Rainbow Man
Veteran
Only if you care about neither money nor capacity..
The storage is pitiful for the cost.
Peace.
The storage is pitiful for the cost.
Peace.
WD VelociRaptor VR150 300GB
- Thread starter Berek
- Start date
I disagree, and so do verifiable benchmarks:
Seek times of the Raptor kill the 7K1000, and sequential data R/W speeds also beat the 7K1000...
...However, the 7K1000 beats out the Raptor in every gaming test
Other performance metrics also go back and forth, so it's not a complete victory for the 1TB drive, but's it certainly isn't a loss either. Drive density certainly plays a role in data access, and seek times aren't really as much as a performance bottleneck as you imply they are.
The 2.5" form factor of the newest Raptor ought to help the big complaints about noise, heat and power. But obviously it doesn't help the price tag
Berek
Regular
I disagree, and so do verifiable benchmarks:
Seek times of the Raptor kill the 7K1000, and sequential data R/W speeds also beat the 7K1000...
...However, the 7K1000 beats out the Raptor in every gaming test
Other performance metrics also go back and forth, so it's not a complete victory for the 1TB drive, but's it certainly isn't a loss either. Drive density certainly plays a role in data access, and seek times aren't really as much as a performance bottleneck as you imply they are.
The 2.5" form factor of the newest Raptor ought to help the big complaints about noise, heat and power. But obviously it doesn't help the price tag
Part of the problem is the "enthusiast" class level of this hard drive. Take a look at the Skulltrail platform for motherboards, an ultra-extreme situation that is altogether impractical except for those with infinitely deep pockets (and even then you're relatively stupid to buy it considering the performance "gain"). Keep in mind Skulltrail is also for servers... Same goes for those itching to get DDR3 and its performance gains... or lack thereof.
While the VelociRaptor is much more practical given the playing field, it still is higher in price vs. performance/space than most would consider it worthy of. Primarily because it is designed to be a "I have a VelociRaptor, do YOU?" kind of ego builder. It's not designed to be the sweet-spot bargain, and so we have the difficult decision of picking out a fast but overly expensive hard drive versus an almost as fast but much more capacitious and much less epensive hard drive. That is why WD is comfortable with there 640GB and this coming out at the same time.
What kind of person are you? An ego builder and/or an ultra performance enthusiast that doesn't care much about cost, or a more conservative person that needs space but would love the performance without burning a hole in the pocket?
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Rainbow Man
Veteran
That Raptor's what - a year and a half a year older than the Hitachi drive? The 7k1000 also has 32MB cache on it, I think that's like 4x more than thatRaptor. It's also more than any desktop drive so far afaik. Hard as it may be to believe for 60 year old tech, harddrives evolve over tme and even a 10k drive will lose its edge eventually..
You have a link backing up your assertion? Because I do: http://faq.storagereview.com/tiki-index.php?page=PerformanceFactors
It's rare when we see a performance leader - or perhaps one should say performance dominator in this case - also priced at the same level as its competitors. So yes. Logic dictates it will be more epxensive.But obviously it doesn't help the price tag
Peace.
Porn doesn't really need low access times, it's not an either/or situation ... get the SSD for the OS, executables and randomly accessed data files and a quiet HD for everything else.
From Storage Review's preview, it seems this "VelociRaptor" actually has lower idle noise than most SATA harddrives and requires less power. So the only problem now is the price.
So why is it people complain about noise and power draw in this very thread? Perhaps they did not read the reviews before coming to their opinions
aaronspink
Veteran
weird, don't notice mine. And its not because my system is loud, I just haven't installed a drive outside of a Grow Up Japan SmartDrive box in years. Can't hear ANY drive inside one of those. And the fact that my case has close to 30 lbs of extra dampening probably doesn't hurt (polymeric mastic FTW!).
Rainbow Man
Veteran
They're tlaking about older generation Raptors which drew more power and generated more heat and noise.
This drive is by all accounts quieter than most modern 7200RPM 3.5" unit and draws less power than any of said group of drives.
Peace.
One advantage that Raptors aren't likely to lose is their access time advantage, as Rainbow Man brought up. It is pretty apparent in real use that my WD 500GB isn't quite as quick as the Raptor 150GB is with random accesses. Sure their sequential access throughputs are the same basically, but when you get the drives grinding while booting, for ex, the Raptor definitely shines.
