Which of these Hard Drives is faster?

I'm looking at these two hard drives:
The first is a Seagate Barracuda
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822148309

And the second is a WD Raptor
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822136012

I really want the Raptor, but I was told that the Raptor would only be about 5% faster than something like the Seagate Barracuda.

Can anyone point me in the right direction? o

 

Good question ya got there....Barracuda 7200 RPM 32MB Cache at SATA 3Gb/Sec...vs a Raptor at 10000 RPM, 16 MB cache and SATA 1.5Gb/Sec....
Check the seek times for both of those drives, and you'll have your answer. I'm pretty sure that the Raptor would be better for short duration data access, but the Barracuda would catch up on longer file accessing. The Raptor I'm sure has a much lower seek time, but not as much data through-put.

Barracuda: 8.2 MS Seek time.
Raptor: 4.6 MS Seek time
...I think the raptor might still be the way to go. Too bad WD hasn't started making a 250 GB raptor /w 3.0 Gb/Sec and a 32 MB cache....

 

If cost is not an issue, the Raptor is nice to have, but IMO you will barely notice any difference unless you are constantly moving large files around. I would much rather get more space thats still nice and fast for less money. Here is a good deal if you want lots of space, however its only good online, today (2/10) http://shop2.outpost.com/product/4924331?site=sr:SEARCH:MAIN_RSLT_PG

 

Thanks for everyone's input. At this point, I will pay the extra price for the Raptor(s) if it will increase my Operating System performance and performance when multitasking with many different applications. I know that the processor, etc., etc., and other things can affect that as well. But right now I would like to concentrate on the Hard Drives and which would be better.

Thanks,

 

Here's an idea: Do a RAID-0/1 (4 drives, stripping). It'll give you killer speed, and give you some redundancy for incase something goes awol. I'm doing a raid 0 (striping) with 2 drives, but I don't have any valuable data and don't mind reinstalling my OS if necessary.