Western Digital's VelociRaptor 10K RPM SATA Drive 250
MojoKid was one of a number of people to submit about WDs new 10k RPM SATA Drive. He says "Western Digital's Raptor line of Hard Drives has been very popular with
performance enthusiasts, as a desktop drive with enterprise-class performance.
Today WD has launched a new line of
high-performance desktop drives dubbed the VelociRaptor, and the product
finally scales in capacity as well. The new SATA-based VelociRaptor weighs in at
300GB with the same 10K RPM spindle speed, but with one other major
difference — it's based on 2.5" technology. Its smaller two-platter, four-head
design affords the VelociRaptor random access and data transfer rates
significantly faster than competing desktop SATA offerings. Areal density per
platter has increased significantly as well, which contributes to
solid performance gains versus the legacy WD Raptor series."
More interesting review (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Noise Level (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Noise Level (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Compared to solid state? (Score:5, Informative)
From the StorageReview.com article [storagereview.com]:
When spinning up from a cold start, the WD3000BLFS maintains its prowess with a very economical showing on its 12V rail. At just 9 watts, the VelociRaptor weighs in a full 6 watts (66%!) lower than any other drive SR has ever encountered.
I think the heatsink is mostly for show, and to make the drive fit into a normal case. Still, it would be nice if they made it easily removable.
Re:Laptop drive? (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Solid State, Fast Disks... all for wimps (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Noise Level (Score:4, Informative)
The WD Raptor 74GB is alright. I can hear it, but I wouldn't say it's loud or annoying (and I have one of those open Lian-Li cases that have 50000 holes).
This new one is supposed to be one of the quietest drives ever measured.
Re:More interesting review (Score:3, Informative)
http://www.pcper.com/article.php?type=expert&aid=548&pid=2 [pcper.com]
http://www.techreport.com/articles.x/14583 [techreport.com]
http://www.maximumpc.com/article/the_new_fastest_hard_drive_ever [maximumpc.com]
Re:Laptop drive? (Score:5, Informative)
I guess I don't understand all the WD bashing. They do have warranties, you know, and I hear they even honor them.
Besides, why are you relying on a single drive? If you have Important Documents you need redundancy + backups, not a "better" hard drive. You should check this [nongnu.org] out. It's saved my butt on more than one occasion.
Re:Compared to solid state? (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Noise Level (Score:2, Informative)
I have no confidence in anything from WD (Score:2, Informative)
Two other drives didn't even make it more than a month! First one died after a month and was sent off to them under warranty, and they send another of the exact same drive. It worked quite well up until last week when it just arbitrarily died on the spot when I got into the office.
Mind you my Toshiba's, and Seagate have been outlasting these things hands down. And for the naysayers; I know there is not an issue with the laptops since other vendor drives work quite well and last.
I don't even want to talk about the 3.5" drives! I have had more premature failures with these and I'm officially sworn off of Western Digital. All they make is junk.
Re:Laptop drive? (Score:3, Informative)
At $1/gig it is still way cheaper than solid state drives, but expect those to get cheaper faster.
It's frustrating that the power benchmark they're using is measuring the whole computer.
You'd think someone doing benchmarks would use a small separate supply for the drive(s) to do the measurement. If the standby consumption and efficiency under load were measured for a small separate supply (easily determined with resistive dummy-loads), one could then get pretty accurate numbers for the drive by measuring the input power to the supply and doing a few simple calculations.
If the power and connector locations were compatible it'd be fun to see one of these in a 24" Core 2 iMac. For those using the iMac as a 1080i PVR, it'd really speed things like extracting the commercial-free version of a tv recording.
Re:Compared to solid state? (Score:4, Informative)
The heatsink (which reduces average temperatures by 5-7 degrees) does work (it's not for show), but these things will never go in laptops.
Re:Has only one application (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Laptop drive? (Score:4, Informative)
Yes, they did replace them all, but when you count in all the time in rebuilding OS installs, shipping, phone calls to get RMA's, etc, it's just not worth it.
Once we switched to Seagate, we never had to deal with all of that again. Yes, we might have 1 drive go bad once in a blue moon, but no where near what we had with WD.
I had sworn off of WD drives in the mid/late '90's because of similar issues. No matter what, though, I couldn't talk my boss out of using them. He learned to listen to my opinions after that, though...
Now, before I start getting modded down to hell, here; yes, I realize there are people (like you) that seem to have had very good luck with WD's drives. Unfortunately (for WD), your experiences seem to be far and few between.
Re:Compared to solid state? (Score:4, Informative)
Re:You misunderstand (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Compared to solid state? (Score:2, Informative)
more friciton = more input energy, so theres no reason to look any further than how much energy it consumes, no matter what your thoughts are on high RPM platters.
Re:You misunderstand (Score:3, Informative)
Re:You misunderstand (Score:3, Informative)
Get yourself a better supplier or transport .. (Score:3, Informative)
One of these disks dying is even my own fault by tilting it while writing.
Also, I've been hearing stories at my suppliers; disks made around JUNE-OCTOBER are mostly the ones with the most problems. I wouldn't know it's a general believe although I'm for sure checking my labels before assigning a disk to a server as precaution to myself.
I've had plenty of other drives dying, IBM, Seagate, Maxtor, Hitachi. My last 2 crashes were my Powerbook PRO and with an IBM disk.
Had best effects with IBM, WD and Maxtor to be honest. Maybe I was most lucky with WD's? My first choice will always be a WD.
The Western Digital warranty has always been inbetween 3-5 years, so, I really wonder if your supplier was kosher at all?
They got a very fast and extensive warranty program which even allows you to send your front-plate and keep the disk with your precious data.
Re:1 GB/$, ouch (Score:3, Informative)
Storage infrastructure is one of those areas of system work where the nut is much harder to crack than most squirrels would realize
Re:Seek Times are what matter (Score:3, Informative)