Western Digital Raptor X and Raptor

[mikeyp410]

Is there any difference between the Raptor X and the regular Raptor??? Or is it just the ability to have to a window looking at your drive which no one really would ever do.

 

[Madrox]

I have a Raptor X... its not just a WINDOW... its a COOL window!

 

[ausch30]

The only difference is the window and unless you have a case designed for it you will never see it.

 

[runswindows95]

The X has a window, so it's personal preference. Then again, once I install a HDD, I never look at it unless I open up my case.

 

[sailer]

There was a long thread on this a while back that went into the differences between the two Raptors, plain and X versions. Basically, you pay an extra $50 or so for a window. That's it. Western Digital lists differences that are not really there, like listing that one has TLER, but not listing TLER on the other. But the reality is that both have TLER, they just didn't list it on both drives. Tom's and Anandtech have both done reviews on these drives and both concluded they are the same except for the window on the side.

So, in the end, if a person wants a clear cover and the opportunity to spend extra money for something he/she will never see, then the Raptor X provides that. In the meantime, I'm happy with my cheaper plain Raptor.

 

[ethel]

One has a window. Both are old models and should be DAMN WELL REPLACED WITH 15K MODELS OR AT LEAST PMR!!

Phew, glad I got that off my chest

 

[sailer]

Agreed. And make them SATA 2 instead of SATA 1 while they're at it.

 

[mikeyp410]

Do they have a 15k drive that is SATA and not just SCSI?

 

[turtle1]

Not yet. Nothing in SATA higher than 10k right now...

 

[slim142]

Raptor X is designed for gamers. Raptor non-X is designed for RAIDS/Servers etc.

Why? Because Raptors non-X in RAID (ex: RAID 0) will perform better because of TLER (Im not sure if its because of TLER, but Im pretty sureis because of this. I discussed this long time ago and ended up buying the non-X version because of this)
In single drive operation, the Raptor X will be a little faster specially in games.

The reason why I got Raptor non-X is because I want to go RAID 0 someday and I really want to have top high-end perfomance without having to pay for 15k drives and SCSI stuff.

There is a small perfomance gain when using Raptors non-X in RAID, but again, if you are not going RAID and you really want that window that u will never see (trusth me), just spend the extra and be happy.

PD: Keep in mind if you go single drive and start to install games, capacity will go boom.

 

[jt001]

Basically you pay $50 more and get the following: a tiny window you'll probably never see, a shortened lifespan(about half that of the normal Raptor), increased heat, increased noise.

What a bargain.

 

[mikeyp410]

Well I do not game and I never really got involved with raid. It is just something I never thought i really needed. Although I have been considering it lately for the faster read times and all. Really I was just thinking about adding this Raptor to replace a system drive for better access times while running app's for video editing and DVD ripping/burning and such.

 

[choirbass]

as far as whether theres a 15k hdd thats sata and not scsi, the closest your going to get currently without being limited to strictly a scsi interface, is a 15k sas hdd. and the only things you need extra in addition to the sas hdd, is an sas compatible cable and sas compatible sata controller (sas controllers work with both sas and sata hdds, sas is just keyed differently than sata to prevent sas hdds and cables from being used with non sas controllers, but not limited vice versa)

but, that would be the way to go for top performance if $/GB isnt so much an issue, as they are certainly more expensive than the overall significantly less $/GB consumer 7200s, with raptors being more middleground as far as cost. raptors arent too expensive in comparison (just look at how many consumers own at least one, so they are somewhat affordable), but theyre not really intended for consumer use either, so the price is consequently going to be somewhat more/GB.

a cheaper 15k solution, is going to be to go with scsi. looking on ebay you can find a u160 scsi controller, terminated scsi cable, and 15k scsi hdd... but again, thats strictly scsi, and the performance of the older 15k scsis for the desktop is more or less on par with current raptors.

 

[mikeyp410]

Ya i was wondering what the difference was with the SAS, it looked like the same as a SATA interface but I was not willing to buy the disk and realize it did not work. I then looked at the controllers but they ran in the 600-1k territory and that is just ridiculous if I am not running the thing as a server or if im not rich.

