I have a 74 GB WD Raptor. Sometimes (especially when I cold start my computer), Windows fails to start completely and results in a blue screen. I'm using Vista, and when that moving bar thing starts to move, it pauses now and again, as if it was waiting for my Hard drive to start up, or some other hard drive I have. When it does start (which is most of the time), it's slow.
I have a 4 Ghz Dual core and that Raptor as my OS hard drive and I feel it shouldn't take any time at all. I mean My older computer starts up faster. I don't know what a raptor is supposed to sound like, but this is noisy. Seems like it's working hard for nothing big.