Originally Posted by
N!ck
The F1s are not really in the same category as Raptors as they are just standard 7200rpm drives. What makes them fast is their large capacity (1TB) and the fact that they only use 3 platters. Meaning lots of data in a small space so a little bit of a rotation covers more data than a similar lower capacity or higher platter drive. Raptors spin at 10000rpm and have just 2 platters (as far as i am aware) but are only 150GB in capacity, so the F1s are a cheaper alternative, quieter, more energy efficient, much more of a storage to price ratio and better performers. I think the only advantage of the raptor is a slightly lower seek time which brings it's overall performance almost up to par with the F1 which has a much better read/write rate.
Seek times aren't a big overhead in normal file access, but in the situation of starting up an operating system a drive like the F1 and raptor only averages something like 10MB/s read in the process (when the F1 is capable of around 120MB/s read on large files). It's because it's not getting the chance to read at high speeds as by the time it's read a file it's having to seek another. That's where the SSD's big seek time drop gives a nice performance increase on things like boot times.
That's my understanding/theory of it all. I could be wrong?
