Western Digital’s 150GB Raptor hard drive is in a league of its own, but is it for everyone?

Ever wonder what it’s like to drive a Ferrari?
I certainly have. The high-end performance parts, top craftsmanship,
insane speeds, and of course, that cringe-inducing price tag. I may
never drive a Ferrari but I do get to take the 150GB Raptor hard drive
from Western Digital for some spins around the computing world. Is it
worth the sticker shock?

This drive, at almost 2$ per gigabyte, is definitely pricey. I know my
fellow gamers always want to be on the cutting edge of performance, and
the WD1500 is supposed to be just that. Can we justify an upgrade to
such an expensive drive when 500GB drives, over triple the space, can
be had for even cheaper? I have been eyeballing a Raptor for my system
for years and finally made the plunge for my home system. We all want
the FX-60’s, 7900GTX’s, and Raptors for our gaming machines, but
they’re rarely the best bang for the buck, and will definitely hurt our
wallets. Is the Raptor a necessity for our love of all things gaming?

The Drive

Western Digital’s (WD) Raptor series has been the premier line of ATA
hard drives since debuting in 2003. They have been at or near the top
of desktop performance ever since they first came out, rivaling the
performance of some of the best SCSI drives. Early this year WD
introduced the WD1500, a 150GB refresh of their 74GB drive that was
beginning to show age. The Raptor has always been known for high-end
performance because of its 10,000 RPM speeds, and reliability from its
5 year warranty, but there are some new features on the block for the
WD1500:

  • 16MB cache – A new standard for all high-end drives, WD is matching it now, also.
  • 150GB of space – Double the previous Raptors’ space, and a much needed upgrade in the high capacity era.
  • NCQ – Native Command Queuing; increased performance mainly for the server environment.
  • SATA – Serial Advanced Technology Attachment; the first Raptor series to feature the 1.5 Gb/s transfer rates of the SATA bus.

I wasn’t too sure what expect from this drive, other than
speed, speed, and of course, speed. I had hoped for faster in-game map
loads, quicker file compression, and better overall performance than
what I was experiencing with my current hard drives. Let’s take a look
at some numbers and get an idea as to what this drive can actually do.

{mospagebreak heading=The Drive&title=The Tests}
The Tests

My system for the testing is the following:

  • 3200+ AMD Athlon 64
  • 2GB OCZ Platinum Ram
  • BFG 7800GS
  • MSI K8N NEO2 Platinum

We will be comparing the Raptor with my Western Digital 400GB WD400
(also 16MB cache). The WD400 is a pretty high-end drive, at a great
price per gigabyte, and should prove to be a good Raptor competitor.

I am not going to put this drive through all the tests in the world -
we know it’s great, and the numbers out there prove it. I just want to
run a few things that I know every day gamers can use, and get an idea
of some of the benefits we’ll actually see.

Map Loads

Firstly, we will test the performance of the two hard drives in Counter
Strike: Source and 1.6 during map loads. I used the same maps for both
tests, all running 10 bots, from a fresh startup of each game, and then
took the average of three map loads.

As you can see, the benefits of a faster hard drive are more noticeable
in the more modern game, CS:S. The map textures are bigger, more
complex, and put more stress on drives than the older CS 1.6. Even in
1.6, though, loads are slightly faster on the Raptor.

We could expect similar benefits in other high-end games, where level
loads and map changes consist of textures galore. The Raptor seems to
shine in such environments. Now a few seconds here or there may not be
a huge issue to some of us, but either way, over time it can add up. I
know I enjoy the feeling of being “first in” on almost every map, and
never missing those pistol rounds.

{mospagebreak title=Compression and More}

Compression

I have a lot of media, music, movies, etc. I am constantly RARing and
un-RARing files with WinRAR, zipping up pictures for archiving or music
for friends - you name it. Often times these compression tasks take up
more time than I would like, and can be quite a hassle. Anything that
can speed the process up would make me a happy camper. Put these two
hard drives head-to-head, and we get the following:

The
Raptor is a speed demon when it comes to extracting files - a definite
bonus, in my book. The Raptor excels at speeding up daily computing
tasks. One notable thing: I saw roughly similar speeds when RARing
large 700MB files on each hard drive. The main reason, however, could
most likely be attributed to the bottlenecking of my CPU, which does
the load of work when it comes to creating a compressed file.

