Old raptors worth using

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I will have a backup drive on the network from the linksys router so I was more worried about performance and the speed I can transfer files.

The reason i was saying are the raptors even worth as most 7200 RPM drives out perform them now.
I was disappointed that they are not putting 32MB cache on 500GB drives.

I think the WD Caviar Black's have 32mb cache.
 
I will go against the grain here...personally I think the Raptors are definitely worth using.

Access times still beat all the new 7200RPM drives - thats what makes your system feel more responsive. I use two older 74gb raptors in my rig, one for XP-64, the other for windows 7 and I must say I'm very pleased with the performance.

I like them more than my seagate 7200.11 640gb hard drive to be honest.

I will make an analogy: The raptors are like a car thats geared really low and can hit it off the line super fast, but top out quick. The fastest 32mb cache drives are geared medium-medium/high and can do decent off the line, but have a high top end. Now are you gonna be driving around in New York, racing stoplight to stoplight? Or are you gonna be on open highway most of the time where you can open up your top end to the max?

I expect the city driving to happen around 80% of the time - unless you're always copying and editing gigantic files you wont notice a difference.

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That's my opinion at least, others might have a better argument for going the other way.
 
Thats a good point about the access times but I still don't think its worth it, as I say you've got to factor in the extra heat, noise, and airflow impedance.
That said it is nice to have volumes on seperate hard drives, that way you can be gaming from one disk or array and doing something else with the other disk or array without impacting performance.

There are definately pro's and cons to be concidered. Personally I always end up filling my case with as many hard drives as it can hold :D but then I always fill the darn things up too.
 
I will have a backup drive on the network from the linksys router so I was more worried about performance and the speed I can transfer files.

The reason i was saying are the raptors even worth as most 7200 RPM drives out perform them now.
I was disappointed that they are not putting 32MB cache on 500GB drives.

i have a 32mb cache on a 500gb drive.... just go seagate.
 
That's not a fair comparison at all. The 7200.11 drives use 320GB platters.... I'm also willing to bet the access times are significantly better on the seagate, which have nothing to do with cache size yet influence startup and load times pretty much the most.
 
You should run seagate seatools on your raptors and run every error check you can on them. If one fails in anyway just RMA them both - this is what I ended up doing. They will send you two new ones - run seatools on them again to check for any errors and to prime them past the initial chance failure region of the reliability bathtub curve.

I dont know if the temperature is being reported accurately, but my raptors are running at 79°F and 82°F. My 640gb seagate is also running at 82°F.

Another thing to consider is a good defragmenting program. The windows built in one is outdated. Newer defrag programs such as O&O defrag will restructure your file order to provide better performance.
 
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