Raptor questions

Mt_GoatMt_Goat Head Cheezy KnobPflugerville (north of Austin) Icrontian
edited May 2004 in Hardware
I recently got a WD Raptor to try out and now have some questions:
  1. Must you use their cable and a legacy molex power connector for them to work correctly? I tried with several different SATA cables and a SATA power connector and it refused to work without errors and was extremely slow.
  2. Are there any tricks to squeeze more out of them as single drives?
  3. Are they really worth it or would 2 regular SATA HD's be just as good for everyday use in a RAID-0?
  4. How does the ATTO below look for a SINGLE DRIVE on an SI 3112 onboard controller?
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Comments

  • floppybootstompfloppybootstomp Greenwich New
    edited May 2004
    Running two x 37Gb Raptors here, RAID 0.

    Gigabyte GA-7N400 Pro 2 Motherboard
    XP2600
    2 x 256Mb Corsair PC2700
    Onboard Promise Raid controller.
    Sata Power connectors.

    Imo, they perform a lot better than most IDE drives.

    ATTO Benchmark:
  • Mt_GoatMt_Goat Head Cheezy Knob Pflugerville (north of Austin) Icrontian
    edited May 2004
    floppy,
    Did you ever try benching them as single drives? I always test individually prior to putting 2 drives in a RAID-0 to make sure each is running well. I am also concerned about mine not running with the SATA power connector.
  • floppybootstompfloppybootstomp Greenwich New
    edited May 2004
    No, never tried running them as single drives, sorry.

    Never had a prob with the power connectors, they were already fitted on the Antec Truepower 430W PSU.

    Are you using PSU convertor leads? Maybe they're faulty, although that's doubtful.

    Dunno, really, what the prob may be there.
  • DanGDanG I AM CANADIAN Icrontian
    edited May 2004
    mtgoat, my raptor speeds are just a bit lower than yours, although I'm running mine in an xpc. About a 6 inch sata cable and a sata power connector.
  • Mt_GoatMt_Goat Head Cheezy Knob Pflugerville (north of Austin) Icrontian
    edited May 2004
    I am using the SATA power leads from my Antec True 480.

    Found the problem. It is actually the SATA headers on my mobo. I tried hooking it up to my HPT SATA RAID card with the SATA power hooked up on the drive and all is well. Now I'm ticked about the headers on my mobo. :rant:

    Dan,
    I ran it on Sandra and got 38,000 and an average seek time of 5.6ms so I guess it works.
  • SpinnerSpinner Birmingham, UK
    edited May 2004
    I've never benched mine as single's either, I was much too excited about getting them running as RAID 0.

    In my experience, being someone who's run many different RAID 0 arrays, including one with a pair of PATA WD 1200JB's, I can say that the Raptors are considerably faster to anything I've previously run in a RAID 0 environment. SATA or not. They do however also really shine as independent drives.

    So don't feel you have to make the jump to RAID 0 to get the most out of them. On the contrary, the RAPTORS are at their best (IMO) when run as single drives.
  • Geeky1Geeky1 University of the Pacific (Stockton, CA, USA)
    edited May 2004
    Holy thread revival!

    Anyhow, I've never been very impressed with the Raptors (at least the 36GB ones). Why? Well, for starters, here's an ATTO of 2 160GB Maxtor DiamondMax 9 8MB/7200RPM/ATA-133 drives on SATA converters in RAID 0 on a HighPoint RocketRaid 1540:
    <img src="http://www.short-media.com/forum/attachment.php?attachmentid=1590&stc=1&gt;
  • Straight_ManStraight_Man Geeky, in my own way Naples, FL Icrontian
    edited May 2004
    mtgoat wrote:
    I am using the SATA power leads from my Antec True 480.

    Found the problem. It is actually the SATA headers on my mobo. I tried hooking it up to my HPT SATA RAID card with the SATA power hooked up on the drive and all is well. Now I'm ticked about the headers on my mobo. :rant:

    Dan,
    I ran it on Sandra and got 38,000 and an average seek time of 5.6ms so I guess it works.

    SATA can be wired and run by BIOS as a PCI-rate base bus process for storage, think this is what happened. It is a shortcut used on non-server boards way too often. Bus rate itself can be limited, plus use of main RAM for buffering can limit actual end-to-end benching if RAM is not fast and fairly hugely present, even with better boards that have a more dedicated SATA pipe in them.

