• Registered: 2009-08-02
  • Posts: 27

Topic: Waste of time and a waste of money?

Hey guys!

How's it all going?... so I am sitting here on my N10J and deciding what type of upgrades I could do with this netbook, and also possibly my other ageing Toshiba that I use for gaming.

Through my previous posts regarding upgrades to faster RAM and HDD's, and from the constructive feedback from u guys, I've come up with another thing I could do, but could be a complete waste of time (and maybe money too).

What I was thinking... was replacing the current 250GB HDD in the N10J for a raptor HDD, I've seen one for about A$300 for a 150GB 10,000rpm HDD. I don't care too much about space, just mainly speed. But what I am worried about is if replacing the HDD with such a device was going to make battery life totally crap, and also if it's going to make the little innocent netbook sound like a jetfighter? My other question is actually regarding my Toshiba Tecra A7 notebook, it is about 2 years old now and running the older SATA type HDD, could I fit a SATA2 HDD in it, or must I have a SATA type HDD? I am thinking of putting the Raptor HDD in either my Toshiba for gaming and quicker response, or my netbook for the speed of read/write capabilities and response times. What do u guys think? Better spent in the Toshiba? I know I could replace the HDD to SSD, but I've heard a few issues regarding dead spots and problems with reading/writing speeds.

The Raptor HDD in question is actually the "Western Digital VELOCI Raptor 2.5" 150GB 10000RPM SATA 16MB".

Thanks, I appreciate all feedback given! smile

Netbook: (NEW) Asus Eee PC 1201n/ Atom 330 Dual Core / 4GB DDR2 800MHz RAM / 250GB HDD / Nvidia ION / Windows 7 Home
Notebook: Samsung R620/ Intel Core 2 Duo 2.53 (P8700)/ 4GB DDR2 RAM/ 500GB HDD/ ATi HD 4650 (1GB)/ Windows 7 Home

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  • From: Belgium
  • Registered: 2009-02-28
  • Posts: 621
  • User Karma: 27

Re: Waste of time and a waste of money?

As far as I know, the VelociRaptors are 12.5mm high instead of the notebook standard 9.5mm, so I don't think they'll fit in any of those notebooks. But it would be crap anyway, because they would sound like hell and suck up battery life like there's no tomorrow. Besides, Western Digital recommends keeping the VelociRaptor inside the 3.5" cooling bay, because it will run too hot without.

And if you're still thinking of getting one: for that price you can get an SSD of about 128Gb that's even a fair amount faster than the VelociRaptor.

Don't make me "touch" you :-D

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3 Reply by web3221 (edited by web3221 2009-10-04 10:18:51)

  • From: Texas
  • Registered: 2008-11-09
  • Posts: 1,789
  • User Karma: 17

Re: Waste of time and a waste of money?

been there not a good idea -  sad  poopie- and yes it sucks - get a good 7200 500gb or > ssd when price is down @ a reasonable level

see you folks in a while, got some bidness to take care.    tongue              10-2-2009  BM-#1

N10J-A1 ~ 128gb ssd ~ 2gb Sodimm, W7

Here's to you ! Best Business Partner Ever - Brittany-Marie ~  2-2-1998 to 10-2-2009

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  • Registered: 2009-08-05
  • Posts: 92
  • User Karma: 5

Re: Waste of time and a waste of money?

VelociRaptor is not a notebook HDD despite the form factor. Its more like a cheaper alternative to a 2.5" SAS server-disk. As for the SATA/SATA2, the newer device can allways fall back to compatibily mode and operate as a regular SATA drive, the difference is in the speed (150Gb vs 300 Gb), but there is no drive yet to fully utilize that speed, so why care? IMHO there is no need to change anything on the N10, it is at the edge what a netbook can do. Besides changing to an SSD. SSD is good big_smile

N10Jc @ 2.0GHz - WinXP/7 - Resolume 2.41 - Behringer BCR2000 - Pocket VJ
What's better than a powerfull small portable device? An even smaller powerfull portable device! I'm the owner of a brand new Nokia 5800 XM! big_smile

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  • Registered: 2009-08-02
  • Posts: 27

Re: Waste of time and a waste of money?

