- Install A Solid State Drive In Your Notebook
- WD and Toshiba Join the 320 GB 2.5" HDD Club
- 2.5" HDD Galore: Samsung, Seagate, Toshiba
- Samsung, Ridata SSD Offerings Tested
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- TravelStar 7K200 and 5K250 Beat the Band
- HyperDrive 4 Redefines Solid State Storage
- The Terabyte Battle
Source: Tom's Hardware – Keywords: HDD, SATA, VelociRaptor
Topics: Build Your Own
Syndication:
One Drive, Multiple Applications

Although the VelociRaptor is a 2.5" hard drive, it does not fit into notebooks due to its greater height. Notebook hard drives typically stick to a 9.5 mm height; some high-capacity models (the current 500 GB notebook drives) utilize three platters and hence occupy a 12.5 mm height. The new Raptor, however, fits into the format for 2.5" enterprise hard drives, which allows for a total height of 15 mm.
The 2.5" form factor allows Western Digital to attack the workstation and entry-level server market. The latter is currently moving from 3.5" to 2.5" for all mainstream and high-performance server applications. While this isn’t the first time WD has tried to approach the business segment, the situation looks much better today, as there is little competition for the new Raptors. While the VelociRaptor is incapable of competing against SAS drives when it comes to I/O performance or even to overall performance if we add 15,000 RPM drives, it is certainly a highly attractive alternative for 10,000 RPM 2.5" SAS drives for mainstream enterprise storage that has to deliver a reasonable balance between performance and performance per Watt.
Once the application profile isn’t too I/O-heavy, the VelociRaptor (without the IcePack) does really well, and looking at retail prices of less than $300 for a 300 GB professional hard drive, $250+ for a 146 GB 2.5" SAS hard drive suddenly looks like a rip-off. Any SATA drive can be deployed into existing Unified Serial infrastructure based on SAS or SATA controllers. This applies to both attaching drives to controllers directly and to deploying VelociRaptor drives into rack mount appliances for 2.5" drives. Clearly, the VelociRaptor can improve the performance per Watt ratio in such scenarios. Even if the hard drive makers follow up with 300 GB 2.5" SAS drives they will still be more expensive than the VelociRaptor.

Drawback: Not Suitable for Server Upgrades
The new VelociRaptor is not the perfect performance hard drive - despite all the advantages. While it can easily be installed into 2.5" SAS or SATA environments (without the IcePack frame) and while it represents the best hard drive choice for high-end and enthusiast desktop PCs, it cannot be used for seamless upgrades of existing 3.5" storage infrastructure. Once hot-swap drive bays are used, which typically is the case in each and every professional storage appliance and semi-professional SMB solutions, the position of the SATA and power connectors on the 3.5" structure (VelociRaptor plus IcePack) will not match the standardized connector position for 3.5" hard drives. Hence you won’t be able to install the VelociRaptor in 3.5" hot-swap bays.
Since the IcePack frame is rather simple, the drive’s SATA and power connectors will remain in the center of the "drive" (VelociRaptor plus IcePack), which means that it cannot be installed into 3.5" hot-swap drive bays for server and workstation applications.
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#2 - A very well written article. I've noticed an uptick in the quality of articles of late. Kudos again.
#3 - A very nice HDD. Something I may definitely look at adding to my system.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod [...] 6822136218
Seagate 7200.11 (if they can work out their doa prob):
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod [...] 6822148316
A few of samsung's F1 spinpoints...
they are all pretty close, especially seagate at 114mb STR, 60 low and around 100 average across 320 gigs.
A 150 gig drive that is just a bit higher is not so awesome, and yes I know seek times, IO and all that matter too. Do you really thonk the new raptor is gonna be 90 bucks like these, I sure don't.
If they at least have a 320 same performance, or the performance was closer to 150 (as in a larger 3.5 platter), then sure, but it's sad considering a 7200 is almost passing them ALREADY.
You could say you don't think it's worth the cash, I have no problem with that, but it sounds a lot like sour grapes to me.
It has twice the storage space of the previous top model.
It has better benchmark results.
It runs cooler way cooler.
That IcePack is perfect for mounting behind front intake fans(improved airflow).
I'd want 1 over any 1TB drive. The price is also quite reasonable for a Raptor.
I'd call that progress in every way.
There's just no pleasing some people.
I wonder why I/O performance isn't as good as the SAS drives even though it has faster read/write speeds and latency. Could this be fixed with firmware?
| rodney_ws wrote : Honestly, who was expecting the next Raptor to be a 2.5 inch drive? I know it's in a 3.5 inch enclosure, but you just know the guys at Alienware are trying to figure out how one of these is going to work in a laptop. |
Notebook HDs only need 5V and the velociRaptor needs both 12V and 5V. I'm not saying it can't be done.
- I get 30%+ of performance increase compared to my 1TB drive (yah, 10EACS)
- I get 300gb for $300, I already have 1000gb for $300
- I can get 640gb instead of 300gb with little speed decrease but it will cost $130.
So 30%+ speed increase equals almost 5x price increase? My wallet thinks otherwise... But thats my wallet, if your wallet says otherwise, I think you'll be happy with the new HDD from WD
| royalcrown wrote : It's not sour grapes...it's spoon feeding us tiny bumps and calling it amazing that gets me...it's better, but amazing or wow or making a big deal about an incremental increase is just hyping it up, when it's not that big of a step up. |
Hard drives have to live within the laws of physics and current technology. Maybe you know of some way to get a 200% improvement. By all means share it with us.
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