    I'd almost BET the card has buffers (RAM like moules or wiring) builtiin while the onboard depends on main RAM. So main RAM load over time is less than it would be for onboard, the buffers absorb it and can let the drives burst from and possibly back to card if buffers are enough in size. REAL good cards can use RAM modules that are faster than normal RAM, and have large RAM style buffers. They will not be as fast as the GRAM used on real fast video cards, but....
  • Straight_ManStraight_Man Geeky, in my own way Naples, FL Icrontian
    edited May 2004
    Geeky1 wrote:
    Holy thread revival!

    Anyhow, I've never been very impressed with the Raptors (at least the 36GB ones). Why? Well, for starters, here's an ATTO of 2 160GB Maxtor DiamondMax 9 8MB/7200RPM/ATA-133 drives on SATA converters in RAID 0 on a HighPoint RocketRaid 1540:

    To get best RAID 0 performance on SATA, you need a multichannel SATA card and each side of mirror on a seperate drive channel, or bus gets double-loaded with both main writes to target and writes to source. then you get bus inneficiencies that can wipe your SATA advantage. The first SATA cards were single channel cards.

    This is similar to SCSI III performance differing alot from card to card and to embedded where a specifically storage bus is present versu where common bus lines are tapped into to be used, drives on different LUNs with chipsets that had different physical routes to drives by LUN had them basicially on seperate channels. Single LUN circuit used for both LUNS got double the load in mirroring or other RAID, the cards stunk on average ebcause RAID 0 writes both ways at close to same time very often and you get main changes triggering mirror writes to the copy.
  • Geeky1Geeky1 University of the Pacific (Stockton, CA, USA)
    edited May 2004
    Uh, John, all SATA cards, RAID or otherwise, with 2 or more SATA ports, are multichannel. SATA does not have masters or slaves. You hook one drive up to each channel.
  • floppybootstompfloppybootstomp Greenwich New
    edited May 2004
    Geeky1 wrote:
    Uh, John, all SATA cards, RAID or otherwise, with 2 or more SATA ports, are multichannel. SATA does not have masters or slaves. You hook one drive up to each channel.

    Unless they happen to be Western Digital.

    I have two SATA WD120's in a RAID 0 on another machine and I had a helluva job getting them recognised in the RAID controller. It didn't help that at the time Western Digital's tech help site was down.

    After a lot of trial and error, I finally hit on the right jumper settings to get both disks recognised as a RAID 0. It was no jumper on one and position three on the other.

    Apparently this is a quirk of Western Digital that has caught out a fair few people.
  • TexTex Dallas/Ft. Worth
    edited May 2004
    mtngoat: The raptors have a faster access time but the transfer rates on the older raptors are very close actually to the fast maxtors on a test like atto which doesnt really factor in access time much but concentrates on transfer rate. The newer version of the raptors are faster. My maxtor ide's with 8mb cache kiss 60,000 on atto when setup right. Considering what most peoples typical usage in a desktop system I'll bet a thousand bucks right now that no one could walk up to two identical systems where one had 36gb raptors and the other had my 120gb maxtors and be able to tell a differance or pick out which was which. And my maxtors have three times the storage for about 90 bucks. I am not saying teh raptors are not nice. And the new model is even better but tehre are other drives that cost less and have more storage that are so close ytou can't tell thyem from a raptor in a blind test.

    The raptors are very optimnized though for desktop performance. So if I want faster I go scsi as for what I use a high performance disk subsystem for they end up being much faster. But for normal desktop type crap like opening word.... surfing the web etc... most people couldn't tell the scsi from a fast ide. The scsi is smoother for me. The temp files and internet temp and swap/pagefiles are all on seperate disks trying to divide the i-o across the channels and drives. But for normal crap the machine feels fast but its not like its turbo charged or anything. The only time I felt a noticable differance was with a bunch of fast scsi drives in raid-0 where the access time was down around 2ms and the transfer rate was kissing 400,000. Then yes.... you just sit there and grin because its so startlingly fast even for normal stuff when the disk is defragged right it was just kick as*.

