Western Digital VelociRaptor WD3000BLFS Previews

[Capsaicin]

RAID 0 (striped) increases performance very little, if at all, IIANM.

Here's one example of RAID 0 vs. non-RAID: http://www.nextlevelhardware.com/storage/barracudaraid/

[NeilBlanchard]

Hello,

They are limiting the setup to just 25GB each drive, and I'll bet these are synthetic benchmarks. What RAID 0 controller did they use?

Plus, the reliability drops significantly.

[FartingBob]

£252 is a hell of alot for 300GB. At 84p/GB compared to less than 14p/GB for the 1TB drives its a hard sale.
Yes different markets, but when the best 1TB drives dont give up that much in the real world performance, i think its just too expensive to consider for the majority. The price wasnt really mentioned in alot of reviews, i think there will be a case of sticker shock for alot of people who read the previews and wanted one.

[dhanson865]

RAID 0 (striped) increases performance very little, if at all, IIANM.

Here's one example of RAID 0 vs. non-RAID: http://www.nextlevelhardware.com/storage/barracudaraid/

NO, that was a comparison of RAID 0 "short stroked" versus RAID 1 "full stroke" vs single drives. He is mixing lots of presumably good data in there just don't let it confuse you. I don't have time to read it all but I scanned it enough to be sure it wasn't just RAID 0 vs non RAID.

In most use RAID 0 and a single drive are not noticeably different in terms of speed.

http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/archives/000335.html goes into it from many angles

see viewtopic.php?p=388987 for more thoughts on RAID.

[Erssa]

£252 is a hell of alot for 300GB. At 84p/GB compared to less than 14p/GB for the 1TB drives its a hard sale.
Yes different markets, but when the best 1TB drives dont give up that much in the real world performance, i think its just too expensive to consider for the majority. The price wasnt really mentioned in alot of reviews, i think there will be a case of sticker shock for alot of people who read the previews and wanted one.

I don't get why people bring out the price and especially why you count price per gigabytes. It's almost the same if I were to compare HD3450 to HD3870 and say, that HD3870 is too expensive because both cards have the same amount of memory, but HD3870 costs thrice as much.

VelociRaptor is priced 265 euros here. That's not even 100 euros more then WDs 1TB GP. Spending a 100-200 euro premium to get the fastest hard drive in the market is peanuts compared to the money people throw at their other components, such as graphics cards. Not to mention those motherboards (Asus Striker II) that cost 300 euros and have absolutely nothing on performance compared to 100 euro motherboards. People pay hundreds in premium for performance memory, that will boost gaming performance by maybe 5%.

Capacity isn't an issue either. 300GBs won't run short in normal usage, unless you are in the business of downloading blu-ray movies and storing them in your hard drive.

Of course this is not the drive for all people, but I think for many people the price is not an issue when they consider how much they are willing to pay for components other then hard drives.

[Tamas]

They have pre-orders on scan.co.uk the price is absolutely crazy!

http://www.scan.co.uk/Products/ProductI ... tID=806694

£252!!! I was tempted by this hard drive, and if it had been £150, which in my oppinion is expensive I may have considered one, but at £252 there is no way on earth am I getting one of those!

For the same price you could buy two 1TB WD GP's and RAID them for double performance, and those drives are pretty damn quiet!

Think maybe I'll just avoid it now and just contemplate a 500GB WD GP drive instead!

WD suggested reatail price for this drive is the same as for 1TB Green Power. I've just bought a 1TB Green Power HDD and it was £125. So you just need to have enough patience to not buy overpriced/preordered etc. drives.

[nick705]

WD suggested reatail price for this drive is the same as for 1TB Green Power. I've just bought a 1TB Green Power HDD and it was £125. So you just need to have enough patience to not buy overpriced/preordered etc. drives.

I agree, pre-ordering is a mug's game - they'll take your money straight away, but by the time they *actually* have it in stock (as opposed to their advertised ETA), it'll very likely be available in many other outlets anyway, and probably at a lower price.

This is the sort of behaviour associated with Overclockers.co.uk (who also have a habit of claiming a so-called "exclusive" in respect of much-anticipated products), and I'm surprised and disappointed to see Scan following in their disreputable footsteps.

