[H]ot ? 300G velociraptor $140

Now that's a wee bit interesting... not sure if I'd go for one these days, however. If it was $99 or so, I'd be all over it. :D
 
Pivo504 said:
I need speed & efficiency not storage capacity..
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Not a good deal then. Get a 60G SSD after rebate for around $100.

But if you need capacity & good speed, this is certainly ~ 1/3 or 1/4 the price of 300G's of ssd's.
 
The Seagate Momentus XT is larger, faster, cheaper, and less power hungry. Raptors are dead. The only rason you'd buy one over an XT might be for warranty.
 
ordovician said:
The Seagate Momentus XT is larger, faster, cheaper, and less power hungry. Raptors are dead. The only rason you'd buy one over an XT might be for warranty.
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wow they are cheap and fast! I didn't even know about these! Thanks
 
Hmm so tempting. I Just might pick up an xt for my second rig. I just HATE seagate's RMA policy. They make you buy special packaging for $20 dollars if you need to rma, and yet don't return it to you when you get your drive back, so you can't use seagate's replacement packaging for future RMA's, i.e. just one $20 dollar investment for current and future RMA's and that's plus shipping. That was the case about 3-4 years ago. Looks like I'll have to head on over to their site and see whats up now.
 
ordovician said:
The Seagate Momentus XT is larger, faster, cheaper, and less power hungry. Raptors are dead. The only rason you'd buy one over an XT might be for warranty.
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You have OBVIOUSLY never seen/read a review pitting the Momentus v. Raptor. Momentus is hardly better than any standard HDD. Hybrid drives are a joke in comparison.
 
Robstar said:
Uh ?

Link
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Uh ... YES. Thanks for the link. Linking an article with MSRP has nothing to do with the real street price of what these things sell for. Every place I commonly shop from had them for $135 or less.

Dark Prodigy said:
You have OBVIOUSLY never seen/read a review pitting the Momentus v. Raptor. Momentus is hardly better than any standard HDD. Hybrid drives are a joke in comparison.
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I also wanted to thank Robstar again for his article which said:

"The Seagate Momentus XT is an excellent notebook hard drive and under the right circumstances surpasses drives well out of its class. The 4GB of cache helps to significantly improve the access of common read/write patterns that a user might see in their daily routine. At its worst it still offers a significant boost in performance over its older 7200.4 brother, but at its best it outperforms even the 10,000RPM Western Digital Velociraptor desktop hard drive.

For the user who might load the same programs multiple times a day this drive might be a better choice than a low-capacity SSD. At $155 for a 500GB Momentus XT it is priced under even the 80GB Intel X25-M SSD which currently sells for about $200. Power users might still want to consider other options in their workhorse machines however, if speed is worthwhile at all costs and capacity is less of a concern.

Overall the Seagate Momentus XT makes the most sense for a anyone who just wants a noticeable increase in notebook performance, while still getting capacity without a huge jump in price. For its intended market this drive is very hard to pass up, especially considering the highest capacity model only costs $155 retail."

And they are correct, that it depends totally on your usage. If you have apps that you frequently use, and boot time is important to you, but you still want capacity plus cheapness, then this is definitely worthy of your consideration over a velociraptor. The velociraptor will consume more power, and it won't fit in most laptops, and for boot times and common application load times it will be noticeably slower. Obviously on straight up throughput tests the velociraptor is going to win. 10,000 RPM probably helps that a bit. But for the right needs, the Momentus XT will certainly be the better deal, and it's the first hybrid drive that's actually NOT a joke, so your statement is the only joke on this thread.

As for the deal, this would still be good for someone who owns a 300GB and wants a second for RAID 0. I would still like to see these hit $100 for this model. When you can get an SSD for $100 (if you watch the sales) for your OS and a decent hard drive for $50 for storage, it makes $140 look like not such a good buy.
 
This deal is for the 300GB Velociraptor @ $139.
If it were the 600GB it might be worth considering but for the 300GB.
That sets the price per gigabyte at 46.3 cents per gigabyte.

You can get a really fast 2TB WD Black for only $179 from Newegg.
That's a price of 9 cents per gigabyte.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produ..._western_digital_black-_-22-136-456-_-Product


So the 300GB velociraptor even on sale is FIVE TIMES more expensive than the 2TB 7200 rpm drive which is nearly as fast.
2TB review by hardwarecanucks:
http://www.hardwarecanucks.com/foru...al-caviar-black-2tb-hard-drive-review-12.html

Now you create a 500GB shortstroke partition on that 2TB drive and you'll have sustained transfer speeds on that partition that are faster than the velociraptor. And you'll have 1.5TB left over for miscellaneous storage too. If I would buy another drive, it would be a 2nd 2TB WD Black so I could raid with the one that I already have. It just makes more sense from a dollars, storage, and performance point of view. But that's just my opinion.
 
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I stand by my recommendation for the Momentus XT over the Raptor. You can do cherry-picked synthetic benches and sustained transfer benchies until you're blue in the face. The XT is faster in side-by-side comparisons, and that's what matters... at least for a boot drive, which I presume that's what most of us would be using it for. The Raptor may have an edge in writes, but it is totally not worth all the down sides (heat, power, noise, cost...)
 
I would buy a ssd over a normal hard drive if you want speed.

For storage I would buy the 2TB wd drives now which cost only 100 dollars.
 
Isn't this last gen?

Even if it's new gen........I would still save for an ssd.
 
TheBuzzer said:
I would buy a ssd over a normal hard drive if you want speed.

For storage I would buy the 2TB wd drives now which cost only 100 dollars.
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I agree. I don't want to be in the middle.

Either very fast (SSD) or lots of storage for your money.

I'm using a 500GB F3 for my boot drive now as it is sufficient for all my software and I got it at a good price ($45).
 
I think the 1TB Samsung F3s are a better deal (regularly on sale for $60-65) right now. They compare very favorably to the raptors and are easily relegated to pure storage drives when you get your SSD down the road (prices are falling, they WILL be the standard in another year or two).
 
For what it is worth, the 300G VRs don't run that hot. Nothing like the older 74G models. I'm using a pair of x25m for my main OS and a hand full of programs, but most of my Steam directory, other games, and anything that does a lot of writing stays on the VR array.
 
Just picked a 2tb Caviar Black @ MC for $189 and its pretty speedy for a 7200rpm drive vs. a Raptor (if you're going the non-SSD route).
 
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