Should I get a Raptor Drive?

[Noozer]

Even WD doesn't recommend their 7200rpm drives for normal desktop use. These
drives aren't worth the extra cost to most users. They are aimed at the
high-end user, running large raid systems, etc.

Now, a 10,000rpm has the possibility of offering better throughput than the
7,200 rpm drives. I'd consider them for the OS/swap drive and PVR/video
editing applications.

 

[kony]

The Raptors have SATA150. Yet some of the newer 7000RPM drives have
SATA300. So, one drive spins faster, the other driver transfers the data
faster. Is Rapor still faster, even it transfers the data slower?

Forget data transfer speed (ATA vs SATA150 vs SATA300), it
is the least important factor in HDD selection. RPM,
platter density, raw size, even cache size matter more.

A drive can't transfer data faster than it can get it onto
of off the platters, with the exception that a slight
increase in buffer size can help up to a point (that point
is usually around 8MB).

The Raptor is a faster desktop SATA drive for it's low
latency and good sustained read speed.

 

[Vanguard]

The Raptors have SATA150. Yet some of the newer 7000RPM drives have
SATA300. So, one drive spins faster, the other driver transfers the
data faster. Is Raptor SATA150 still faster than a non-Raptor
SATA300?

You are vagifying your "speed" criteria. Based on your original
criteria regarding first access to a file (seek time) and load time then
a faster spinning hard drive is still your primary goal.

Have you maxed out your system RAM yet? Unless you have a real need for
the fastest real-time seek and load of files (but then why would you be
using Windows if that was a concern?), you'll get more overall zip to
responsiveness to your computer by upping memory. Of course, if you add
more memory than the OS and applications actually use then it is wasted
memory. Free memory is unused memory and should only been viewed as how
much reserve you have to push more OS or apps into memory.