The Raptor

Conqueror's Reign · Post by **Conqueror's Reign** » Sun May 20, 2007 9:54 pm

How much of a performance increase in a DAW would you get upgrading to a WD raptor hard drive compared to the other hard drives on the market?

Post by **garyb** » Sun May 20, 2007 10:36 pm

none.
the wd drive is well made and reliable. it's quiet and cool, relatively. it has the best warranty on the market. that's it.

manfriday · Post by **manfriday** » Mon May 21, 2007 10:02 am

The raptors are faster than most other sata disks.. about 10k rpm as opposed to 7200rpm. I think the seek time is also better.
It can translate into a theoretical increase in DAW performance but I think a 7200 rpm drive is fast enough that you would hit another bottleneck before the disk speed became an issue.

The raptors are smaller last time I checked (about 80 gig?) and more expensive than a decent 7200 rpm hard drive.

considering the cost of the disk in relation to the realistic performance benefit and it's relatively small size, I don't see the benefit in getting one.

But I have been wrong before.

Conqueror's Reign · Post by **Conqueror's Reign** » Mon May 21, 2007 2:52 pm

Yes they are expensive and from reading your replies no real gain for audio performance. It must be the warranty your extra paying for.

Post by **garyb** » Mon May 21, 2007 3:11 pm

i always use wd drives, usually the 7200rpm are pleny fast. do get the biggest cache available for the money you have to spend, at least 8mb.

Conqueror's Reign · Post by **Conqueror's Reign** » Mon May 21, 2007 6:51 pm

are there any HD that have more than the 8 mb cache so far the only i have seen are the raptors with 16 mb.

Post by **garyb** » Mon May 21, 2007 6:57 pm

usually it's 2, 4, 8 and some of the more expensive drives have 16 and 32mb caches. 8mb is just fine(more than enough) for all the tracks you'll need.

dawman · Post by **dawman** » Mon May 21, 2007 7:25 pm

The Raptor family is a quality product from a former SCSI expert. Seagate was kicking their asses, so they took their SCSI design and converted it to SATA.

You will only see a performance boost when using the endless streaming technology from Rockwell.

I saw a big difference when going from Giga 2.54 to Giga 3 using the 10k speeds. But when going from the 8MB cache versions ( 360G, and 740G ), to the 16MB version ( 1500X ), i saw a 40 voice polyphony rise. So the design has probably matured as far as it will go.

But Those Dogs Will Hunt,

hifiboom · Post by **hifiboom** » Mon May 21, 2007 8:14 pm

exactly Jimmy,

its a scsi hard disk drive design combined with a SATA interface.

the scsi/SAS drives are mainly produced for professional tasks(RAID Storage systems), while the SATA drives are end consumer products...

The producing quality on SCSI drives is higher and they are built to last longer (normally higher MTBF)

In the last years SATA RAID controllers spread from ground like hell, so WD decided to build a SATA disk drive that is closer to the performance and reliablility of SCSI/SAS drives.
The idea behind is to build small and mid range storage system for servers and that stuff for a much lower price than a SAS/SCSI system.

Although the protocol is not as powerful as SAS standard the disk drives seem more reliable and a bit faster than standard SATA disk drives.

There is really no need to build such a drive into your home PC. But surely nobody does prevent you from doing it.

To bring it to the point, a small performance gain is there compared to a standard sata drive but won`t give you the big boost on standard tasks.

The advantage is more or less the better build quality...

Conqueror's Reign · Post by **Conqueror's Reign** » Mon May 21, 2007 10:18 pm

Thanks guys, yes i have heard that this drive was great for gamers and video editing but didnt hear much on how it would be for audio apps, this clears things up.

dawman · Post by **dawman** » Mon May 28, 2007 6:50 am

It is helpful in raising your polyphony in Gigastudio though, or any other endless streaming technology based apps that samplers use.

Our STS series store samples in RAM which I wish could address more in terms of memory addressing, but this was to be used in recordings where the RAM could be dumped, and reloaded for another track. If SFP goes to 64bit, I wonder if Vista would allow larger loads. RAM based samplers were my cup 'o' tea in the 80's and '90's using the deadly Emulators and their Oberheim DPX sample players.

I prefer streaming apps, but must remain prepared for a HDD failure by having a mirrored copy in the RAID cage for hot swaps if need be. Chance favors the prepared mind.

I also have been told by a recording enthusiast that his extra 2 GB's of ECC Registered RAM can be used in a 4 GB Supermicro set up to recover from a RAM failure, which are rare but do happen.

As They Say In Las Vegas,.......The Show Must Go On !!!