    Tex
  • SpinnerSpinner Birmingham, UK
    edited May 2004
    Tex wrote:
    mtngoat: The raptors have a faster access time but the transfer rates on the older raptors are very close actually to the fast maxtors on a test like atto which doesnt really factor in access time much but concentrates on transfer rate. The newer version of the raptors are faster. My maxtor ide's with 8mb cache kiss 60,000 on atto when setup right. Considering what most peoples typical usage in a desktop system I'll bet a thousand bucks right now that no one could walk up to two identical systems where one had 36gb raptors and the other had my 120gb maxtors and be able to tell a differance or pick out which was which. And my maxtors have three times the storage for about 90 bucks. I am not saying teh raptors are not nice. And the new model is even better but tehre are other drives that cost less and have more storage that are so close ytou can't tell thyem from a raptor in a blind test.

    The raptors are very optimnized though for desktop performance. So if I want faster I go scsi as for what I use a high performance disk subsystem for they end up being much faster. But for normal desktop type crap like opening word.... surfing the web etc... most people couldn't tell the scsi from a fast ide. The scsi is smoother for me. The temp files and internet temp and swap/pagefiles are all on seperate disks trying to divide the i-o across the channels and drives. But for normal crap the machine feels fast but its not like its turbo charged or anything. The only time I felt a noticable differance was with a bunch of fast scsi drives in raid-0 where the access time was down around 2ms and the transfer rate was kissing 400,000. Then yes.... you just sit there and grin because its so startlingly fast even for normal stuff when the disk is defragged right it was just kick as*.

    Tex
    Well said Tex.

    At the end of the day, it boils down to user preference, is the user willing to pay so much more just for that little bit extra speed? What's a realistic economy ratio for speed vs space? It's all user preference. I love my 36Gig Raptors, but they cost me a lot of dosh. It wasn't an economic buy, I just wanted the best at the time, no matter what. To me, that mentality works, but for others it doesn't.

    But like folk have pointed out, they're are some nice alternatives to the Raptors at the moment.
  • SpinnerSpinner Birmingham, UK
    edited May 2004
    Tex wrote:
    Considering what most peoples typical usage in a desktop system I'll bet a thousand bucks right now that no one could walk up to two identical systems where one had 36gb raptors and the other had my 120gb maxtors and be able to tell a differance or pick out which was which.
    Would I have to wear ear-muffs? ;)
  • TexTex Dallas/Ft. Worth
    edited May 2004
    I can't hear my fluid bearing maxtors even run when sitting bare on top of the desk in front of my keyboard. I would have to touch them to tell if they were running. So noise isnt a give away unless your raptors are loud as hell.

    And my desk sits with a 7 foot tall 19" rack filled with computers 3 feet behind me, filled wioth dual cpu servers with big and fans and scsi racks with big fans so unless your raptors are really really loud you still couln't heasr them.

    I meant both computers running and you can use a kvm to switch back and forth. I have won more money from extreme techy guys on bets like... I have five computers in the room here now, all on a kvm... You can switch back and forth easy with all the same apps on each machine. They range from dual opterons to 3400+ Athlon 64's to dual 2100 XP's dual p3 1000's to a single 1700+ on a kr7. All on a gigabit LAN. Allhabe a gb of ram but one. The game is you can not benchmark but can do any normal activities like surf the web... open documents or spreadsheets etc.. I have no games but using Photoshop or Office apps etc.. You have be able to pick out all 5 box's and corerctly by telling me what cpu's are in them. Everybody laughs and says they are in but no one has taken any of my money yet.

    Never even yet had anyone get more then 3 right. Normal is one or two right. A fast scsi disk can blur which is whcih. For normal desktop playing there isnt a huge differance if everything is setup right and you have lots of memory. For web surfing and normal stuff you couldn't of told the old dual p3 server from the new dual opteron. Gaming is a differant story. Just like me running Oracle its pretty easy to pick them out by memory and disk subsystem. But for a normal home user doing normal desktop chores a dual opteron is fun but its just not that much faster in real life for most real uises that a home user would use it for, and I'm a benchmark whore. But new toys are fun. But trying to justify the need for them isnt so easy if your honest.

    I don't game. I couldn't tell enough differance between a nvidia gforce 5200 FX then a 32mb radeon 7000. Not in what I do. And i'm sitting in fronbt of a nice 21 inch hitchi monitor. But I don't game and that would show up big time there. But to see the sales guys at comp usa and fry's etc.. selling grandma and grandpa a new video card and saying they need the new $350 video card makes me want to puke. A normal user doen't need anything like that either IF they don't game or do image or video editing or something beyond the realm of the normal home user.

