Hi to All

Once I finish the mind numbing project I am working on at the moment, it will be time for me to build a new PC. I am looking to have something quick and quiet. Current favourite is a Shuttle based system with a big hard drive externally for backup and a small and fast one internally.

Now here is the rub. I like the look of the Raptor 10,000rpm series drives, but have read conflicting reports on the noise level they emit. Some say they are quiet, others reckon not. Is it a case of them being a bit variable? Anyone have experience with them?

Failing that, I am also tempted to run a 16 or 32 Gig solid state hard drive for C: Read and write speeds are similar to the Raptor series, but I know these will be quiet. Again, anyone got experience with these? Something like Mtron Mobi?

Chris

The Raptor drives are not particularly fast and the transfer speeds of some 7200rpm drives are in fact higher. The seek time is marginally lower, but in real terms you will never notice that.

Read and write speeds on SSD's are a misnomer and discs can often outperform them when doing random reads. Add to that that SSD's have a limited number of writes you can do and that you would have to provide a normal hard drive to run the swap file, index files and anything else that changes lots.

So in my opinion you are better off either getting a nice big 3.5" drive (750GB up now come with 32MB cache on many models) or if you want quiet get a high performance SATA II 2.5" drive.

If the raptor doesn't have fluid dynamic bearings it won't be that quiet, if it does have them it might be fairly quiet.

A very quiet drive is the samsung spinpoint F1 750GB, again in my opinion.

If it was me I'd run a pair of large 2.5" drives in RAID1 and then have a small NAS device with 2 or 4 drive in RAID 1/5 stuck out the way for storage.

The Raptor drives are not particularly fast and the transfer speeds of some 7200rpm drives are in fact higher. The seek time is marginally lower, but in real terms you will never notice that.

Read and write speeds on SSD's are a misnomer and discs can often outperform them when doing random reads. Add to that that SSD's have a limited number of writes you can do and that you would have to provide a normal hard drive to run the swap file, index files and anything else that changes lots.

So in my opinion you are better off either getting a nice big 3.5" drive (750GB up now come with 32MB cache on many models) or if you want quiet get a high performance SATA II 2.5" drive.

If the raptor doesn't have fluid dynamic bearings it won't be that quiet, if it does have them it might be fairly quiet.

A very quiet drive is the samsung spinpoint F1 750GB, again in my opinion.

If it was me I'd run a pair of large 2.5" drives in RAID1 and then have a small NAS device with 2 or 4 drive in RAID 1/5 stuck out the way for storage.

Cheers for the input. I have a raid setup at the moment, but want to make less noise and heat. I am thinking the Raptor series are better for read / write speeds at the mechanical level. Transfer speeds are another matter and I can see the advantage of a 32Mb buffer for writing, but this will not make much difference to reading.

I am looking to go from homebrewed frankinstien quick machine, to small quiet simple Shuttle or similar.

Chris

Cheers for the input. I have a raid setup at the moment, but want to make less noise and heat. I am thinking the Raptor series are better for read / write speeds at the mechanical level. Transfer speeds are another matter and I can see the advantage of a 32Mb buffer for writing, but this will not make much difference to reading.

I am looking to go from homebrewed frankinstien quick machine, to small quiet simple Shuttle or similar.

Chris

Nope the raptors are no faster for read/write speeds as that is what is directly related to the transfer speeds.

The higher capacity drives have a higher areal density so even though they are only spinning at 7200 rpm as opposed to a shade over 10k, more sectors pass under the head in a given time on the 7,200 rpm drives. This results in a better read/write speed.

The only time the 10k drive may give you an advantage is if you are reading lots of random data (small files) spread over the disk due to the lower seek time.

The 7200's will use less power and be quieter, so honestly I'd save your money. The raptor is a marketing device. If you wanted raw performance then you would get a FC drive or 15.4k SAS drive.

Many storage arrays now use SATA II drive because the performance is good enough for use and the price per GB is massively less.

So my point, due to all the other factors to do with a disk outside of rotational speed the raptors are not faster and may be slower than the 7200 drives.

I can't find any up to date public domain reviews i'm afraid as most are 2+ years out of date.

Just noticed you say a 32MB buffer will make little change to read speeds. This isn't the case as the drive can use read ahead algorithms, such that is it feeding you from the cache while it seeks to the next bit of data. This speeds things up a very noticeable amount.

Another vote for the Samsungs if you want a quiet drive and decent performance

Interesting that I am not finding any current opinion on the Raptor series either.

On hard drives, I currently stripe and backup in one setup. The bigger drives do have higher density, so I suppose a 750MB hard disk with a big buffer should be quick ish.

Next up, finding a graphics card with DDVI interface and no fan.

Chris

Dual DVI and no fan?

MSI do a NVidia 8600GTS that is fanless:

NX8600GTS-T2D256EZ-HD : MSI GeForce 8600GTS 256MB PCI-E Passive Cooled : nVidia PCI Express Graphics Cards : novatech.co.uk

Quiet PC UK - Hard Drives, HDD silencers and Optical Drives

Solid State Drives suck - The INQUIRER

I can't say what I think of the performance of the green power drives in that linkon an open forum. Quiet and low power I'm sure.