Western Digital launches new VelociRaptor drives

[Jos]

Countering the rampant development of fast and expensive solid state storage, Western Digital has officially released the fifth generation of its VelociRaptor hard drives. The series itself hasn't changed drastically from 2008, but it does include new 450 and 600GB models, along support for SATA 6Gbps and a larger 32MB cache. According to WD, the updated drives can load data up to 15% faster than their predecessors with the same 10,000RPM spin speed.

The drives come in the VelociRaptor's signature 3.5-inch bay version with the IcePAK heatsink cooling the drive or a bare 2.5-inch form factor for server use. Don't think about stuffing one of these in a notebook, though, as they are 15mm tall rather than the standard 9.5mm. The updated drives consume no more power than the previous generation VelociRaptors and feature sustained transfer speeds of up to 145MB/s.

These specs might not hold a candle to the 200+MB/s reads and writes and much faster random-access times of solid-state drives, but in the price per gigabyte department the VelociRaptor still commands a considerable advantage. The 450 and 600GB drives have an MSRP of $299 and $329, respectively, and come with a five-year warranty.

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https://www.techspot.com/news/38486-western-digital-launches-new-velociraptor-drives.html

 

[JMMD]

Those are very nice drives. If you need a fast drive and tons of storage this is probably about it right now. I'd like to see some extensive reviews of these drives especially with SSD drives in a RAID 0 config.

 

[Per Hansson]

Review at Storagereview; http://www.storagereview.com/western_digital_velociraptor_review

 

[TomSEA]

I'll add one of these to my upgrade next spring. SSD for the OS and VelociRaptor for everything else.

 

[Chazz]

Exactly what I'm planning to do,Tom. My rig just got better.

 

[Obakemono]

I hope that these new drives bring the prices of the 74 & 150gb raptors down. I have 4 of the 36gb raptors in raid 0 and love them. They can saturate the sata I bus with ease, and I hope with the new mobo I am getting, they will run even faster. SSDs for me are still way too pricy still, I know they are really fast, but the $$$ for them is just too much right now.

 

[LinkedKube]

I dont think 4 of any hdds could saturate a sata bus unless your mobo was made pre sata 2. I was looking at the largest version of these drives but those are still kind of price just for the space.

 

[Guest]

Why can't they get these drives quiet. Spending all that money to get a almost quiet PC then dumping one of these grinders is just shear madness....

 

[Obakemono]

I did have a pre-sata 2.1 mobo. I HOPE usps delivers my box today and I will have a "modern" mobo! I got tired of not being able to run BFBC2 with my old vid cards and dual core AMD. YAY for spending money to update my computer. :/

 

[PanicX]

obakemono said:
I hope that these new drives bring the prices of the 74 & 150gb raptors down. I have 4 of the 36gb raptors in raid 0 and love them. They can saturate the sata I bus with ease, and I hope with the new mobo I am getting, they will run even faster. SSDs for me are still way too pricy still, I know they are really fast, but the $$$ for them is just too much right now.

How is it you could afford 4 Raptors but a SSD is too pricey? Are you thinking of buying 4 SSD's to RAID them? Cuz really, 1 SSD will be faster than your 4 raptors and have the same GB if not more for way less.

 

[Guest]

The Velociraptor will still be working when the SSDs are put to rest. SSDs have too many technical problems unresolved, as yet.

 

[windmill007]

Humm no problems with my OCZ Vertex...been running for over a year now. Just super blazing fast.. I bet a mechanical drive would fail first.

