WD Introduces Fastest Ever VelociRaptor HDDs

I wonder, does the heatsink really need to be there or is it because a full 3.5" version too expensive and/or too buggy to make.

will they still work on a sata 3gb/s interface

Yes its backwards compatible

Might as well just put 4 7200 RPM HDDs in raid 0.

Ooooooor, get an SSD.

My bad, didn't know Velociraptors were usually 2.5". Just got off Anandtech.

as i said in another post, the new Caviar Black 640 has a 64mb cache and is SATA 6gb/s and spins at 7200 rpm and is $80 bucks. This one just spins faster and is 4X more expensive just for 2800 rpm with all else being equal except LESS cache. That's crazy and definitely not worth the faster few seconds I'd get on Windows loading or a game load to me. Better off getting 2 Caviar Black and running in RAID 0.

Still very expensive. For about 100 dollars more you could get yourself a 160gb SSD which is faster, quiter(silent) and much more power efficient.

Barely beats the spinpoint at triple the price. Raptor = FAIL

Hee, hee. Either:

1) You've been lucky and never had a disk crash.
2) You don't value your data much.
3) You take images of your disks daily so when a disk dies, you can get back up and running quickly.

RAID 0 is not for the average user. Those who use it usually learn the hard way. After that they swear off RAID 0 as a viable option.

Belief me, the Raptor is fast! You'll notice a difference moving from a 7200rpm to a 10K Raptor. The seek time makes all the difference. Also, did I mentioned that the Raptor is cool to touch? It generates significantly less heat compare to the 7200rpm drives. Oh and also 1.4 million hours MTBF.

After owning my first 300GB VelociRaptor (use as a OS/boot drive), I would not go back to any 7200rpm drives. The 7200rpm drives are only good for huge storage (mp4, avi, ogm, mkv, ts, etc...)

Although, I might consider moving to SSD later on when it becomes affordable.

Actually, there's a significant difference between Caviar Black and VelociRaptor in the number of I/O ops the two support - it's not only about the lower access time and faster spindle speed. In workstation applications which is the target market this actually matters quite a bit.

Also, for certain types of workloads (software development for one), the old VelociRaptor beats all but the fastest PCIe-based SSDs due to SSDs having problems with small files I/O.

I'd really be interested in the smaller capacities - 150GB and 300GB - since I don't need such capacity for software development...

I agree completely with this statement.

I certainly agree that the performance difference on a 10k vs 7.2k is not to be sneezed at, but also the quality of these drives have been very good.
Of course if you're not gaming nor running something else (like a fileserver) wich requires fast disk access a cheaper alternative will suffice. For me the only alternative is scsi and with that comparison the raptor isn't too expensive.

A good SSD drive will murder this drive any day. The cost of the 600GB Velociraptor is about the same as a 1TB 7200 HD with an intel G2 80GB drive... which will easily spin that VR drive dizzy.

1 - faster, much faster
2 - Much quieter

When I heard the news and the benchs here, I was WooHooo, BUT then i saw the price

I saw a lot of people saying they want smaller capacities etc. Well my main concern about raptor was the small capacity. Now the 600Gb is plenty but the pricing needs to be something like 25% lower i believe. I was thinking to use this drives for storage along with 2 ssd's for OS/swap/scratch but it will cost me more than 1000 to have 4 of those for stripping and mirroring!!

If WD drop the prices 25% in the next few months i will consider 4x600GB and a 300GB for my new workstation this august. But with the carrent prices i will choose 2xSSD's and 2x1TB caviar black or RE3.

And for those considering raid 0 as the worst option i will say i never hold my data in a raid 0 but simply use it as an OS drive and swap/scrach disks Or copy them for as long as i work with video editing or compositing. So if they fail i'll just have to buy a new one and copy again the files or re-install the OS.

The price difference between 450Gb and 600Gb models does not make sence... Nor does the size. The 600Gb version has 3 200Gb blatters, but what is that 450Gb version? 3 Three times old 150 Gb blatters?
Why not two 200 Gb blatter at smaller price. It would be exelent drive to randow read / write operations. Well maybe we get more information later.

