I have a few programs that could REALLY benefit from a faster drive, but I don't want to go with an SSD for several reasons. Currently I have a WD drive with 7200 RPM 16 MB cache. How much faster would this drive be?
Newegg.com - Western Digital VelociRaptor WD1500HLFS 150GB 10000 RPM 16MB Cache SATA 3.0Gb/s 3.5" Internal Hard Drive -Bare Drive
I would say in real life usage, probably about 10-15% improvement. It will be noticeable, but not night and day.
You might want to consider one of the WD Black drives instead. I've read some reviews that place them on par with the Raptors, yet they offer more capacity for a lower cost.
Actually the Rapter is faster, but I don't think it's that much ahead to consider giving up space in place of speed.
One thing I would say is to stay away from the Caviar Black SATA 6 drives (64mb cache) though they are slightly faster than their 32mb cousins, they are considerably louder. See my thread here - SATA 6 WD Caviar Black 1TB
On the other hand I can't imagine the Rapter being any quieter since it runs at 10,000 RPMS!
I've got two of these as my boot drive in two different machines. They're great. I have much larger 7200RPM SATA drives for data, but I wanted the 10KRPM speed and MUCH faster access times for the OS.
I can say that they are almost silent. It's amazing.
Also, I would recommend getting it from Amazon rather than Newegg... only $89 plus free shipping and no sales tax (Newegg charges tax if you live in CA).
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