moving to SATA

Tange1Tange1
edited December 2005 in Hardware
Hey everyone. I wondered if someone could answer this question.

First some backround. I'm planning on moving my primary windows install to a WD360 SATA 10,000RPM w/ a SATA controller card (No onboard SATA). What i've done in the past when moving to a new drive is do a snap shot of the drive and clone it onto the new drive. I'm worried this might not work in this case simply beacause of drivers. The SATA drive and SATA controller card drivers wouldn't reside in the image applied to it (if I could even apply an image to it?). I'm thinking that while still on the first drive and in windows; Hook up the SATA and installing drivers then grabbing an image, moving it and jumpering the SATA as primary might just work.


Anyone love/hate this drive? Particular thoughts?

Thanks

Andrew

Comments

  • QeldromaQeldroma Arid ZoneAh Member
    edited December 2005
    I have the 74GB Raptor.

    I'm not certain what you do, but I've found 36GB to be too small and I'm using a 400GB with my Raptor now as it is. I video edit.

    Pros:

    - Fast consumer market drive.
    - Has run reliably for a year.
    - It once tickled the "bleeding edge" fancy.
    - Can probably get a smokin' deal at a place like E-Bay. Recommend you go there before you pay that premium.

    Cons:

    - Cost too much too long
    - High speed price for a cheap-machine size.
    - By far and away the noisiest thing in my case.
    - Has a dorky interface adapter- like they made it for IDE before SATA came out and were too cheap to bother doing it right. If you get the OEM version, BE SURE to get the interface adapter too.

    Sorry, I got ticked with WD over this one when I went to look for a second drive and found out it cost EXACTLY what I paid for it a year earlier.

    That being said, if you're not going SCSI, it's the one to beat- but, if I read this right, not for long at all.

    WD has also done what looks like an evolutionary jump in 7200RPM drives with the Caviar WD400. If this translates over into 10K-ville, WD will once again pwn the consumer HD roost.

    I got the 400 on a whim when I was sick and I was was pleasantly surprised. I paid as much for it as my Raptor, got 5 times the size and I figure about 95% of the performance. The Sandra I have actually has it running FASTER on the Read than my Raptor (54MB/s to 52MB/s), but it's not really an apple to oranges benchmark as the Raptor is percentage-wise much fuller and I'm much better about backing up than defragging. I also had to pinch myself to see it working and NOT hear it. It's the quietest 7200 I've owned.

    Personally, I'd keep my cash for a little longer or bid $25 bucks on the 36GB tops.

    EDIT ADDED:
    As far as fitting a system with an adapter- I've not had a problem (except maybe some latency), but what motherboard or PC do you have? As far as compatibility- SIZE may be more of an issue than SATA- but the 36 OR the 74GB (anything below 137GB) should not be a problem.
  • Tange1Tange1
    edited December 2005
    Qeldroma wrote:
    I have the 74GB Raptor.

    I'm not certain what you do, but I've found 36GB to be too small and I'm using a 400GB with my Raptor now as it is. I video edit.

    Pros:

    - Fast consumer market drive.
    - Has run reliably for a year.
    - It once tickled the "bleeding edge" fancy.
    - Can probably get a smokin' deal at a place like E-Bay. Recommend you go there before you pay that premium.

    Cons:

    - Cost too much too long
    - High speed price for a cheap-machine size.
    - By far and away the noisiest thing in my case.
    - Has a dorky interface adapter- like they made it for IDE before SATA came out and were too cheap to bother doing it right. If you get the OEM version, BE SURE to get the interface adapter too.

    Sorry, I got ticked with WD over this one when I went to look for a second drive and found out it cost EXACTLY what I paid for it a year earlier.

    That being said, if you're not going SCSI, it's the one to beat- but, if I read this right, not for long at all.

    WD has also done what looks like an evolutionary jump in 7200RPM drives with the Caviar WD400. If this translates over into 10K-ville, WD will once again pwn the consumer HD roost.

    I got the 400 on a whim when I was sick and I was was pleasantly surprised. I paid as much for it as my Raptor, got 5 times the size and I figure about 95% of the performance. The Sandra I have actually has it running FASTER on the Read than my Raptor (54MB/s to 52MB/s), but it's not really an apple to oranges benchmark as the Raptor is percentage-wise much fuller and I'm much better about backing up than defragging. I also had to pinch myself to see it working and NOT hear it. It's the quietest 7200 I've owned.

    Personally, I'd keep my cash for a little longer or bid $25 bucks on the 36GB tops.

    EDIT ADDED:
    As far as fitting a system with an adapter- I've not had a problem (except maybe some latency), but what motherboard or PC do you have? As far as compatibility- SIZE may be more of an issue than SATA- but the 36 OR the 74GB (anything below 137GB) should not be a problem.