Awesome! Thanks guys, as usual u never fail to deliver. smile

I didn't know about the physical size of the Raptor HDD, but definitely can see the logical side of it being louder and generating more heat inside a laptop/netbook case.

But going back to SSDs, I've read on a couple of forums about certain so-called 'Black Spots' or issues with reading and writing speeds of data etc. The black spots I think is referring to the amount of times the certain area of the SSD hard drive can be read and written to, and until a time when it cannot be written to anymore and that area 'dies'? Is this still true on SSD's, or have they rectified the problem more or less? But I've noticed quite a few members of this forum group have opted for the 7200rpm HDD option, so is this a unanimous decision? I guess this option is a good balance between cost effectiveness and speed.

But as usual guys, your opinions have helped heaps! Cheers! smile

Netbook: (NEW) Asus Eee PC 1201n/ Atom 330 Dual Core / 4GB DDR2 800MHz RAM / 250GB HDD / Nvidia ION / Windows 7 Home
Notebook: Samsung R620/ Intel Core 2 Duo 2.53 (P8700)/ 4GB DDR2 RAM/ 500GB HDD/ ATi HD 4650 (1GB)/ Windows 7 Home

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  • Registered: 2008-12-07
  • Posts: 144
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Re: Waste of time and a waste of money?

You won't have any kind of issues with a current generation SSD. Stick with Intel or OCZ vertex or agilitys.

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  • Registered: 2008-11-14
  • Posts: 60

Re: Waste of time and a waste of money?

kevinf wrote:

You won't have any kind of issues with a current generation SSD. Stick with Intel or OCZ vertex or agilitys.

In regards to OCZ Vertex, basically any Indilinx based SSD will perform the same as this (including the cheaper g.skill Falcon).

As well as Indilinx based drives, the new Intel G2 drives perform much better than the first gen. Stock availability of the G2 is a bit of a problem now...

http://forums.whirlpool.net.au/forum-re … ?t=1274902

That's a good read-up on SSDs. Basically get an SSD because it's now much faster than a Raptor (I'm upgrading from a 150GB Raptor to a 128GB g.skill Falcon).

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  • Registered: 2008-12-07
  • Posts: 144
  • User Karma: 1

Re: Waste of time and a waste of money?

I'm running a 160GB Intel G1 in my N10 and an 80GB Intel G2 in my desktop. Having the SSD in the N10 made a huge difference; Steam used to take forever to load, now it just takes awhile wink

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  • From: Belgium
  • Registered: 2009-02-28
  • Posts: 621
  • User Karma: 27

Re: Waste of time and a waste of money?

The problem with the latest Intel SSD's is they are really, really fast. They're so fast, the bus on the N10 becomes the bottleneck. I've seen lots of people buying the latest Intel SSD and not getting more throughput than the much cheaper OCZ Vertex series. So the Intel on an Atom platform (maybe ION does better) is a waste of money, as cheaper SSD's will also reach the limit.

It all depends on what you want. I'm definitely going for a good 7200rpm for two reasons. It's bigger and it's cheaper. 256Gb is the absolute minimum for me, and those SSD's are still really expensive. I'm going to get the Western Digital 2.5" 640Gb when it comes out here. So you just have to decide what's most important to you: speed or size. It's that easy  wink

Don't make me "touch" you :-D

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  • Nith
  • Nith
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  • Registered: 2008-12-13
  • Posts: 244
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Re: Waste of time and a waste of money?

Id either go for a wd black 7200 rpm or a blue 5400 or the seagate 5400.6 series.  Black gives great performance at the cost of some heat and battery where as the blue and the 5400.6 have come a long way and perform right on par with some of the cheaper 7200s and runs alot cooler.  the 320gb 5400.6 was on sale on newegg for 50$ last week so you might be able to find the 500 for cheap somewhere as well.


The wd blue also comes in 750 and 1 tb sizes for 2.5 inch.

Will
www.beyourownit.com

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