This is just not insignificant. I'm not even sure that pure sequential throughput is that important because you really don't get to experience it that much in most computing activities. Random accesses are where it's at, IMO, and this is where access time really shows through. Some of the access times on the 7200 RPM drives below are actually slower than 7200RPM drives I had in the '90s that were as loud as a Raptor, believe it or not. The initial Quantum 7200s (Fireball Plus) and some Seagates come to mind.
http://techreport.com/articles.x/14583/14
I doubt the extra "snappyness" is enough to get me to buy more Raptors though. Especially when the new WD 640s are even faster than the 500s, apparently. I'll trade off some of that snappyness for more space and much-cheaperness.
I am quite interested in SSDs and their super low access times though. Those things really need to get mainstream and out in volume so costs and prices can drop... maybe...
This is just not insignificant. I'm not even sure that pure sequential throughput is that important because you really don't get to experience it that much in most computing activities. Random accesses are where it's at, IMO, and this is where access time really shows through. Some of the access times on the 7200 RPM drives below are actually slower than 7200RPM drives I had in the '90s that were as loud as a Raptor, believe it or not. The initial Quantum 7200s (Fireball Plus) and some Seagates come to mind.
http://techreport.com/articles.x/14583/14
I doubt the extra "snappyness" is enough to get me to buy more Raptors though. Especially when the new WD 640s are even faster than the 500s, apparently. I'll trade off some of that snappyness for more space and much-cheaperness.
I am quite interested in SSDs and their super low access times though. Those things really need to get mainstream and out in volume so costs and prices can drop... maybe...
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I'd suggest having your hearing checked if you don't notice a Raptor during seeks.
I'd suggest having your hearing checked if you don't notice a Raptor during seeks.
rwaaaarrrrrwaar
aaronspink
Veteran
I'd suggest having your hearing checked if you don't notice a Raptor during seeks.
Seriously, everyone doesn't already use SmartDrives? Weird. Last forever, so buy them one, keep the drives perfectly quiet and never have to hear them EVER again.
Seriously people, go buy them! Best product ever for people who still have hearing. My raptors inside a GUP SD enclosure are quieter than any drive on the market except SSDs.
Also Polymeric mastic, its cheap and works wonders.
Aaron spink
speaking for myself.
2x more actually -- 16mb versus 32mb.
Well, except for the new raptor which has 30% of the storage space
Yeah, I like exactly how they say it, per the link you provided:You have a link backing up your assertion? Because I do: http://faq.storagereview.com/tiki-index.php?page=PerformanceFactors
Gee, so if you're running a server, you might care. Guess what? I'm not. And my entire point to this is to debate your claim of seek time having such a huge importance placed upon it for a home drive (and we ARE talking about home drives). If they were as important as you say for a home user, why did the terabyte drive (which had BOTH 50% slower access times and ~10% slower sustained read times) beat out the 150Gb Raptor in every gaming test, and come within about 5% of the Raptor's score in just about every other "real world" (ie, non-synthetic) test?
My point is this: yes, seek is important. But it's not as important as you imply, at least for a home user.
aaronspink
Veteran
Possibly cause the 7k1000 was tuned to consumer single stream workloads and was being compared against the ADFD version of the raptor which is tuned for multi-user workload instead of the AHFD which is tuned for single user workloads?
Aaron Spink
speaking for myself inc.
Ah, but even if that were true, that still takes seeks away from the top priority position doesn't it?
We are talking about a new drive in case you did not realize that yet.
And how does this invalidate my point?
A drive with 50% faster access time and 10% faster sustained transfer lost. Obviously, seek time isn't the godsend to to disk performance as was being implied. New drive, old drive, SATA, SCSI or IDE -- my point still stands.
I dunno. It seems to me that the VR150 is significantly ahead quite frequently over at TR. In server scenarios, which may or may not be applicable, it's stunningly ahead. Sometimes it does lose, but it's certainly not a guaranteed thing compared to the WD640 or other drives. Anandtech actually decided to hold off judgment a bit because of concerns about buggy firmware....
Of course, the price is ridiculous. But the performance certainly does seem to be there. At least relative to its mechanical brethren. Fascinatingly, it's power use is the lowest of all, lower than even WD's own goofy Green Power drives.
Of course, the price is ridiculous. But the performance certainly does seem to be there. At least relative to its mechanical brethren. Fascinatingly, it's power use is the lowest of all, lower than even WD's own goofy Green Power drives.
Berek
Regular
I would attribute the lower power costs and quieter noise, along with its performance, all mainly due to its inherent 2.5" platter design vs. the 3.5" in previous raptors. Thankfully WD's strategy appears to be paying off... in more ways than one *pun here folks*.
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