[OblivionLord]

Not quite. The Velociraptor still has the Seagate very beat when it comes to access time.

I thought you were selling a 320gb version of the velociraptor. Your just selling a 7200.11 320gb Seagate HDD for $65. If I am wrong then what exactly are you selling or are you selling anything since it just says you found a hdd?

 

[bobrocks95]

Lol, Spyhop isn't selling anything. He just found a great HDD.

 

[OblivionLord]

To be honest I would still rather have my WD 640gb AAKS considering I can partition 10-20% as the first partition being that it is the outermost edge of the platters and still have a residual 480GB of space for archiving on the second partition. By doing this I can just about match the speed of a Velociraptor for random access time as well as Read speed.

I use Roadkil's Disk Speed Version 2.0 because it shows random access times for separate partitions on the same drive which HD Tune, HD Tach, Crystal Disk, Atto... all do not.

Therefore here is my performance results...


Click on it for access to the full size.

Here is a test done on a Velociraptor that wasn't partitioned....
Mini review: WD VELOCIRAPTOR(S) - OutOfSpecs.gr

If you scroll down on that thread then you will see this image....
http://img242.imageshack.us/img242/450/1xvelociraptorich10rroaiz6.jpg

As you can see, his raptor and my drive are neck and neck. 1ms difference for random access and 2mb read difference.

Of course if he partitioned his raptor then he would clearly beat me, but as it is I am partitioning 16.5% of the 600gb that is readable on my drive which is 100gb for the first partition. That leaves me with a good 500gb for archiving on the second. All for $75 shipped at NewEgg.com. If he partitioned the same % amount on his drive, then out of the 300gb visable, he would only be able to get 50gb for his first partition out of 16.5%. 50gb is a bit too small for me.

I was considering doing 10% of the 600gb giving me 60gb for the first partition since I've been only using 30gb of the 100gb I have now. I'm sure at that point I would be able to match the Raptors performance although it matters little to me since I'm virtually neck and neck as it is. However I think having 30gb free for the main OS drive out of the 30gb that I'm already using may be risky since a lot of games today are averaging around the 10gb area. At least having 60gb free from the 100Gb gives me a bit of headroom.

Download Roadkil's Diskspeed 2.0 and see what you get for performance.

Here is the link...
Roadkil.Net

 

[Princess Garnet]

On one of my 640GB AAKS drives, I got 102.90MB/s for the maximum. On the other 640GB AAKS drive, I got 109.04MB/s. Neither is partitioned, and neither is an OS drive. On my OS drive, which is a 320GB AAKS, scores were quite lower at 72.98MB/s. My second 320GB AAKS, though, got 100.59MB/s as the maximum. I'm not sure why the 320GB drive the OS is on is that much slower. The page file is on a separate 2GB partition on the second 320GB hard drive.

I should also mention that my 320GB drives, especially the one the OS is on, were a bit louder than the 640GB ones, but none were very loud. The 640GB ones were very quiet.

 

[OblivionLord]

Use this program on your 640gb drives...
http://www.brothersoft.com/d.php?soft_id=188688&url=http://www.withopf.com/tools/aam/winaam-29.zip

It allows you to adjust the acoustic levels of the drive. Quieter makes it run slower, louder makes it run normally.

Also see what particular 320gb AAKS you have. There are 2 versions...
Single platter = WD3200AAKS-00B3A0
Dual platter = WD3200AAKS-00SBA0

If you have a dual 166gb platter 320gb then that would answer why it is slower.

 

[Princess Garnet]

They're already pretty quiet. The "loudest" one is the OS drive, and as that one already has slow performance compared to the other ones, the last thing I want to do is slow it down even more. As I said, the two 320GB ones are "louder", but they're not necessarily loud at all.

As for the 320GB drives, they're both the same WD3200AAKS-00VYA0 model, which is the older double platter ones. That might explain why they're slower, period, but it wouldn't explain why one of the same model is much slower than another of the same model.

I actually just realized something, and I'm pretty sure the one is just slower because it's nearly full (~57GB free) versus the faster one, which only has the Windows 7 Beta, and a 2GB partition for the page file for the Windows XP installation on the first, on it (~274GB free). Hard drives are a bit slower as they fill up, but it's often not by a drastic amount, so that much of a difference seems awfully big.

 

[dolphin1984]

Was thinking a geting me one of these till i found out how crap seagate barricuda's are when i bought a computer two years ago it had a 300gb barricuda installed within 6 months it had broke i got a 500gb Seagate barricuda again with my new computer today its not recognised less than 6 months after i got it i spent an hour trying to fix it never again am i buying a Seagate Barricuda. Ive had a Maxtor Diamond for over 3 years which still works pissed off lost so much stuff /end rant

 

[SCHUMI_4EVER]

My Seagate Barracudas are all fine. Seagate used to be a really good name but recently they have been havimg firmware troubles with their drives, especially those delivered to North America.