    The two computers here which are normaly picked as the fastest both have scsi raid and the second one is either the sloest or next to the slowest cpu's Its the old dual p3 with 64/66 slots. Everyone pays all this money at times to overclock and push a machine untill its unstabel to gain an edge and the disk subsystem is always the slowest link for any non-gaming activities. For non gaming a user would be better off getting a fast disk subsystem then a $400 video card.

    Tex
  • floppybootstompfloppybootstomp Greenwich New
    edited May 2004
    Spinner wrote:
    Well said Tex.

    At the end of the day, it boils down to user preference, is the user willing to pay so much more just for that little bit extra speed? What's a realistic economy ratio for speed vs space? It's all user preference. I love my 36Gig Raptors, but they cost me a lot of dosh. It wasn't an economic buy, I just wanted the best at the time, no matter what. To me, that mentality works, but for others it doesn't.

    But like folk have pointed out, they're are some nice alternatives to the Raptors at the moment.

    And well said Spinner. I managed to secure a couple of used Raptor 36 Gig drives, so didn't pay full whack for them, and I'm pleased as punch with them.

    I notice my ATTO test result was only a little higher than the ATTO test for the two Maxtors posted here. But it's that little bit that makes the difference ;)

    The main thing is, I can actually notice a difference in everyday use, which to my mind is the main criteria.

    And I've just added two x 512 Crucial PC3200 sticks and an XP3200 to the system, it fairly flies along now :)

    And that's it, for now, next upgrade will be looking towards a 64 Bit system with a PCI Express vid card but I'm going to do my best to at least use this system for a year. We shall see :D
  • SpinnerSpinner Birmingham, UK
    edited May 2004
    Tex wrote:
    I can't hear my fluid bearing maxtors even run when sitting bare on top of the desk in front of my keyboard. I would have to touch them to tell if they were running. So noise isnt a give away unless your raptors are loud as hell.
    My Raptors can been heard accessing a good few miles away. ;)

    Everyone pays all this money at times to overclock and push a machine untill its unstabel to gain an edge and the disk subsystem is always the slowest link for any non-gaming activities. For non gaming a user would be better off getting a fast disk subsystem then a $400 video card.
    Absolutely, and I tell that to everyone I meet who asks my advice. The primary bottleneck in the modern day PC is still the hard disk, and I can't see that changing any time soon.

    Hence why for the last 3 years my primary rigs have always used a RAID 0 array.
  • SpinnerSpinner Birmingham, UK
    edited May 2004
    And that's it, for now, next upgrade will be looking towards a 64 Bit system with a PCI Express vid card but I'm going to do my best to at least use this system for a year. We shall see :D
    I imagine my next upgrade will be early next year. But you never know like you said. 18 months is my idea of a solid upgrade cycle. For enthusiasts like us I mean.
  • TexTex Dallas/Ft. Worth
    edited May 2004
    And well said Spinner. I managed to secure a couple of used Raptor 36 Gig drives, so didn't pay full whack for them, and I'm pleased as punch with them.

    I notice my ATTO test result was only a little higher than the ATTO test for the two Maxtors posted here. But it's that little bit that makes the difference ;)

    The main thing is, I can actually notice a difference in everyday use, which to my mind is the main criteria.

    And I've just added two x 512 Crucial PC3200 sticks and an XP3200 to the system, it fairly flies along now :)

    And that's it, for now, next upgrade will be looking towards a 64 Bit system with a PCI Express vid card but I'm going to do my best to at least use this system for a year. We shall see :D

    And here is my single maxtor. They hit 115,000 in raid-0. Are dead quiet and I got 120gb for 90 bucks. Hard to beat.

    Tex
  • floppybootstompfloppybootstomp Greenwich New
    edited May 2004
    Tex wrote:
    And here is my single maxtor. They hit 115,000 in raid-0. Are dead quiet and I got 120gb for 90 bucks. Hard to beat.

    Tex

    Sweet :)

    Anything running on the system during that test?

    At the time I ran the ATTO test for the benchmark I posted above, there was all kinds of stuff loaded, all the usual Office stuff, grafix programs and about a dozen games loaded. All kinds of clutter. And it was crunching UD proteins.

    It may be interesting for me to run a test on a barebones OS.

    Still, can't deny that with the latest drives, the Raptor's advantages seem to be diminishing.