I've built three of my machines with RAID-0 arrays and there is a performance increase and more responsiveness, and I've never had one fail. I've always used WD RE drives, however, and I currently have two 300GB VelociRaptors in RAID-0. So if you decide to go RAID, make sure you have the right drives, and always have a backup.

I've been running RAID0 for years. Right now, I have two 150 GB Velociraptors in a RAID0 for my OS and programs, and two 1 TB Caviar Black drives in a RAID0 for my data. I have a single external eSata drive for backup. If the OS RAID fails, who cares. I get the bad drive replaced, and just reinstall everything. What's the big deal?

P. S. There are just too many bugs with solid state drives, and they are way overpriced. In a year or two, they might be a good option, but they aren't right now

lulz i have an 80 gb intel ssd and its been...flawless, been up and running as my main os drive for near a year now, not a single issue, and i run it hard! ssd it totally a viable option...you just cant store 1TB of movies on them yet.

I've been using RAID 0 on all my machines for 10 years now. I've had a grand total of 2 die on me. I've lost zero data. RAID 0 is the simplest to set up and the most effective speed wise. Fancier solutions won't protect your data any better if you are an idiot user or lazy about backing up your data. Even if you aren't sooner or later either you'll get hit by a power surge or your house will burn down, and take your RAID 5 with it.

My basic rule set.
Rule 1: Never ever use your primary drive (C: Drive/where ever your OS is installed) for any type of data storage. Learned that lesson in the Win 98 days when it was as stable as Lindsay Lohand. Though the likelyhood of your OS spontaneously combusting these days have gone down drastically, it can and will suicide on you and take everything on the drive with it. Use your primary drive only to install programs and your OS on and you'll never go wrong.

Rule 2: Never trust a drive with anything important until it has been in solid use for at least 30 days. If it's going to break it will break immediately. Once it hits 6 months old it will out last its warrenty 90% of the time.

Rule 3: Once a drive hits 3 years old, don't be a cheap bastard, start shopping around for a replacement. It's living on borrowed time after 3 years. You can probably expect 5 years or more out of the high end newer ones. I have a pair of 128gb Raptors that are 7+ years old still going strong. Reguardless sell it/give it away or turn it into a sneaker net file transfer device, but don't use it for anything important anymore.

Rule 4: Never ever to the 12th power trust anything important to you to only 1 drive. At least 2 back ups. One which should be kept off site. The power thing took out all my buddies machines in one fell swoop, including his big RAID 5 setup that he was constantly telling me was superior to my "unreliable" RAID 0s, lucky for him we had been swapping HDs for back up/file transfer purposes for some time, so I had him back up and running in the time it took to mail a HD to him. The other was a guy at work, his house burned down taking everything including his external backup drive with it.

they are build very solid. since they are made for 24/7 operation in enterprise use, they are made toughffer than regular drive. 2 of them in raid 0 as your main. plus a bigger regular drive with a ghost of your main, and you got exellent performance and peace of mind. y have one computer with a c drive made of 2 74g in raid 0. this machine run 24/7 running boinc for about 3 years now.
the high level of erase and write operation would probably to hard on the life of a ssd.

That would net you some crazy throughput but would provide zero benefit for anything other than large file transfers. Similar random file performance and exactly the same access times.

I second that notion as well.

They should have made 100-250GB versions, I do not need that much space for a primary drive and I would want to put them in raid0 with $300 I can buy a SSD much faster. I do not know why they think we need 10k raptors for large data storage.

except average seek times, average latency, path to path seek times and average write times... other than than those things they are the same as the caviar black...

They most certainly should not. If it was that small, I'd rather get an SSD at these prices OR get like a Caviar Black if the velo was cheap. At this size, it is trying to fill a niche that neither currently does (not saying it's filling it well.)

These are impressive.
Patients is virtue and I will wait the extra second or two for my game to load and save a bunch of cash.

I think WD is beating a nearly-dead horse here. Sure the Velociraptor drives were great and all, but they can't touch the performance of a SSD.

Additionally, I ran two different systems with RAID 0 for 5 years altogether and never once had a problem with it. Faster than a raptor, never a crash. Seagate HDD's for the win.

or 4 and raid them trust me it's worth it. i've had my 4x ssd in raid 0 for over a year and no problems.