15 Comments:

1. Snarkasm

   The Photographer.

   
   18 Jul '09, 1:44 am

   Now THAT'S fairly interesting.
2. Lincoln

   Snapperhead

   
   18 Jul '09, 3:39 am

   Damn.

   /me sighs about his shiny new Velociraptor
3. shwaip

   elaborate bot

   
   18 Jul '09, 3:44 am

   DO WANT.

   (perhaps a raided pair...)
4. DrLiam

   FoxtoN

   
   18 Jul '09, 5:06 am

   Now this is worth bookmarking! Thanks for sharing.
5. patrickcabenjamin

   That's mr PatrickCABenjamin

   
   20 Jul '09, 9:06 am

   I'm just wondering why they give computer parts such wierd names
6. Gnome Queen

   Ms. D

   
   20 Jul '09, 9:38 am

   Because it makes me want to buy them more?
7. AlexDeGruven

   I am Geek. Hear me... type?

   
   20 Jul '09, 10:04 am

   This is great. I was actually thinking about putting a RAIDed pair of VelociRaptors in when I build my HTPC later this year/early next year. But this article has made me think better of it. I like that at 819GB, the drive still outperforms the VelociRaptor pretty handily.

   Since I'll also be building a big RAID for external storage, I might see if I can land myself a bulk price for a bunch.

   It also seems that, with the slower spindle speed, you'll probably get better long-term viability than you would with the 10k drive.
8. mas0n

   technosexual

   
   20 Jul '09, 10:46 am

   Quoting AlexDeGruven

   It also seems that, with the slower spindle speed, you'll probably get better long-term viability than you would with the 10k drive.

   No.

   This is pretty interesting; I'll keep my lower access times though.
9. lordbean

   404 Brain Not Found

   
   20 Jul '09, 11:05 am

   Quoting mas0n

   No.

   This is pretty interesting; I'll keep my lower access times though.

   I dunno... I bought a single WD Raptor drive back in the day, and it failed after 3 years. It's so far been the ONLY WD or Seagate drive I've ever owned that has ever failed, period. Makes me suspect the 10k spindle, too.

   Either way, that's a pretty sweet article right there. Who needs a Raptor when you can just tell a Barracuda to use half its space... I wonder if it works on the 7200.12 series?
10. AlexDeGruven

    I am Geek. Hear me... type?

    
    20 Jul '09, 11:20 am

    Quoting mas0n

    No.

    In the Enterprise space, this is probably true. But we're talking about consumer-grade hardware here. In 99.9% of cases, though, the insanely high MTBF on modern hardware pretty much negates my statement, but I thought it would be worth mentioning.
11. mas0n

    technosexual

    
    20 Jul '09, 1:03 pm

    It's also worth noting that this whole operation is just so that you can flaunt your HDTach scores. This basically just marks off the fastest 20% of the disk so you can test it without including the slowest 80% of the drive. If I did this with a Velociraptor I'd see sustained transfer rates averaging >135 MB/s

    For the same results but less awesome benchmarks, just partition the first 300GB of your 1.5TB drive and use it for OS/Programs, then dump your My Documents folder on the 1.2TB partition that's left.
12. ardichoke

    King Banana Spanner

    
    20 Jul '09, 3:08 pm

    Quoting mas0n

    For the same results but less awesome benchmarks, just partition the first 300GB of your 1.5TB drive and use it for OS/Programs, then dump your My Documents folder on the 1.2TB partition that's left.

    I doubt this would work. Any time you accessed a Document then the system had to load a system file you would have to move from the slowest part to the faster part thus negating any performance increase. The reason that the mod works, most likely, is because the heads never move out of the fastest tracks on the drive.
13. mas0n

    technosexual

    
    20 Jul '09, 3:59 pm

    You're correct about the heads obviously, but I don't think it would totally negate the benefits and you get to keep the "slow" 80%.

    I think it really depends how often the specific user needs to access files on the second partition. For boot times, application load times, gaming, and tons of other uses, the heads could stay in the primary partition.
14. shwaip

    elaborate bot

    
    20 Jul '09, 4:06 pm

    Heh - or if you had indexing enabled on the second partition.
15. mas0n

    technosexual

    
    20 Jul '09, 4:19 pm

    balls

    well at least that should only happen while the machine is idle.

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