I don't get why people bring out the price and especially why you count price per gigabytes. It's almost the same if I were to compare HD3450 to HD3870 and say, that HD3870 is too expensive because both cards have the same amount of memory, but HD3870 costs thrice as much.

I think that's an apples to oranges comparison - you'd presumably buy an HD3870 over an HD3450 for gaming purposes, and the benefits of the extra expenditure would be immediately apparent. I doubt you'd see anything like a similar performance boost from a VRaptor over, say, a Samsung F1, and the money saved could be put to more effective use elsewhere in the system (unless running HDTune benchmarks constitutes the main use of your PC).

I do agree with you in general, though - I guess if you get genuine pleasure from knowing you have state-of-the-art hardware, then it's money well spent even if it can't really be justified in purely rational terms.

[Vicotnik]

I think that's an apples to oranges comparison - you'd presumably buy an HD3870 over an HD3450 for gaming purposes, and the benefits of the extra expenditure would be immediately apparent. I doubt you'd see anything like a similar performance boost from a VRaptor over, say, a Samsung F1, and the money saved could be put to more effective use elsewhere in the system (unless running HDTune benchmarks constitutes the main use of your PC).

But a fast drive for the OS and applications does give a kind of performance boost of sorts. The OS boots faster, applications start faster. The whole system feels a bit more snappy.

So a Raptor or SSD for a system drive is not wasted money imho.

[xafier]

Hard drives are one of the few components that dont increase in speed at drastic rates, the size keeps going up but performance is only creeping slowly...

The HD is the major bottleneck in almost every computer, especially those playing games etc, for video playback its not a major issue

[nick705]

But a fast drive for the OS and applications does give a kind of performance boost of sorts. The OS boots faster, applications start faster. The whole system feels a bit more snappy.

So a Raptor or SSD for a system drive is not wasted money imho.

I'm not convinced - I had a few of the previous generations of Raptors, and although I liked them I never felt the speed advantage over their 7200rpm competition was particularly striking in general use. I switched from a WD740ADFD to a Samsung HD501LJ as the boot/OS drive, and the only thing noticeably missing was the seek noise. The VRaptor seems to me to have the same kind of relationship to the 1TB Samsung F1, although obviously everything has stepped up a gear in capacity as well as speed (SSDs are a different kettle of fish altogether, on many different levels).

I'll probably end up getting one anyway though (once the initial bout of price gouging is out of the way), in the hope of proving myself wrong. And of course one must never ignore the all-important e-penis value...

[Erssa]

I'm not convinced - I had a few of the previous generations of Raptors, and although I liked them I never felt the speed advantage over their 7200rpm competition was particularly striking in general use. I switched from a WD740ADFD to a Samsung HD501LJ as the boot/OS drive, and the only thing noticeably missing was the seek noise.

My 150 raptor failed on me last year, so as a replacement I dropped in my old Samsung P80 SP1614N where I had a backup image. Granted, the P80 isn't exactly the latest hard drive, but the difference in speed was clearly noticeable, even to the point, that it made me feel a bit frustrated at times. Kind of like when you move from dual core computer back to a single core. Or from 2gb of memory to 512mb, though not quite as bad.

[Cistron]

The HD is the major bottleneck in almost every computer, especially those playing games etc, for video playback its not a major issue

I haven't heard of any games being limited by hard-disc performance yet.

But a fast drive for the OS and applications does give a kind of performance boost of sorts. The OS boots faster, applications start faster. The whole system feels a bit more snappy.

"A bit", but not more. Windows Vista boots in roughly 30secs on my latest PC (E2160, 2GB Ram, WD320, nothing big), photoshop and other programmes are swift in reaction. The drive might be nice, but I doubt the price is justified. However, I think many prices aren't really justified, most prominent example being graphics cards.

[Capsaicin]

The HD is the major bottleneck in almost every computer, especially those playing games etc, for video playback its not a major issue

I haven't heard of any games being limited by hard-disc performance yet.