 

[Per Hansson]

http://www.dustin.se/pd_5010437437.aspx
I was sending a link to a friend with the price of the new 600GB Raptor at a Swedish retailer, then I wrote;

Yea right, or instead you buy 1x Intel X25-M G2 80GB SSD and 1x Samsung Spinpoint F3 1TB drive and in the end you saved two bucks and gained 480GB storage space. Plus the performance became an order of magnitude higher at 4k random write plus seek time

4k aligned random write; (Numbers from Anandtech)

OCZ Vertex Limited Edition; 162MB
Crucial RealSSD C300; 141MB
X25-M G2; 46MB
Velociraptor 600GB; 1,9MB

That's atleast an order of magnitude, and in worst case for the Raptor actually well over 10 orders of magnitude

 

[Obakemono]

PanicX said:

obakemono said:
I hope that these new drives bring the prices of the 74 & 150gb raptors down. I have 4 of the 36gb raptors in raid 0 and love them. They can saturate the sata I bus with ease, and I hope with the new mobo I am getting, they will run even faster. SSDs for me are still way too pricy still, I know they are really fast, but the $$$ for them is just too much right now.

How is it you could afford 4 Raptors but a SSD is too pricey? Are you thinking of buying 4 SSD's to RAID them? Cuz really, 1 SSD will be faster than your 4 raptors and have the same GB if not more for way less.

I have had my raptors since 2004, and I bought them when the prices started to fall, and only 2 at that time. I bought 2 more (new, in boxes) off of Ebay last year, but the total I spent for 4 raptors is still less than 1 160gb SSD. Check Newegg, the SSD's at the 160gb mark start over 400.00, but I spent 330.00 total for my 4 HDD's. I don't think I'm even close to the MTBF mark on these drives, and have had ZERO problems with them, and no, they are not noisy to me. If you like SSDs then enjoy them. I'll stick with my "Vintage" hard disk drives. Now where is my Quantum Bigfoot................

 

[Obakemono]

Oh and I can buy 300gb's worth of raptors (4 74gb) off of Newegg for 360.oo, and that is still less than 1 160gb SSD.

 

[PanicX]

I bought my 128GB Kingston SSD last August and paid $250 for it from newegg. I was using this in comparison to your 4x36GB (124GB) array, which I can't figure in 2004, you paid less than $250 for. Obviously price per gigabyte the SSD's don't match current offerings from rotating disk, but the point is that raptors are intended to be fast drives that cost a premium, unfortunately for them, SSD's are as Per Hansson said "over 10 orders of magnitude" faster at a slightly higher cost.

My confusion with your post is that when you bought your 36G raptors, it was worth the premium then for the performance in your mind, but now you dont see it being worth relatively the same premium.

 

[Obakemono]

I spent 308.00 for all 4 of my raptors. 2 were bought in 2004, 2 were bought in 2009. They saturate the SATA I channel in raid 0 on my 939 mobo.The performance I wanted was great for the mobo I had, but now my "old" raptors are slow, and the "old" mobo is going to get replaced. They still run like champs and I paid the premium in 2004, when these drives were the fastest around. I am wanting one more 74gb raptor for my gaming machine, and I can get it cheap. 4x36gb in RAID 0 for the games and the 74gb for the OS, and my machine will run just fine for what I need it to do. Also most SSDs are 2.5" form factor, so on top of buying the drive, I need to find an adapter to fit these drives in my "old" beige full tower. It boils down to I don't want, or need a SSD.

 

[PanicX]

So basically, you plan on upgrading your machine, but instead of dropping $300 on storage like last time, you're satisfied with dropping $90 for a drive made in 2003.
It seems odd to me only because you sound so happy with your previous investment that I'd think you'd want to repeat the process, but perhaps you feel these drives will perform well and last through the life of your next PC.

BTW, I upgraded from 2 74gb raptors in raid 0 when I bought this SSD, which I really only opted to do because 1 drive was showing signs of failure.

Also, my SSD is 2.5in and shipped with the 3.5 inch adapter in the box.

 

[Per Hansson]

obakemono; I would really suggest you get atleast the more recent 150GB Velociraptor (instead of the 74GB)
I have owned all released WDC Raptor drives and they have served me well
I still have not taken the plunge to the SSD world, but I have seen their performance first hand and know how much faster they are vs my current 150GB VelociRaptor...