    But I still love mine :D
  • SpinnerSpinner Birmingham, UK
    edited May 2004
    Still, can't deny that with the latest drives, the Raptor's advantages seem to be diminishing.

    But I still love mine :D
    I love mine too, I just wish they were the 74GIG versions. :banghead:
  • TexTex Dallas/Ft. Worth
    edited May 2004
    Sweet :)

    Anything running on the system during that test?

    At the time I ran the ATTO test for the benchmark I posted above, there was all kinds of stuff loaded, all the usual Office stuff, grafix programs and about a dozen games loaded. All kinds of clutter. And it was crunching UD proteins.
    :D

    I don't trick out a empty system to bench. I load an OS and all my apps with driver updates and stuff. The bottom right hand tray is full and anti virus progs and crap is all loaded but I don't test with folding running or anything. You should test a system in the same state it will be used in or whats the point? We won't be giving out prizes here or anything. If we were I would post crap like this...

    Tex
  • floppybootstompfloppybootstomp Greenwich New
    edited May 2004
    Tex wrote:
    We won't be giving out prizes here or anything.

    Tex

    That's OK, cos I wasn't expecting one.

    And your point is?

    I just contributing to a thread here, is all.

    You're obviously far more clued up than I.

    On the other hand.
  • SpinnerSpinner Birmingham, UK
    edited May 2004
    That's OK, cos I wasn't expecting one.

    And your point is?

    I just contributing to a thread here, is all.

    You're obviously far more clued up than I.

    On the other hand.
    I don't think Tex meant any offense buddy, Right Tex??!! I think he was just trying to illustrate how he prefers to bench. No special conditions, just real world benching. Right Tex??!!
  • TexTex Dallas/Ft. Worth
    edited May 2004
    The point ws simply that I don't trick up benchmarks in a false environment unlike what I run every day. I wasn't picking on you and I didn't mean it in any derogatory way at all. I think you took what I said all wrong. Lots of folks post benchmarks from a freshly loaded naked OS with most the services turned off and every task they can kill wiped out and stuff. They run the bench with a high priority as a process and all kinds of crap. And that benchmark may have little to do with real life performance. If you disable sound and lan and usb and serial and parrallel and OC till the machine is flaky but you squeeze a neat benchmark out of it once in between a bunch of bsod's just isnt my idea of a valid benchmark. And trust me... some people don't care if its realistic.

    Thats all.

    Tex

    P.S. The last benchmark was unrealistic really. In way it is and a way it isnt I guess since it does reflect real life performance. Thats from a single scsi drive. But the test isnt fair really because of the controller used. Its got a really fast cpu onboard with 512mb pc3200 DDR cache onboard the controller. So ATTO fits into the cache and probably never hit the disk at all. We tested the controller but not the disk.
  • TexTex Dallas/Ft. Worth
    edited May 2004
    Spinner wrote:
    I love mine too, I just wish they were the 74GIG versions. :banghead:

    The new are supposed to be not only bigger but faster also. Sweet. I have raid onboard the MSI neo with the Athlon 64. I'm thinking about getting a couple sata's to play with but have not decided if I want to drop that kind of bread on a raptor or just get two big sata maxtors like the one I posted the bench of.

    Tex
  • SpinnerSpinner Birmingham, UK
    edited May 2004
    Tex wrote:
    The new are supposed to be not only bigger but faster also. Sweet. I have raid onboard the MSI neo with the Athlon 64. I'm thinking about getting a couple sata's to play with but have not decided if I want to drop that kind of bread on a raptor or just get two big sata maxtors like the one I posted the bench of.

    Tex
    Well, I'm not a big fan of Maxtor, period. However, I don't really hold anything against them either. The Raptors are, like you said, a bit of an investment. They are also pretty noisy (as I touched on earlier). They can also act as heating elements for your case.

    The Maxtors, going by what you said also, are probably quieter, obviously cooler and much more of an economical buy because of the additional capacity.

    Pretty weighted towards the Maxtors when you look at it like that isn't it?

    So why would anyone buy a Raptor. Well...

    They are faster, even if not by much. They are made by Western Digital (IMO, WD are a better manufacturer with regard to quality control). They sound much more hip.

    So three points, the last seemingly irrellevant, but really not in today's age of poncy show offs. I know, I'm one of them.

    So the bottom line here for me is...

    Economy just ain't cool. That's why the Raptors sell even though they are very pricey. Oh yeah, and of course, because they are the fastest. It doesn't matter to people by how much, it's just whether it is, or it isn't.