You should see gaming on my laptop (C2D, 5400 rpm hdd, 2gb ram) vs. my desktop (P4, 7200 rpm hdd, 2gb ram). The desktop loads much faster -- the only saving grace is the 2gb ram, so at least there's a some room for the data to be cached once it's loaded.

[FartingBob]

I haven't heard of any games being limited by hard-disc performance yet.

Just check out any HDD review that includes in game benchmarks. HDD speed does make a difference, although its usually not huge, especially compared to the effect of GPU, CPU and often RAM.

[kamina]

RAID 0 (striped) increases performance very little, if at all, IIANM.

Here's one example of RAID 0 vs. non-RAID: http://www.nextlevelhardware.com/storage/barracudaraid/

That is just so skewed. How can his random access time go down by 40% when running raid 0 vs. single drive? Obviously he has done some big mistakes during his testing.

[NeilBlanchard]

Hello,

I think this is due to what I pointed out: he limited the RAID 0 partition to just 25GB on each drive, while the single drive system had the whole drive as a 500GB partition?

Apples and kumquats.

[m^2]

The HD is the major bottleneck in almost every computer, especially those playing games etc, for video playback its not a major issue

I haven't heard of any games being limited by hard-disc performance yet.

The Witcher. The game is great, but I spent almost as much time watching loadscreens as actually playing. After a few days I gave up..I have a low end 1.5 y.o. 7200 RPM 3.5'' HDD.
I'll return to it in 3-5 years.

[Aris]

this is currently my most anticipated review, and subsequently its release.

If it holds up to all the hype, i can honestly see this drive going into every new PC i make from now on. I think i'll wait for the single platter version though. It would be nice if they made the single platter version in a 9mm hight enclosure.

[QuietOC]

Motherboards.org Preview

[andyb]

I have a question that I hope someone can answer.

Which benchmarks test via "Partition", and which test via "The Drive".

I think this is due to what I pointed out: he limited the RAID 0 partition to just 25GB on each drive, while the single drive system had the whole drive as a 500GB partition?

As Neil has pointed out, the seek performance and average transfer time can get a huge boost via using smaller partitions. I would love to know how my setup (64GB boot partition, with XP, page file, apps and games on) performs compared to the drives average performance (1TB F1).

What benchmarks can I run on my drive, that only benchmark the 64GB partition, that I can compare directlt to other peoples benchmark results (i.e. the same benchmark software).


Andy

[QuietOC]

ExtremeTech Preview

[josephclemente]

I have a question that I hope someone can answer.

Which benchmarks test via "Partition", and which test via "The Drive".

That's a question I'm interested in too.

A lot of tests I've seen where the drive is "short-stroked" is with an Intel Matrix raid setup where multiple volumes are created, rather than just having one volume split up into multiple partitions. So software such as HD Tune would just test the individual volume. Single-drive tests are noticably missing...

I'd like to test all different partition sizes on a single WD6400AAKS drive, and see where the best mix of size vs. seek time is.

[LG is noisy]

Hard drives are one of the few components that dont increase in speed at drastic rates, the size keeps going up but performance is only creeping slowly...

The HD is the major bottleneck in almost every computer, especially those playing games etc, for video playback its not a major issue

that's a BIG TRUTH my friend.

So purchasing the Velociraptor is not a bad idea at all. But you know, most of users only care about CPU (# of cores) and GFX card.

[QuietOC]

Anandtech Second Review Sample

[yacoub]

wow, it dropped nearly 30% off the filesize copy tests at the end of their chart. that's much better. Gary Key ftw

[MiKeLezZ]

I want the 150GB version

What I am supposed to do with 300GB of space? When I have 20GB for OS, 30GB for programs, and 20GB for temp... that's enough

films and mp3 will stay on a different hd

[Farinorco]

Hard drives are one of the few components that dont increase in speed at drastic rates, the size keeps going up but performance is only creeping slowly...

The HD is the major bottleneck in almost every computer, especially those playing games etc, for video playback its not a major issue

that's a BIG TRUTH my friend.

So purchasing the Velociraptor is not a bad idea at all. But you know, most of users only care about CPU (# of cores) and GFX card.

Yes and no. "Yes" the phrase where he talks about performance improvement on hard drives. And "No" in the phrase where he states that HDs are the major bottleneck in a computer.

