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Q2 2004 Desktop Hard Drive Comparison: WD Raptor vs the World

 by Anand Lal Shimpi on June 7, 2004 12:05 AM EST
50 Comments | Add A Comment
50 Comments

Overall System Performance - Winstone

Historically, one of the most disk bound system performance tests has been the Winstone suite, composed of two benchmarks: Business Winstone 2004 and Multimedia Content Creation 2004.

Business Winstone 2004 tests the following applications in various usage scenarios:

  • Microsoft Access 2002
  • Microsoft Excel 2002
  • Microsoft FrontPage 2002
  • Microsoft Outlook 2002
  • Microsoft PowerPoint 2002
  • Microsoft Project 2002
  • Microsoft Word 2002
  • Norton AntiVirus Professional Edition 2003
  • WinZip 8.1
Business Winstone 2004

The first thing we see is that the new Raptor only offers a sub-2% performance advantage over the old drive. It is better than nothing, and there's no reason to opt for the old drive over the new one, but it's not a significant performance reason to upgrade.

The benchmarks also point out that if you are still running on an old 7200RPM 2MB cache drive, it is time to upgrade. The upgrade from an aging 75GXP to the latest generation Raptor will yield a perceptible 8% performance improvement, which is more than a lot of CPU upgrades will give you.

Multimedia Content Creation Winstone 2004 tests the following applications in various usage scenarios:

  • Adobe® Photoshop® 7.0.1
  • Adobe® Premiere® 6.50
  • Macromedia® Director MX 9.0
  • Macromedia® Dreamweaver MX 6.1
  • Microsoft® Windows Media™ Encoder 9 Version 9.00.00.2980
  • NewTek's LightWave® 3D 7.5b
  • Steinberg™ WaveLab™ 4.0f
Multimedia Content Creation Winstone 2004

In MCC Winstone 2004, we see that the 2nd generation Raptor once again does not provide a significant real world performance boost over its predecessor, but still manages to turn out the fastest scores for this test.

The IBM 75GXP shows its age in this test, seeing how it manages to be no less than 11% slower than the fastest Raptor. Granted, it's a bad comparison to make, considering the Raptor is the latest and greatest while the 75GXP is years old, but it should serve as a compelling reason to upgrade for those of you still using the old 75GXP (assuming yours hasn't died yet).

Pure Hard Disk Performance Overall System Performance - SYSMark
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  • T8000 - Monday, June 7, 2004 - link

    One point I did not see in the review was the partition information.

    This may be important, because smaller partitions usually perform better, because of their smaller allocation table and possibly even a smaller cluster size.

    It would be best to use a drive image that fits on all drives and load it on each drive for testing, to make sure smaller drives are not given an advantage over bigger drives and fragmentation is the same for all drives.

    Did you use this method?

  • broberts - Monday, June 7, 2004 - link

    It would be nice if you included the actual model numbers of the tested drives.

    Perhaps I'm missing something but ISTM that comparing benchmarks of SATA drives against those running at PATA-100 is questionable. Especially since most of the numbers reported are within 5% of each other. Why weren't SATA models of the 8MB/7200 drives used?

  • jrphoenix - Monday, June 7, 2004 - link

    I have submitted my request to Anand. I would like to see the new Seagate and Hitachi drives. The new 7200 rpm Seagates (shipping this month) support NCQ and are supposedly quicker than the raptors at a lower price!!! :)

  • Crassus - Monday, June 7, 2004 - link

    Anand,

    I would have liked to see also the performance of 2 Raptors of both generations in RAID 0, at least with the integrated controllers (ICH5 etc.).

  • Nighteye2 - Monday, June 7, 2004 - link

    It's good to see this test, but why are the raptors the only SATA drives? It would be good to add in a SATA WD 7200 RPM 8 MB drive (80 GB, 120 GB, or another size)

  • trexpesto - Monday, June 7, 2004 - link

    Since with buying technology part of the equation is how long to hold off, it would be cool to get a head's up on stuff in the pipeline like the NCQ/TCQ drives.
    http://www.seagate.com/cda/newsinfo/newsroom/relea...

  • Apologiliac - Monday, June 7, 2004 - link

    I was startled how quiet the seagate was, because i was wating for it to turn on (?...!) I was also laughing out loud after the new raptor played because it immediately followed by gangsters paradise by weird al on my playlist :p

  • deathwalker - Monday, June 7, 2004 - link

    I am somewhat dissapointed that this review did not include at least a couple of competing SATA drives...such as maybe a Seagate and Maxtor drive. The majority of the community already assumes the advantages of SATA over PATA!!

  • Blain - Monday, June 7, 2004 - link

    A 75GXP? You gotta be kiddin'
    Why not run the other drives against a new Hitachi?

    For crying out loud! :o

  • Z80 - Monday, June 7, 2004 - link

    Your review was right on target for my needs. I was considering upgrading my 120GB Maxtor to a new WD 74GB Raptor. Looks like I can save my money now or spend it on an upgrade that gives more bang for the buck. Thanks
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