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Benchmarks
Installing Windows XP
The first thing I did (naturally) was install XP and along the way I decided
to time the installation after entering the cd-key/network info/domain info.
XP finishes installing much sooner on the raptor as expected
1GB File Copy Between Partitions
In this test I copied the 1GB Half-Life Steam folder between partitions on the
hard drives.
The raptor beats my old 30GB by a wide margin (not surprising)
PC Mark 2004
I only did the hard drive portion of the test in PC Mark.
Again, my old 30GB gets smoked
BF1942 Local Server Load Times
Initiated BF1942 and started a local listen server (not dedicated) then timed
it.
In smaller maps (Wake, Stalingrad, & Gazala) the difference isn't that large,
but once you start getting into the larger maps (Philippines & Market Garden)
the gap becomes apparent.
HD Tach
Started HD Tach for both hard drives and printed the final results.
The raptor is about twice as fast give or take, although the raptor's CPU utilization
is slightly higher
Conclusion
The graphs speak for themselves; this thing is a beast! So for the people who've been waiting to get one, this might be the right time as the raptor is hovering around $125 bucks currently. If you really want to get hardcore performance, then get two of them in Raid 0. Overall, this hard drive has met my expectations and then some. Performance wise, it beats every 7200RPM hard drive right now, but it's still not as fast as SCSI overall(it's sandwiched between mainstream 7200RPM IDE and high-end 10000RPM SCSI hard drives). For gaming, it improves loading times noticably so you can get into the action immediately. Complaints... I only have one: it emits a slightly high pitched squeal, but if you have a lot of case fans you won't hear it. Lastly, this drive it rather small (36.7GB), so if you need storage, get a different hard drive or the new 74GB version of the raptor just released by Western Digital (it's kind've spendy though).
Pros
Excellent performance
Speeds up game load times
Installs programs faster
Cons
Slight high-pitched squealing sound
Kind've spendy considering it's only a 36.7 GB drive
