of OS's on different drives. But I don't want to spend the money for both drives right now.

I don't really need the Raptor to be 74GB big. A ~30GB Raptor would do the trick. Can't seem to find any on my usual sites however.

Any ideas? Are Raptors worth it, for those that use them? I know it sounds like a simple decision... I'm trying to figure out the best decision with my money / performance / convienience ratio.

What would you guys do in this situation?

[Thrax]

I believe a Raptor is a waste of money when storage is $120 for 1TB.

[rayray]

Those 1TB+ drives have a sustained transfer rate of 70+ MB/S - unless you are working with tiny files and lots of random access you really have little to gain from a Raptor except noise. Get 4 drives and put them in a RAID 0+1 so you have 140-170MB/s transfers and redundancy.

[fatcat]

Velociraptors are for speed, not storage.

[Buddy J]

How about a small SSD (OCZ Apex) and a WD Caviar 1.5 or 2TB for bsns?

[Mt_Goat]

I have had several Raptors in my possesion in the past few years. I liked the original 36GB but they ran hot and didn't last too long. Then I tried the 74GB model and they were a big improvement in both speed and dependability. I had one of the later generations of the 150Gb model and it was just a tad faster but not really worth the increase in cost since I only wanted them for my OS drive. There was a firmware upgrade for the 74GB model that I did try and they were exactly on par with the 150's after that. The Raptors are not much different as far as sustained transfer rates go but substantially faster when it comes to seek and access times. That is what really makes them stand out from all else and makes them an outstanding choice for a boot/OS drive. If someone is on a budget and wants a drive for their OS I point them to the 80GB SEagate drives. If they want the best drive for the task I point them to the 74GB and 150GB Raptors. I do beleive they are not woth the cash for just data storage but for fast access they cannot be beat except fro a high end SCSI system.

[UPSLynx]

Alrighty, I'm picking up the 1TB.

BuddyJ - That's a neat plan, I'd love to sport a SSD. At the moment however, a bit outside my price range. Trying to save up money for the rounds of conventions I'm hitting this summer, so I need to keep upgrades at a reasonable minimum.

definitely to be considered though.

Thanks for all the insight everyone.

[MachineDog]

Alrighty, I'm picking up the 1TB.

BuddyJ - That's a neat plan, I'd love to sport a SSD. At the moment however, a bit outside my price range. Trying to save up money for the rounds of conventions I'm hitting this summer, so I need to keep upgrades at a reasonable minimum.

definitely to be considered though.

Thanks for all the insight everyone.

What do you do for backups?

[UPSLynx]

What do you do for backups?

I only back up the things I absolutely need. A lot of that used space belongs to game install files, or video render files, things that don't need a backup.

My digital camera files (60GB+), as well as animation files and video assets, and everything else important, still fits on my 250 external drive collectively.

I also have redundant backups for the VERY important files on my other hard drives.

It's all about being selective, and knowing what you really need.

[Callred]

I have had several Raptors in my possesion in the past few years. I liked the original 36GB but they ran hot and didn't last too long. Then I tried the 74GB model and they were a big improvement in both speed and dependability. I had one of the later generations of the 150Gb model and it was just a tad faster but not really worth the increase in cost since I only wanted them for my OS drive. There was a firmware upgrade for the 74GB model that I did try and they were exactly on par with the 150's after that. ****snip****. I was going to write pretty much the same thing being as I own 5 Raptors of various sizes. While I've never regretted the purchases at the time, there are less expensive ways to go. I also own two of the Barracuda 500 gig drives that seemed to have failed on so many people and (knock on something that looks like wood) have never had the first hiccup out of them. I think the newer 'Cudas may be worth looking at for storage.

[chrisWhite]

I run two RAID-0 smallish Raptors for my system drive and then I've got a few larger, slower drives for all my other storage. It's the one thing that actually rocks on my current rig and it's not like Hard-Drives are getting that much faster very quickly (my CPU & GPU are so outdated now...)

Also, having fast drives really rocks when your editing video.

[ardichoke]

I've owned about 8 Barracudas in my life. Only one of them ever failed on me and that was after it had been in use in 4 different computers for about 6 years. Right now I'm running a RAID5 array with 4 Barracuda 160 drives. Barracudas are the way to go IMHO.

[chrisWhite]

I've heard a lot of good things about Barracudas, I don't think you can go wrong with either Raptors of Barracudas. Seems like you're paying for good drives as well as speed in these cases.