Is it worth it to replace my old hard drive which is Western Digital model type WD800BB with a western digital raptor 10,000 rpm on SATA 150. the harddrive i have now is IDE, and the one i would like is SATA. they are both 80 GB. would i notice a small increase in proformance or a big one. please let me know.

Well, you will experience a definate decrease in startup time, loading time of programs, etc.

plus...the increase speed for moving the data...the times taken come shorter than IDE drive..

Check this thread out for some info:

http://www.pcguide.com/vb/showthread.php?t=40759

I assume your mobo supports SATA?

To your question...I have two Raptors. More important than "Is it worth it?" is "Can you afford it?". Worth it? That depends. I hate waiting on a PC to start up. The Raptor reduced my boot time pretty radically (that's where I see the biggest difference), so I'm happy, and it's worth it.

The fact is though that this is a very expensive HDD in terms of cost/GB, especially relative to what HDDs are going for right now--less than 50 cents/GB. You will pay a big premium for that speed boost.

One other thing, the Raptor comes with a very good warrantee. However, be advised that there is a power-cycle limitation written into the warrantee (pointed out to us by Saphalline). The warrantee is 5 years--extremely good. The power-cycle limitation (how many times it gets powered up and down) is 10,000. Exceed that, and you've exceeded the warrantee. Kind of like 12 months or 12 thousand miles, whichever comes first. 10,000 sounds like a bunch, but take into account hibernate, sleep, etc and you could get there in less than 5 years. My Raptors never sleep.

Specs for the WD800BB (just because I memorize this stuff :rolleyes: ) - 7200rpm, 2MB cache, 2 x 40GB platters. The Raptor - 10,000rpm, 8MB cache, 1 x 74GB platter. Keeping in mind that spindle speed has the greatest impact on HDD performance, and that areal density (ie GB per platter) is next in line, and that the buffer size can make a small impact, I think we can see which one is superior! The Raptor trumps your current 80 gigger by quite a large margin. And pop pop is always talking about the wonders of the Raptor, so it must be true! :p

In terms of the power-cycle limitation, all hard drives have that actually. It's just that the Raptor is designed for 24/7 runtime environments and it is a 10,000rpm hard drive. So relative to its warranty, it has a low power-cycle limit. However, I personally never let any of my hard drives sleep. It's just good practice for my usage because my system is on nearly all the time. But I still recommend people turn off Windows' default setting of powering-down the hard drives after 10-15 minutes of inactivity. Set it to "never" and you'll be fine.

Sorry for posting this in a running thread. It segues into my question, but please clue me in if I shouldn't have posted here. My desktop is configured to never sleep...sort of like me. I'm using a notebook (Vaio GRX-560) with a bad main screen to stream music, which remains plugged in and is always fairly warm on the bottom. I usually only listen to it in the evenings.

Would I be helping or hurting matters by letting a computer like this go to sleep or hibernate? I'm not in love with the machine, but I'd like to extend it's life for as long as possible. Am I dealing with a double-edged sword, or should I just treat this thing like a desktop?

treat it like a desktop. its all about leaving it on