 

[ethel]

as far as whether theres a 15k hdd thats sata and not scsi, the closest your going to get currently without being limited to strictly a scsi interface, is a 15k sas hdd. and the only things you need extra in addition to the sas hdd, is an sas compatible cable and sas compatible sata controller (sas controllers work with both sas and sata hdds, sas is just keyed differently than sata to prevent sas hdds and cables from being used with non sas controllers, but not limited vice versa)

but, that would be the way to go for top performance if $/GB isnt so much an issue, as they are certainly more expensive than the overall significantly less $/GB consumer 7200s, with raptors being more middleground as far as cost. raptors arent too expensive in comparison (just look at how many consumers own at least one, so they are somewhat affordable), but theyre not really intended for consumer use either, so the price is consequently going to be somewhat more/GB.

a cheaper 15k solution, is going to be to go with scsi. looking on ebay you can find a u160 scsi controller, terminated scsi cable, and 15k scsi hdd... but again, thats strictly scsi, and the performance of the older 15k scsis for the desktop is more or less on par with current raptors.

All true - in fact I have 15K SCSI with a U160 card, and it performs beautifully. The cost was good too - about £90 for the whole setup, including a brand new 74GB drive.

But the reason that I want to se a faster Raptor is because SCSI / SAS drives have firmware that's slanted to server useage and so don't perform as well as they could on the desktop. A 15K Raptor should be able to beat my Fujitsu MAU hands down.

 

[choirbass]

yeah, theres rumors about WD releasing a 15k raptor, from a forumz member who supposedly has a relative that works there. they didnt mention anything about pmr from what i can remember, but it would certainly be nice. the timeframe though, i would speculate is sometime in 2008-2009, if at all.

as far as sas affordably specifically... newegg has what you 'could' loosely call a budget 15k sas setup:

HighPoint RocketRAID2314MS PCI-E x4 (x8 and x16) slot compatible SATA II External Controller Card RAID 0/1/5/10 JBOD - Retail $199.99
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16816115042 (it comes with sas cables as its retail)

Fujitsu MAX3036RC 36.7GB 15,000 RPM 16MB Cache Serial Attached SCSI (SAS) Hard Drive - Retail $144.99
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822116015
(not much on the capacity side, but then again, raptors have never been much either, this is actually the same price the 36GB GDs were when they first came out)

but, that amounts to $345 total (+shipping&tax), which isnt all that bad from a strictly performance point of view, especially when you consider people are purchasing 2 raptors for raid 0 for about the same price, and getting essentially minimal performance gains from an overall os and application perspective, thats not always the case depending on the purpose, but over 90% of the time otherwise it will be.

 

[blashyrkh]

Hello everyone.
I think it was me that posted that info on the upcoming Raptor 10k. As far as I know (insider info, very reliable), the new 10k raptors are coming out early summer of 2008. I believe SATAII raptors are out already (i will know in about 10 days as I'm expecting new arrivals of HDD's directly from WD).
As far as Raptor-X goes, it's only a window version, nothing more nothing less (well, maybe a bit less heat disippation). Performance and technology wise, it's exactly the same with the good ol' raptor.

I'm not sure whether the new 15k's will have PRM (logic dictates they will) but I prey to god they'll be less noisy! I also hope they are a bit "greener" with performance and power save modes included.

 

[choirbass]

definetly looking forward to 15k raptors... that should easily put them in the performance lead again, especially if they make use of pmr for larger capacity, for even quicker data accessing and application performance on the desktop (sata300 would probably be necessary then too)

the only competition 15k raptors should really have at that point would be ssds, and even then only when ssds are even in roughly the same price range, as hardly any enthusiasts will probably be using them otherwise.

 

[mikeyp410]

So if I was going to do a raid setup but with only 1 Rasptor and 3 SATA 300's drives would that work or would it be a waste?

