Performance with the new WD Black Edition

[khelben1979]

Hi.

I want to know if anyone out there know anything about the new harddrives from Western Digital black edition. I'm very curious of the test results and I will, perhaps, buy these if the performance is impressive enough. I guess they are quite good but I will never ever buy something without knowing what I get.

I'm a WD fan and will probably get the black edition disks even if they aren't the fastest out there, but still, it's interesting to see some figures..

 

[Guest]

Black Edition? Can't say I've heard of them.


Do you mean the VelociRaptor?

 

[cjl]

Maybe the Caviar Black (the performance oriented 7200)?

 

[khelben1979]

Maybe the Caviar Black (the performance oriented 7200)?

Exactly.

 

[cjl]

Not a clue - I know the Velociraptor performs beautifully (and it is what I'm planning to use as my primary drive on my next build), but I haven't seen anything on the Caviar Black yet. I have actually tended to prefer Seagate for 7200's, but if the WD one performs well enough, it could become a new favorite. Based on the specs, it looks good, but we'll just have to see how it does in tests.

 

[SomeJoe7777]

I haven't seen any independent test results. But the specifications on Western Digital's site, if accurate, indicate that these things deliver.

They're claiming sustained data transfer rates of 145 MB/sec. That's way faster than the Seagate 7200.11 (115 MB/sec), Seagate Savvio 15K (112 MB/sec), Seagate Cheetah 15K.5 (125 MB/sec), and the Velociraptor (120 MB/sec), making the Caviar Black the fastest 7200 RPM drive available, and at the same time faster than all 10K RPM drives and most 15K RPM drives.

It's only bested by the Seagate Cheetah 15K.6, at 171 MB/sec.

Now, those comparisons are data transfer rate only, and only at the outer edge of the platter. Other drives will beat the Caviar Black in IOPs, rotational latency, seek time, and access to data time. Those factors become more important than transfer rate in many server applications and some desktop applications.

 

[khelben1979]

Would the VelociRaptor be better than the Black edition drives when one speaks about gaming performance?

 

[cjl]

Yes. Even though it is slower on sequential operations, the faster speed (10,000RPM) and smaller disk size (2.5") means that the average access time will be much faster, both from faster seeks and lower rotational latency. This matters far more in games than pure transfer rate.

 

[monsta]

Yeah the new WD 300gb Velociraptor performs much better than the previous Raptor. Think the Black Edition you are talking about is the one with a clear window on the drive that exposes the internals.
You are better off getting the new WD Velociraptor, but they aren't cheap.

 

[cjl]

Yeah the new WD 300gb Velociraptor performs much better than the previous Raptor. Think the Black Edition you are talking about is the one with a clear window on the drive that exposes the internals.
You are better off getting the new WD Velociraptor, but they aren't cheap.

Nope - the Caviar Black is a new standard (non-raptor) drive. It comes in 750GB and 1TB flavors, and is 7200RPM. It's probably pretty darn fast for a 7200, and holds far more than a 10k, but it will never match the 10k drives for speed alone due to rotational latency.


(you're thinking of the Raptor X btw)

 

[monsta]

Ok cool

 

[babban]

[*** ING THING WHICH EAT POWER VERY BADLY , STANDARD HDD IS BLUE , ALRIGHTTTTTTTTTT

 

[cjl]

First, the black doesn't eat power very badly (as you put it). It's only fractionally higher power than the blue. Second, this is nearly a year old.