Western Digital VelociRaptor WD3000BLFS Previews

QuietOC · Post by **QuietOC** » Mon Apr 21, 2008 3:43 am

The new 150GB/platter 2.5" VelociRaptor. Fastest magnetic platter desktop drive--low noise, very low power.

StorageReview

TechReport Review

Tom's Hardware Review includes all 1TB drives & 2.5" SAS drives

HotHardware Review includes WD6400AAKS

PC Prespective Review

lm · Post by lm » Mon Apr 21, 2008 4:19 am

Woah. I was almost going to get the old raptor, before people talked sense to me. So I ended up buying a <100EUR 500GB 2-platter seagate and wait for better products. And that seems to be it! Please SPCR, review this new product faster than you usually review stuff, preferably next month already. It looks almost too good at this moment.

Capsaicin · Post by **Capsaicin** » Mon Apr 21, 2008 5:22 am

Another review (in case you needed another): Maximum PC.

Really, though, we need a SPCR review.

I think this thing is going to hold me off from getting a SSD quite yet.

_MarcoM_ · Post by **_MarcoM_** » Mon Apr 21, 2008 5:40 am

Unbelievable, simply unbelievable. Faster, really faster, cool, quiet, low power consumption, and... faster. Wanna buy one for my rig, despite the cost, i don't care about cost, i want it!

ryboto · Post by **ryboto** » Mon Apr 21, 2008 5:41 am

and here I was hoping to buy a terabyte network drive...and they had to release this. Storage review shows a 6.9W seek power consumption. That's around 11W less than the 150gb Raptor. The 2.5'' form factor should make a lot of the suspension users happy, granted it voids the warranty...

sheninat0r · Post by **sheninat0r** » Mon Apr 21, 2008 6:01 am

Very impressive looking drive - faster, quieter, cooler, smaller than the old Raptor. Even faster than our 11-page-thread Spinpoint F1

QuietOC · Post by **QuietOC** » Mon Apr 21, 2008 6:15 am

Capsaicin wrote:Another review (in case you needed another): Maximum PC.

The second page of the Maximum PC Review compares the Velociraptor with the 64GB Mitron Pro SSD. The $2,000 flash drive is significantly faster desktop drive than the $300 Velociraptor. The PCMark05 scores really show why low latency trumps bandwidth. A hybrid flash and magnetic drive could still prove interesting.

I can see not going up to a mere 32MB cache, but SDRAM is so cheap--a single 128MB DDR2 800 chip is <$2. And couldn't they even put a SO-DIMM slot on a 3.5" drive?

nick705 · Post by **nick705** » Mon Apr 21, 2008 6:45 am

It looks like the old Raptor bugbear of seek noise remains, at least to some extent - not as bad as the previous version, but still worse than the 7200rpm competition.

I guess it's part of the price you pay for the fast access times, but hopefully the promised single-platter version will be a bit better, with presumably a lighter head assembly.

JazzJackRabbit · Post by **JazzJackRabbit** » Mon Apr 21, 2008 9:12 am

Interesting, I was wondering when 2.5" Server SAS drives will make it to the desktop. A touch faster than currect 320GB platter desktop drives (nothing major, around ~7MB/s), significantly better seek times and about 6 times more expensive per 1GB.

Those with money to burn surely will welcome it, however 300GB is a little too small for me and $300 is a little too expensive. I'll stick with WD6400AAKS which provides nearly the same transfer rates, and I'm willing to live with slower seek times if it means I can save $500.

zoob · Post by **zoob** » Mon Apr 21, 2008 9:33 am

Check this article out from Anandtech:
http://www.anandtech.com/weblog/showpost.aspx?i=432

also read the comments section:

Gary Key wrote:We received two new 150GB Raptors last week and I was amazed at the lower acoustics. So much so that we retested the drives for this article.

QuietOC · Post by **QuietOC** » Mon Apr 21, 2008 10:15 am

Legit Reviews

AuraAllan · Post by **AuraAllan** » Mon Apr 21, 2008 10:37 am

Does anybody know if the single-platter version will come in standard 2.5" size?

I want to get one and put it in double Scythe SQD's.

_MarcoM_ · Post by **_MarcoM_** » Mon Apr 21, 2008 10:53 am

Single-platter version? When? Where? Who?

xafier · Post by **xafier** » Mon Apr 21, 2008 11:50 am

Wonder if it'll be quieter than my noisy Maxtor DiamondMAX 10 HD? If so I want one!

nick705 · Post by **nick705** » Mon Apr 21, 2008 12:49 pm

_MarcoM_ wrote:Single-platter version? When? Where? Who?

http://techreport.com/articles.x/14583/2

"The VelociRaptor needs only two platters to reach its 300GB capacity. Western Digital says it's also working on a single-platter version of the drive, but that's not ready yet."

_MarcoM_ · Post by **_MarcoM_** » Mon Apr 21, 2008 2:38 pm

nick705 wrote:
_MarcoM_ wrote:Single-platter version? When? Where? Who?
http://techreport.com/articles.x/14583/2

"The VelociRaptor needs only two platters to reach its 300GB capacity. Western Digital says it's also working on a single-platter version of the drive, but that's not ready yet."