    Make sense?
  • TexTex Dallas/Ft. Worth
    edited May 2004
    Fastest Sata in some tests. I have not seen atto's from any of the 1'st gen raptors that were better then 60,000. The faster access shows up in other benchs though. But you can get nicer 36gb u320 scsi drives for less on eBay and they are made to a much higher level of quality then any ide or sata drive if thats your arguement. Unlike ide drives they are made to run in servers 24/7/365 without problems. No ide/sata drive is.

    And I have seen as many people grumbling in the forums over failed WD drives as maxtors. Thats more of a personal preferance and I understand that.

    My view is if your going to try and top the drives like the maxtor I posted which atto's as fast as a raptor but has a slower access time, is quieter and cooler then you might as well bite the bullet and go scsi. scsi has so many advanatges over sata you can't begin to compare them.

    Cheers Spinner... and tell floppy I wasn't picking on him again. I was thrilled to see him posting here at all. I really liked him back at the old site. I considered him a friend.

    Tex
  • SpinnerSpinner Birmingham, UK
    edited May 2004
    Tex wrote:
    Fastest Sata in some tests. I have not seen atto's from any of the 1'st gen raptors that were better then 60,000. The faster access shows up in other benchs though. But you can get nicer 36gb u320 scsi drives for less on eBay and they are made to a much higher level of quality then any ide or sata drive if thats your arguement. Unlike ide drives they are made to run in servers 24/7/365 without problems. No ide/sata drive is.
    Oh yeah, SCSI shoots PATA/SATA out the sky, no disputing that, obviously. But if you look at things from a product retail price stand point, SCSI it still no closer to being a viable desktop alternative. So for most, it's just not an option. Finding the drives cheap on Ebay etc, is great, but most people just don't want the hassle of doing that. But I agree, SCSI rocks the world! no doubt about that.

    and I have seen as many people grumbling in the forums over failed WD drives as maxtors. Thats more of a personal preferance and I understand that.
    Oh yeah, personal preference all the way. One can only speak by experience. :)

    Cheers Spinner... and tell floppy I wasn't picking on him again. I was thrilled to see him posting here at all. I really liked him back at the old site. I considered him a friend.

    Tex
    I think you've just told him yourself.:)

    Thanks mate.
  • TexTex Dallas/Ft. Worth
    edited May 2004
    The drives I like are not the fastest at all. More a reasonbale compromise. I like Atlas 10k IV's. 10,000 rpm 8mb cache and 4.5 ms access and they hit about 73,000 on atto and are dead quiet. Maybe the fastest 10k drives ever made. I have seen them on the web retail for $100 bucks. I pay 55 to 65 on ebay. This isnt high end high dollar gear. Its fast, quiet, dependable drives you can really trust to run 24/7. Faster 15k drives will kiss 80,000 with a single drive but for me the performance gain isnt going to out weigh the higher price. I have to always balance those requirements carefully. As these are all toys for me.

    What did you pay for 36gb Raptors? more then a hundred bucks?

    maybe it's time to rethink things.

    Most nice scsi drives have a five year warranty. Most OEM ide/sata's have 12 months and are not intended to run 24/7. Some retail boxed one do have a 3 year warranty. I shut the system here down when heavy lightning comes through for storms. I have run servers here for up to 3 or 4 months and never rebooted, and never powered it off. This just isnt the strong suit of ide/sata. They are designed to be inexpensive drives for desktops primarily as thats what their firmware is tweaked for. Thats why they hang close to many scsi drives on some benchmarks. Because the benchmarks are geared to desktop activity. And I don't mean running three heavy background process's but rather running one process at a time. The more you put a heavy load onto scsi the better it looks and the worse raptors do because they were carefully optimized them for the desktop not multi-tasking or multi-user disk usage. So if you adhere to their projected usage patterns they perform very well. I have scsi tools to tweak my scsi firmware for differant environments. Can't do that with sata. The thing I don't like about the raptors I have touched is that they don't all seem to perform the same even with a carefully tweaked environment. You can see atto's ranging from 48,000 to 60,000 even after you mess with them a lot. Every one of the maxtors I HAVE TOUCHED will hit 57,000 to 61,500 on the outside edge. Thats a substantial differance. Would you be thrilled with a raptor hitting 50,000? Didnt think so.

    tex
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