Western Digital VelociRaptor: A Drive with a Bite
by Gary Key on April 22, 2008 4:00 AM EST- Posted in
- Storage
Vantage Once Again
The WD VelociRaptor drive generates excellent scores in the PCMark Vantage tests that simulate real-world performance patterns utilizing a variety of actual applications. We added in our Mtron Pro SSD 32GB drive as a comparison. While PCMark Vantage utilizes actual applications for testing, the HD test provides a pure performance look at the hard drive or controller tested. Like our previous testing with iPEAK, the results show the capabilities of the hard drive without the platform penalty. In other words, these tests will indicate the true performance capability of the hard disk and should provide an indication of the drive's performance potential within the platform.
The question now is, how well does the VelociRaptor hold up in actual applications with early firmware? Let's look at our early results. For those who need high synthetic benchmark results, you can skip the rest of this article. Buy an SSD if you can afford it, and if not, buy this drive.
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DeepThought86 - Thursday, April 24, 2008 - link
Why oh why do you people insist on using new benchmarks all the time? How stupid is it that I can't go to your review of the Seagate 500GB from just last year and be able to compare performance with this new Velociraptor.Zak - Sunday, April 27, 2008 - link
Hm, so I guess this is not going to fit in a Mac Pro due to non-standard connector position. I bet there will be 3rd party replacements, but will this void the warranty?Z,
mvrx - Thursday, April 24, 2008 - link
I still find it strange that a drive only has 32MB of cache.. I'd think a gig or two would be on some high end drives..Xean - Wednesday, April 23, 2008 - link
Is it suitable for laptops?strikeback03 - Wednesday, April 23, 2008 - link
As they mentioned, only ones that accept unusually tall 2.5 inch drives.Fricardo - Tuesday, April 22, 2008 - link
What happened to the hard drive review article that was supposed to come out a month or so ago? I'd really like to see a full comparison, especially of the new WD and Samsung drives.Deusfaux - Tuesday, April 22, 2008 - link
#1. Tech Report says:"Western Digital says it's also working on a single-platter version of the drive, but that's not ready yet."
Gary can you verify this one way or another? What would the timeframe be?
#2. I have a couple spike drops when I bench one of my 2 Raptors with HDTach/HDTune. They're not right at the start, but they're there all the same.
What do they mean? I don't have them on my other Raptor.
Araemo - Tuesday, April 22, 2008 - link
Haven't all raptors(and indeed, most 10k and 15k rpm drives) used 2.5" platters in their large casings? I thought that most/all high-end drive manufacturers used 2.5" platters due to the high angular velocities and vibration.In that case - the smaller drive size shouldn't have any negative impact on performance at all.
GhandiInstinct - Tuesday, April 22, 2008 - link
In 2008, for their next generation Raptor, only 16MB Cache?CK804 - Monday, April 28, 2008 - link
Do people read anymore? The explanation is given on the second page:While the hot option on the latest 750GB~1TB drives is a 32MB buffer, WD is once again staying the course with a highly optimized 16MB cache. WD states they did not see any advantages to a 32MB cache on this drive and instead spent their engineering resources on optimizing the cache algorithms.