I think I would rather have two 500GBs rather than a TB, anyways, 'TIS FUGLY D=

when formated how many gigabytes is it?

Originally Posted by Denis_iii
when formated how many gigabytes is it?

First page, third paragraph: "With an NTFS formatted capacity of 1397.26GB..."

I'd still rather have a 1TB Samsung Spinpoint F1.

Surprisingly comprehensive review of an HDD. Though I'm already looking forward to the 7200.12 500 GB single platter drive...

Originally Posted by The boy 4rm oz
I'd still rather have a 1TB Samsung Spinpoint F1.

Me too.

Just did an upgrade of my media PC to increase performance and reduce power consumption, and was looking at a new 750GB HDD to replace a WD 320GB.

Did my research and went for a Samsung HD753 750GB over WD and Seagate models. It was perfect for me.
WD 750GB Green was price competitive and plentiful at suppliers, but sloooooow.
WD 750GB Black was faster than the Green, but pricier and harder to get.
Seagate 750GB was significantly more expensive, and no faster than the Sammy.
But here was the rub; having made the decision to go with the Samsung I couldn't actually find one! Everyone was sold out and were trying to get more stock, and they kept pushing WD Greens at me. They were even sold out of 640GB and 1TB models. Is this just local to me, or are others finding this as well in other markets?

Having now installed it, I can't believe how fast (XP SP2/2.2GHz X2/nF430) boots are from it! It boots significantly faster than my gaming rig (XP SP2/3.0GHz X2/790FX) with a Samsung HD501LJ 500GB. And both are extremely quiet too. I have to say I'm a convert to Samsung drives, they are very impressive.

750GB drives are the current sweet spot IMO. The price jump to 1/1.5TB drives are a bit hard to justify for me with my current storage needs. I've always bought drives at this price point for all my upgrades: 2->8->20->80->200->250->320->500->750GB.

Is the reason you are comparing to the 150GB raptor because its 3.5" while the velociraptor is smaller?

Would like to see that compared.

wow, that's long random access time.

i prefer my WD Black 1TB over any of those, lowest random access time of any 7200rpm drive :) great for performance drive (i don't do a lot of large sequential file transfer)

how can it boot faster than VelociRaptor?

I would guess the high access time is because of physically so many heads in the drive. Smaller drives with less capacity have less heads and so they weigh less and accelerate faster to find a new place on the platter.

This is just a wild guess, though, I have no knowledge of these things.

I'll wait for samsung 1.5TB SP F1

Hey I have this!!!

Samsungs are hard to find as they are primarily used by OEMs and samsung itself in its PCs, and the remaining ones are sold standalone. As they don't make that many, that's why they are valuable.
Still, 1TB or 1.5 is a very nice thing to have (and is planned) as game installs get stupidly big.

A few questions:
Is the Raptor drive in question the new Velociraptor (SATA II) or Raptor X (SATA I)?
Did you test with the latest firmware? I've heard reports that the 1.5TB drive freezes at times, causing it to drop from RAID arrays, or freezes your OS until it comes back. A Firmware update apparently helped, but it slightly decreases performance.

i wouldnt have this as a booting drive, i'd have it as a media storage, in which case its just fine the way it is, and when lanning and peeps want to watch/pimp goodies from it its burst and constant read/write rates will be just what the doctor ordered. best in a home server imo

Originally Posted by ParaHelix.org
I think I would rather have two 500GBs rather than a TB, anyways, 'TIS FUGLY D=

Fugly? How pretty does an internal HDD have to look? :|

Originally Posted by Nexxo
Fugly? How pretty does an internal HDD have to look? :|

It's not what's on the outside but what's on the inside that counts :P

Alas I just got a slower drive for my new build because a few seconds here and there doesn't bother me to much when the price is right.

Originally Posted by wuyanxu
how can it boot faster than VelociRaptor?

Blame platter size and disc geometry. Read speeds on the outer ring of platter is almost twice as fast as on inner ring. Seagate can achieve faster read speeds with 375GB platter even if it's 7200RPM, while Velociraptor uses 75GB at 10.000RPM.
I've done some measurements myself - Seagate 7200.10 series has max read speed 75MB/s, avg 60MB/s. 7200.11 has max read speed 115MB/s, avg 89MB/s. Samsung Spinpoint 500GB has max read speed 116MB/s, avg 89MB/s. I wish some of our customers has bought 750GB Spinpoint so that I can measure how does it perform. Theoreticaly it uses 3×334GB(75% of platter size is used for 750GB) platters and if samsung has excluded inner ring of platter it should, theoreticaly, score much better average read/write speeds.

Samsungs are hard to find as they are primarily used by OEMs and samsung itself in its PCs, and the remaining ones are sold standalone. As they don't make that many, that's why they are valuable.
Still, 1TB or 1.5 is a very nice thing to have (and is planned) as game installs get stupidly big.

never had a problem finding them personally

What I question is the reliability of these drives. Shortly after release I bought 3 and for my use they were very fast (recording, editing and trans coding HD TV files Aprox 7~9hrs a day). For the 1st couple months all was fine, but then one started to act up (would really slow down or completely disappear from the system) and i was able to retrieve the data from it but shortly after it died. A couple weeks later both the other drives started the same thing and I updated the firmware on them and it seemed to fix the problems for about a week when on of those two went the way of the 1st. So out of 3 drives I have one that works and I cant even trust it.

In the next month or so I am going to build a new i7 system and think I will go with four WD 1tb re3 drives and hope they are more reliable.

when formated how many gigabytes is it?

Here is what they show in windows.

http://webpages.charter.net/chew_toy/DFI8400/Drives.PNG

the raptor in question is the SATA I 150GB - NOT the VelociRaptor. That drive is 300GB and 2.5".

I like I said before, I assume they use the old raptor because all the other drives are 3.5"

Originally Posted by Omnituens
the raptor in question is the SATA I 150GB - NOT the VelociRaptor. That drive is 300GB and 2.5".

I like I said before, I assume they use the old raptor because all the other drives are 3.5"

# Cache: 16MB
# Form Factor: 3.5"
# Features: The 2.5" WD Veloci Raptor is enclosed in a 3.5" enterprise-class mounting frame.
# Parts: 5 years limited
# Labor: 5 years limited
# Model #: WD3000GLFS
# Item #: N82E16822136260

but the drive they are using is Western Digital 150GB 10,000RPM Raptor

Originally Posted by Omnituens
but the drive they are using is Western Digital 150GB 10,000RPM Raptor

Ya I know I was just clairfying that it is the older version of the Raptor since its only 150GB.

WD also offers a 150 and 80GB Velociraptor. They're available through the customer loyalty program.
https://websupport.wdc.com/store/upgrade/products.asp

That's why I asked.

ah, i see. im going to assume they are still using the old raptor, since they dont state velociraptor in the article.