 

[choirbass]

the raptor can be used as the os hdd if you wanted, thats no problem, it doesnt need to have any connection to the raid array. if you were to do raid 0 however with other hdds, you can have any number of hdds, as long as its at least 2.

as far as performance goes... its going to entirely depend on your intentions. if you play games, you may experience close to 0% improvement, even with 3 hdds. but, if you deal with really large files and transferring and/or manipulating them, then the performance increase may be faily linear more or less, only mostly limited by the performance of the raided hdds and the controller itself. smaller impacts will be file fragmentation and stripe sizes. the best performance will come from using hdds of the same capacity and performance.

one of the most important things to consider for raid 0 (or any hdd for that matter), is to not store essential data on them, not without having at least one seperate nonraided backup of that same data

 

[mikeyp410]

So there is no real improvement then. So im thinking having the Raptor as a OS drive and having a setup of 4x 500 gig SATA 300 drives in a raid 0 setup but will that be needed for just storing 5 gig files on them? The files will only be on there for a month or so at a time.

 

[choirbass]

as far as performance, if youre dealing with manipulating or moving large files (which is something that raid 0 does well in), your performance will potentially be 4 times greater, ideally. it probably wont reach quite that level of performance, but it will certainly be faster than just a single hdd.

its not that you 'cant' store stuff on a raid 0 array... but in general, the expected rate of array failure is doubled for each additional hdd you add to it... with 4 hdds, you chances of losing data is 4 times greater, due to any number of causes, such as OCing/software corruption, power spike/power outage, hardware failure, etc... so if any random cause takes even one hdd down, all of the data stored across them is gone, or at least inaccessible without the needed hdd data. thats not to say its going to happen either, its just as likely to happen as a single hdd by itself failing and losing data from just one hdd, but your chances are 4 times greater this way. so its never a good idea to use it as a long term storage solution (especially without a regular backup routine), temporarily is usually not a big deal however. but backing up stuff you want is always a good idea, because you never know when hdds are going to fail. but because theyre mechanical, they will, due to defects, some other problem, or just plain wearing out.

if youre just looking for ways to store data, even 4 individual hdds will work, your transfer rate performance wont increase, but neither will your odds of losing data either.

 

[slim142]

Keep in mind if they do release a 15k raptor in SATA 3.0Gbs interface, they will come back down to 36Gbs probably...

 

[Rabidpeanut]

They are fast as phuk. But the x is a rip. 15k would be nice though...

 

[choirbass]

yeah, even 36GB is enough for an OS and application hdd where access/seek times really matter, moreso than capacity even (as capacity shouldnt be at a premium when its just the OS, unless the successor to vista is larger than the total hdd capacity, hows that for overly bloated, lol), but if they include pmr, at least theres the likelyhood that the capacity and overall desktop performance will be increased noticably in later versions, if not in the first release... they might do just that though (like cpu makers do), release slower and/or smaller versions, then ramp up the performance and/or capacity with each subsequent release.

but for massive games and other similar sized files and programs, 7200s will still be the way to go, where the $/GB is very low (~$100 for 500GB), and performance is decent enough now, seeing as how their desktop performance is roughly on par with current raptors, they should also be approaching 2TB total capacity before too much longer, with 334GB+ platters on the horizon... but for hosting an os and other smaller applications, nothing less than 15k will do (and pmr too if other hdds are any indication), for the new raptor.

cant remember where i found this before (and this is paraphrasing, cuz i dont remember the exact wording), but WD had said before in an online quote from one of their representatives in 2006, that they wont be releasing faster/revised raptors until they really need to... [and for the desktop where the raptors performance had always been strongest], that time looks to be fast approaching, and does warrant a performance overhaul to the raptor line...

if raptors were just another 7200, it would be different, and WD might have a server market to protect then too, but they dont, so theres no reason for them not to go with at least 15k and pmr in the next major refresh, with their current 10k being roughly matched on the desktop now... 10k isnt enough currently for a real performance lead... and even with pmr, 10k 'might' still not be enough to overshadow current and future top 7200s on the desktop by much anyhow it would seem.