    I'll be using the WD360 for a primary (just windows) and 2 160 ATA's as 2nd drives. I dont have SATA on my board (its a 3+yr old dell). A PCI adapter would be comming w/ it. The only reason I'm looking at getting this 36 GB raptor is beacause a freind has one he isn't using and i have an extra 160GB ATA and we might just trade. Its a complete kit, so the adapter and such shodulnt' be an issue.

    Do you think thats worth it?

    Any thoughts on my idea: Install it as a 2nd drive, installing all needed drivers. Then cloning the old IDE drive onto the raptor and setting the raptor as my primary?

    I'm a little behind on my knowledge of HD technology but when use HD tach to compare my drive w/ historical data of the WD360 I find that the burst read rate is higher (100 over my 92mbs) but hte average read rate of the WD (49.7) is lower than mycurrent drive (52.3). Of course the seek times are lower on the raptor and the cpu usage is lower. What does all that mean? Some numbers are lower, some are higher.
  • QeldromaQeldroma Arid ZoneAh Member
    edited December 2005
    Tange1 wrote:
    I'll be using the WD360 for a primary (just windows) and 2 160 ATA's as 2nd drives. I dont have SATA on my board (its a 3+yr old dell). A PCI adapter would be comming w/ it. The only reason I'm looking at getting this 36 GB raptor is beacause a freind has one he isn't using and i have an extra 160GB ATA and we might just trade. Its a complete kit, so the adapter and such shodulnt' be an issue.

    Do you think thats worth it?

    Any thoughts on my idea: Install it as a 2nd drive, installing all needed drivers. Then cloning the old IDE drive onto the raptor and setting the raptor as my primary?

    I'm a little behind on my knowledge of HD technology but when use HD tach to compare my drive w/ historical data of the WD360 I find that the burst read rate is higher (100 over my 92mbs) but hte average read rate of the WD (49.7) is lower than mycurrent drive (52.3). Of course the seek times are lower on the raptor and the cpu usage is lower. What does all that mean? Some numbers are lower, some are higher.

    Since you asked, I will give you, for what it is worth, my personal perspective-

    I like the WD160GB 8MB cache IDE drive- I've had a couple myself. It's a fine drive and an adequate storage solution. I might trade one straight up for a 74GB Raptor but ... a 36GB? Personally ... no (though people might beat me up about pricing).

    But the Raptor is perceptibly faster than the 160GB and running windows and even a couple of personal apps on the 36GB is a pretty popular and workable idea. I used an Adaptec 1205SA when I used a card controller, but it may be pretty dated now- so I'll let someone who might know more about it chime in. I now have a motherboard that SATA drives take to like a duck to water.

    The common mistake I've seen when migrating to a SATA boot drive is NOT doing the SATA/(and/or RAID) driver installation before installing XP (the WinXP install CD prompts you to press F6 immediately as it is booting to do so). You generally MUST do this for a SATA boot drive. Also, I've stopped using disk-copy tools whenever I do a hard drive upgrade. I personally do a complete data back-up, then zero-wipe/format and fresh install XP and the apps. It gets rid of a lot of bloatware, registry artifacts, and craplets you tend to pick up after a couple of years of use.

    Hope that helps :thumbsup:

    EDIT ADDED: As far as performance measurements go, comparisons are generally done in rigorously controlled environments where a lot of effort is spent making sure the conditions for each device is the same. As an example, the measurements between my Raptor and a friends would not be fair since my disk could be much more heavily fragemented and/or running with different processes and services running in background. These factors can dramatically affect an outcome.

    If you'd like to look at comparisons, I think

    Tom's Hardware Guide

    is a good place for whatever PC component comparison you'd want to do. I've found some good explanation artilces there too. :cool:
  • MadballMadball Fort Benton, MT
    edited December 2005
    SCSI aside, the only thing better than a Raptor is TWO Raptors. My main computer has two 74gb Raptors in Raid 0 and it blows away any of my other computers in hard drive performance (even my wife's rig with WD120's in raid0). Everything loads so much faster. Especially game levels!

    If you're just using if for your programs and OS then I say go for it.
  • Tange1Tange1
    edited December 2005
    Thanks I think i am going to go for it. For the time being it'll be a single 36GB. In the near future I'll see about moving to one or 2 74gb raptors in Raid 0.

    Madball -- Have you read the question I asked above in regards to drivers/cloning the disk onto the 36gb raptor? Any thoughts? I know i could re-install everything but I just dont feel its necessary for that yet. Besides I like to keep images of all my PC's to help restore faster.
  • MadballMadball Fort Benton, MT
    edited December 2005
    I've never attempted to clone one drive to another. No important information is saved on my raid array. I keep two other drives for that purpose, so when it's time to reinstall Windows, all the info I need is on the other drives.
  • Tange1Tange1
    edited December 2005
    Madball wrote:
    I've never attempted to clone one drive to another. No important information is saved on my raid array. I keep two other drives for that purpose, so when it's time to reinstall Windows, all the info I need is on the other drives.

    Thanks, guess I'll just give it a try.
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