PCMark05

I used the PCMark05 suite to test the two drives head-to-head, and
threw in my old 180GB IBM GXP hard drive for good measure. The PCMark05
hard drive test suite uses RanDisk developed by Intel. Taken from the
Futuremark PCMark05 FAQ: “Randisk is used to record a trace of disk
activity during usage of typical applications. These traces can then be
replayed to measure the performance of disk operations for that usage”.

Both the current high-end drives easily dominate the 180GB IBM drive,
which during its prime was a top performer. The Raptor excels even
further, backing up my overall feeling of better system performance.

{mospagebreak title=Conclusion}
Noise Factor

Another topic I want to touch on quickly is the noise. My system is
very quiet overall, with Panaflo case fans, the very quiet Antec Neo HE
power supply, and my Zalman 7000b CPU cooler. The big hit on the Raptor
is often considered to be how loud they are when in use, but to be
honest, rarely do I ever notice it. If my TV is on, or if I’m gaming
with headphones, I hear nothing. To verify, I made it totally silent in
the house, did a 700MB file transfer while sitting here typing, and
barely even noticed the drive. By no means is the audible noise from
this drive intrusive.

Conclusion

What can I say? This drive is the Ferrari of desktop hard drives. As I
mentioned before, benchmarks show it even holds its own against SCSI
drives, though I can’t confirm those statistics here because I don’t
have any SCSI drives for comparison. This drive is the all-around best
desktop drive you can buy for speed. It should be noted that the WD400
drive is a top performer in its own right being a 16MB cache drive.
This is why the Raptor doesn’t dominate it like it does with the
180GXP. But the Raptor still easily out-classes its sibling from
Western Digital. There are cons to all this speed; one being a lack of
massive storage capacity, two being the price per gigabyte.

I use my Raptor strictly as an OS and application/game drive. My system
boots up faster. Applications like Photoshop do as well, along with
considerably quicker game loads. I do a lot of media encoding, custom
DVD’s, mp3’s, et cetera, and the Raptor has given me a boost in all
these key areas.

Admittedly, I was previously a naysayer when it came to buying anything
from the Raptor series. It never made sense to me; I could never
justify the expense when other areas of my system were in need, or when
I needed more storage than the Raptor line could supply. I dismissed
the Raptors under the elitist concept of a “name brand” fad, like
buying a $200 pair of designer jeans over a $20 pair of Levis. But
after using this drive for a couple of months now, I have become very
aware of some of its awesome capabilities. It is quite the performer.
In an era when hard drive performance can often be a system bottleneck,
it’s nice knowing my hard drive isn’t holding me back.

So is this drive for you, my fellow gamers out there? I think that
entirely depends on your budget, to be perfectly honest. Would I go out
and buy the drive again if I needed to? Yes, I would, assuming I had
the same extra cash laying around. I bought the WD150 and the WD400 at
the same time…the former for speed and the latter for storage. It
certainly wasn’t cheap, and if I had been on a budget at the time, I
probably would’ve settled on the 400GB drive alone. I can’t honestly
recommend the Raptor to everyone: the price compared to the performance
benefits don’t make this drive a must-have for those of us short on
cash. At 4x the price/GB of other modern drives, we don’t see a
congruent performance boost. But, at the same time, if money is no
object on your next system, and you have $300 laying around, feel free
to spend it on the Raptor. It is definitely a worthwhile investment,
and lives up to its billing as the king of hard drives.

Now excuse me while I take my “Ferrari” around the Counter-Strike: Source block. 10,000 RPM’s here I come.

Pros:

  • Amazing speed
  • Did I mention it is insanely fast?
  • 5 year warranty

Cons:

  • Price per gigabyte (its not all that expensive, but when you factor in its only 150GB, it seems more expensive)

Rating:
9/10*

*To some people, the high price per/GB might weigh in more than just a negative point.

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