Hardware Western Digital VelociRaptor 600GB Review

What I'd like to see is the performance of a couple of these in Raid 0... not that I'd buy one, prefer a small SSD for OS/apps and large slow HDD for data.

 

Personally I think you'd be mad to buy one. I work in a PC shop and if a customer approches wanting the velociraptor I give them a slap and they leave with an SSD and 1TB drive saving them money in the process!

 

Are you guys sure that HDD wasnt dropped or damaged in anyway? I have this exact HDD and it isn't at all half as noisy as you put it at full load or boot. It's much quieter then any other HDD I own. My fans are loader then the HDD.

 

For the same price you can now pick-up 15,000RPM 300GB SATA/SAS 6GBps enterprise drives, or spend the extra $100 and get a 600GB unit; those units also have 64MB buffers to help them run along smoothly; better quality control (MTTF). Both Seagate Cheetah's and Hitachi Ultrastar's seem to be almost a better alternative.

So... Western Digital has essentially done nothing to make this drive anymore/less appealing than it always has been. Did they bump performance? Yes - but I can just RAID0 F3's via the onboard ICH10R on an X58 motherboard and be no slower at a lower cost.

Ultimately, you can pickup a small SSD for boot/primary game applications and stick to Caviars/F3's/Barracuda's for all your major storage needs.

 

I've been running two 150GB VelociRaptors in RAID 0 since last December and I've had no problems thus far. They were, and still are pricey compared to the 7200 rpm drives, but still significantly cheaper than the SSD drives.

 

and can you hear anything over that din?

 

Actually, the Linux kernel supports trim commands since december 2008, and the commands are integrated in the kernel since first half 2010

 

Nice review, thanks!

Shame the product itself is pretty pointless now thanks to SSD's.

I owned one of the WD Raptor 150 Gb drives, before the VelociRaptor series came out. I did like it at the time, it was certainly a substantial improvement, but in a modern system now with SSD's in the running, there is just no contest. I go with an SSD for boot drive and applications now, and a 2 TB drive for storage.

The biggest difference I noticed going from a Raptor to my first SSD was actually the noise though, rather than the speed! Going from all that rumbling and clunking (I even had it in a silencing enclosure!) to the total silence of an SSD was just bliss.

 

"Interesting observation about the F3s though- so many people sing their praises yet the Caviar Blacks seem to perform better in most instances. Anyone wanna suggest the best brand of ordinary HDDs?"

a lot of people were telling me the caviar black has crap raid 0 performance, so that was not an option.
Ive got 2 f3's in raid 0 and its a beast of a raid. for $80x2 to compete with the crucial SSD in all but random access? and its 2TB?
i burst 400MB/s, and 300-180MB/s in sequential read, basically the same in writes. i like my f3's

 

i like my 300gb so far, have been playing gta EFLC on it for two months. was worth the $129 i paid for it (clearance at best buy). thanks for the article, entertaining read.

 

Thanks for the review.

You may want to fix the mis-labeled graphs on pages 4 and 5? Both graphs on each page have the same keys (Read/read, write/write).

 

I know it would be pointless and possibly rather stupid, but I can't help but wonder what the access times would be like if the drive was "short stroked"...

Please keep all naughty comments to a minimum