Western Digital's VelociRaptor 10K RPM SATA Drive

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."

Compared to solid state?

[Ed Avis]

Interesting to see that 2.5" form factor disks are now faster than their desktop-size cousins. In a way it's a shame that WD decided to bulk out the case with extra heatsinks... it would have been more fun for them to ship a properly sized 2.5" drive you could put in your laptop.

The review only compares the new drive to older models from the same manufacturer, and it turns out to be faster - duh. How does the performance compare with those expensive solid state disks that are starting to appear?

Laptop drive?

[danielsfca2]

When you say 'based on 2.5" tech,' does that mean this IS a laptop drive? Or is it a 2.5" drive in a 3.5" shell?

I assume the power requirements would be intense though, so even if you could fit it in a laptop I suppose it would be unwise unless you're always plugged in.

And also being a WD drive, as far as reliability goes you'd probably be better off just keeping your important documents in RAM.

Noise Level

[MankyD]

I've always wondered - what's the noise like on a 10k drive? I would think its safe to assume that they're louder, but with smaller platters, who knows. I'm always working to make my machine quieter, and sometimes this seems to come into conflict with making it faster.

1 GB/$, ouch

[rubeng]

It's a little better than the current Raptors' [diskcompare.com] 0.88 GB/$, but nowhere close to the 6.25 GB/$ for a Samsung Spinpoint F1 [diskcompare.com]. You gotta wonder if a RAID array of cheaper drives wouldn't give you overall better performance, and more than 2x the storage for way less money.

Re:Has only one application

[Colonel Korn]

So...this beats the data throughput of any of the 7200 RPM drives by about 50%, and outperforms them in real world benchmarks by about the same, and it does it while consuming LESS power than the WD Green Power drives. It also for the first time comes within about 10% of the speed of a 10k SCSI disk for server-tasks, while using far, far less power. This sounds like a great low end server drive to me, and it's clearly the best single user drive by a large margin. Check out the storagereview.com review, since they actually know what they're doing.

Re:Has only one application

[MrNaz]

I beg to differ. After waiting for rev2 of these drives, I'm going to use 4 of them in RAID10 for my database server.

I've currently got 4x 74gb drives, and I've been waiting for the next gen Raptor drives for a while now. I'm glad they are here, and I'm glad they are finally at a more usable size for modern applications.

Re:Laptop drive? Keep it cool stupid.

[Anonymous Coward]

Not really, no. People who have a lot of HD failures usually have a lot of other issues.

I've had 3 drives in about 300-400 actually fail. And they were used 5+ years. One was dropped.
This was in the late 90's, the WD800 ATAPI's, so you are 100% FUBAR. 90 percent failure = USER ERROR.

Maybe your personality just annoys electrons. Or, more likely, you are inept at system building.

TIP: Good PSU, install the drives oriented correctly, and maybe a fan or two. Try it.

Re:You misunderstand

[Anonymous Coward]

I build my own PCs and cut out the middleman markups.

You're just paying a different Middleman, New Egg and Fry's. At best you're not paying for Dell's assembly labor, which on Desktop class systems I find is usually $0 versus components from New Egg, and I like the Dell's integration better (tooless chassis, better laid out small from factors, etc). But certainly there's a place for build it yourself when it comes to customization, though there's also a place for annoying folks who think its a sign of their 733T skillz that they can build something more complicated than a basic Lego set

Me, I gave up the build your own path when I realized it cost me money to build it myself (that was 4 years ago). I got my dad a 2.8Ghz Dual core w/ 1 GB RAM & a 19" LCD for $400 2 months ago, covered by a 1 year warranty. Even if I could save $100 buying the cheapest components I could (which I doubt), its not worth my headaches and time to deal with.

Considering I've spec'd out comparable systems with parts from Newegg and Frys that cost anywhere from 50% to 66% the Mac Pro, I'd say they have a pretty hefty margin.

Admittedly, Apple's pricing model starts aggressive then fades as component prices drop and their prices hold steady, but you're clearly talking out your ass. Apple sells an 8-core Dual Xeon system for $2,800, two 2.8 Ghz Xeon's are currently priced at $720 each at New Egg, so you hit 50% before you bought a Motherboard ($200 minimum), much less RAM, case, optical drives, power supplies, and video cards. Can you build a PC for less than a Mac Pro? Sure. But the savings aren't that huge anymore.