Oh thanks, cheapest version is welcome

QuietOC · Post by **QuietOC** » Tue Apr 22, 2008 4:07 am

Anandtech Preview

Moogles · Post by **Moogles** » Tue Apr 22, 2008 5:39 am

I'd also be much more interested in a single platter, standard 2.5" size drive. Cheaper, and more easily silenced using Scythe SQDs. The double platter drive just doesn't seem that appealing because its seeks are still clearly audible and it won't fit in a 3.5" enclosure. Still, I'm sure it's a huge improvement over the old Raptor.

With (kind of) afforable SSDs on the horizon, it's hard to get excited about this kind of technology.

Post by **NeilBlanchard** » Tue Apr 22, 2008 5:48 am

Hello,

Am I correct in thinking this is a 2.5" drive in a 3.5" case?

FartingBob · Post by **FartingBob** » Tue Apr 22, 2008 6:07 am

Its a 2.5 inch drive but comes with a cooling system that slots into a 5.25. If you take out the HDD on its own, its a 2.5 (but taller than most, so only suitable for desktops). You'll need a way of mounting it into a 3.5" slot though since i didnt see one mentioned in the reviews. But thats why God invented suspension mounting.

Capsaicin · Post by **Capsaicin** » Tue Apr 22, 2008 6:08 am

NeilBlanchard wrote:Hello,

Am I correct in thinking this is a 2.5" drive in a 3.5" case?

It's a 2.5"/15mm form factor (used by Seagate Savvio drives -- think blade servers) with a 3.5" heatsink surrounding it. (Laptop HDDs are typically 2.5"/9.5mm form factor.)

QuietOC · Post by **QuietOC** » Tue Apr 22, 2008 6:16 am

FartingBob wrote:Its a 2.5 inch drive but comes with a cooling system that slots into a 3.5. If you take out the HDD on its own, its a 2.5 (but taller than most, so only suitable for desktops).

There fixed that for you.

I have an ancient 150MB drive at home that looks to the exactly same type of 2.5" drive stuck in a 3.5" frame--except this 2.5" drive is even taller than the Velociraptor. So this whole adapter thing isn't new.

It is funny to see people gripe about how WD should have made this a real 3.5" drive as if that would be better. Well, I have some experience with those horrible 5.25" Bigfoot hard drives, and bigger platters are hardly better.

merlin · Post by **merlin** » Tue Apr 22, 2008 11:19 am

I don't think it would make sense at all to be a 3.5" drive. That would wipe out the quiet and heat advantages.

It seems to me that 3.5" is completely unnecessary. The whole point of this drive is to be able to run at a high spindle rate with smaller platters to reduce the seek/access latency. Obviously there's a minus for getting a big large drive, but remember this raptor is still double the size of the previous version.
Also from another review, the 3.5" adaptor actually does help cool the drive by several degrees.

m^2 · Post by **m^2** » Tue Apr 22, 2008 11:43 am

ryboto wrote:and here I was hoping to buy a terabyte network drive...and they had to release this. Storage review shows a 6.9W seek power consumption. That's around 11W less than the 150gb Raptor. The 2.5'' form factor should make a lot of the suspension users happy, granted it voids the warranty...

There will be a version w/out adapter meant for servers / workstations.

ryboto · Post by **ryboto** » Tue Apr 22, 2008 3:35 pm

m^2 wrote: There will be a version w/out adapter meant for servers / workstations.

Yea, but what kind of price difference are you looking at?

fri2219 · Post by **fri2219** » Tue Apr 22, 2008 9:48 pm

No one seems to be mentioning the serious Firmware issues that have cropped up in some of the reviews.

I think it's going to be a little longer than people might think until they hit the shelves. Once they're out, I'm definitely getting a couple for home use.

xafier · Post by **xafier** » Wed Apr 23, 2008 11:34 am

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

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

Â£252!!! I was tempted by this hard drive, and if it had been Â£150, which in my oppinion is expensive I may have considered one, but at Â£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!

Vicotnik · Post by **Vicotnik** » Wed Apr 23, 2008 12:19 pm

xafier wrote: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!

Apples and oranges. The real alternative to this new Raptor is a SSD imho.

kamina · Post by **kamina** » Wed Apr 23, 2008 12:29 pm

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

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

Â£252!!! I was tempted by this hard drive, and if it had been Â£150, which in my oppinion is expensive I may have considered one, but at Â£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!

Raid does not help you with access time. Raid 0 will also not give you double performance on anything else then some useless synthetic benchmark. You would also end up with two drives creating more noise and heat, using more power and more prone to data loss from either drive failing.

There is clearly a market for this drive, Ive rarely seen such exitement over a hard drive. That market is of course not anyone considering bang for buck, or needing a huge drive.

Post by **NeilBlanchard** » Wed Apr 23, 2008 12:31 pm

Hello,

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

Western Digital VelociRaptor WD3000BLFS Previews

Western Digital VelociRaptor WD3000BLFS Previews

I'm as enthused as anyone else, but...