The major "bottleneck" in a computer is the user input by long. The user himself, in fact. Most user-input-oriented applications runtime is determined by user reactions and nothing else. Of course, there are lots of user-input-oriented applications that don't depend on user speed, and they do on hardware speed. Games anyone? Why? Because the application can work and do a miriad of things without having to wait to the user input.

With harddrives is more or less the same. There's simply no need to read from hard drive on the fly on most applications, you can store in RAM huge amounts of data, and there are lots of situations where you can predict more data you'll need to access and load it to RAM with anticipation, while the application is doing other things and having it in RAM when the app definately needs it.

Sure, there're some activities where hard drives ARE a bottleneck. Startup, loading an application, loading a new level in a game, copying a file... maybe if you have a VelociRaptor you can startup your system in about 40 secs, and with a 7200 it goes up to 50. Then you'll be using that system for 3 hours. Maybe, with your VelociRaptor, you can launch game X in 11 segs, while with a 7200, you can't in less than 15. Uh. Maybe if you had an instant access and lightning fast data storing system, it could be less than a milisecond! Then you'll be playing for 1 hour and the framerate is going to be the same.

I can't really see a hard drive being "the major bottleneck" of nothing during 99.99% of the use time of the computer. Talking about the average Joe's desktop pc, if it exists, of course. Then, there's always that guy that does some kind of heavy files editing, that database or server (those are clear examples) that the only thing they do is read, write, modify and delete data...

[Vicotnik]

When I sit at my computer I rarely play a game for hours at end. Often I play around, check email, listen to music, check my budget in OO Calc, start and shut down MPC as I play small video clips (not all of them pr0n, really) and lots of stuff like that.

As I do all this a fast drive will dramatically speed up the whole experience. And a Raptor or SSD is not really like a graphics card that you'll need to upgrade quite often, as xafier says: "Hard drives are one of the few components that dont increase in speed at drastic rates"

So it all depends on how you use the system I guess. For me a fast drive is totally worth it. It's not "the best bang for the buck" as such, more like a way to generally speed up the whole computer experience.

[Farinorco]

All this stuff you're talking about is hardly bottlenecked by hard drive speed. When you open the e-mail or the browser the data load from hard drive is minimal and when using it, if any, is done in the background, when you launch the music player, only a little piece of the data stream is needed to start playing, and then the load speed is much faster than the real time playing so it doesn't afect at all, and so on. The things prone to show a noticeably performance difference because of the hard drive speed all involve large amounts of data that need to be manipulated as a precondition for doing something, or when the data manipulation is the target in itself. That's it, copying/moving large files, applications that need to preload huge amounts of data to start running, working with big databases...

Sure, like I've said in my previous post, there're some things that can be sped up by a faster drive, and everyone is facing them when using a computer, and is up to each one if it's worth to pay 6x the price per giga and to bear a louder noise to reduce the startup from 50 seconds to 40, or to reduce the load time of an application/event from 20 seconds to 15 (and that's not the case of a music player or a browser, I doubt no one can tell the difference between a 1.5 seconds load and a 2 seconds load). But by no means a hard drive can be considered a major bottleneck in most of the things done in a computer.

[Vicotnik]

Starting an application is indeed bottlenecked by hard drive speed. Starting Open Office from my SSD takes a couple of seconds. Starting it from a regular non-Raptor type of HDD probably takes a couple of seconds more.

From your previous post we agree on this. All I'm saying is that faster startup of applications (not the OS really, since I don't reboot that often) makes it worth it for me. I'm not saying it makes it worth it for everyone.

Price/GB doesn't matter for this type of drive. I need a separate drive for my OS and applications and that drive doesn't have to be very large since all my storage is someplace else.
I need a very fast drive with an acceptable price tag. A while ago I used a 150GB Raptor, now I have a 16GB SSD. I dual boot WinXP and Ubuntu on this drive with only 4GB for WinXP and some applications (currently ~1.5GB free on that partition).
With the Raptor I could have the few games I play on the Raptor, now I have them on my WD GP. That's the only drawback for me for going from 150GB to 16GB.