Q2 2004 Desktop Hard Drive Comparison: WD Raptor vs the World
by Anand Lal Shimpi on June 7, 2004 12:05 AM EST- Posted in
- Storage
Final Words
The importance of this review, the reviews to come and our new HDD test suite in general is that we are finally able to bring real world hard drive performance numbers to you all. So, what do our real world performance tests show us?
They show us that, for the most part, all of the current generation 7200RPM 8MB cache drives perform about the same. Although there are much more significant differences between the three current-gen contenders here in the synthetic tests, in the real world, we see that they all perform just about the same.
Our tests have also shown us that the 10,000RPM Raptor can offer a noticeable, but not dramatic, performance improvement over the current generation 7200RPM 8MB cache drives. While the performance improvement is there, it's not as significant as the synthetic tests would have you believe.
More importantly than all of this is the fact that our tests have shown the true age of older 2MB cache drives. The 75GXP, once the most popular drive around, is definitely showing its age and the performance of the even newer Maxtor D740X-6L isn't that far off. If you're still running an older drive, you will see a performance improvement by going to even one of the current generation 7200RPM 8MB cache drives. It is all too often that we look at hard drives as capacities alone, but while a 80GB drive may be suiting your needs just fine an upgrade to a newer 120+ GB drive will give you more space and a performance boost to match. The thing to keep in mind is that the more up-to-date you keep your hard drive performance, the faster your system will feel and the more performance you'll get out of every upgrade of your CPU, motherboard, chipset, etc.
With our new test suite, we are committed to bringing you reviews of any drive that's available. All we ask is that you give us feedback. If you'd like to see a drive reviewed, let us know and we'll do our best to get it reviewed under the new test suite. We're going to be focusing on IDE/SATA drives first, but we will definitely move to include SCSI drives as well as controllers in the very near future. All you need to do is drop us a line and tell us what you'd like to see.
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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 :pdeathwalker - 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