Western Digital's New VelociRaptor VR200M: 10K RPM at 450GB and 600GB
by Anand Lal Shimpi on April 6, 2010 8:00 AM EST- Posted in
- Storage
Power Consumption
Western Digital promised that the new VelociRaptor would use no more power than its predecessor. To find out we measured the current going to the drive across all voltage rails and determined total power consumption at the drive level in both idle and while performing our 2MB sequential write test:
Power consumption did go up by 4.3% at idle, but hardly anything to complain about. More performance at roughly the same power isn't a bad thing. Do pay attention to how much more power the larger 3.5" drives consume. This isn't really an issue on the desktop, but in a server with tons of spindles it quickly adds up.
Load power is a similar story. The new drive uses a bit more than the old one, but still far less than any 7200 RPM 3.5" drive.
Noise
At 10,000 RPM these things are going to be louder than your standard 3.5" desktop hard drive. To find out how loud I put a sound meter 1" away from the front of the drive and measured pressure at both idle and while performing a torture 4K random write test. The torture test basically keeps the drive in constant seek mode so it's a good indication of how loud the drive will be when it's really crunching away.
Note that the system these drives are connected to is my standard SSD testbed, which is a fairly high end desktop that isn't optimized for noise. The decibel readings may be high (particularly because of the 1" distance they were taken at) but they will give you an accurate comparison of which drives will be the loudest.
Obviously these 10K RPM drives are loud when they're accessed. The new VR is not much louder than the old one, but compared to a newer 7200 RPM drive they are noticeably louder when seeking. At idle or when performing sequential operations the gap is far narrower, but under load it's pronounced. These drives have never been for silent PCs.
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Aezay - Tuesday, April 6, 2010 - link
The model used in this review is the new WD1002FAEX disk, which is the upgrade to the WD1001FALS model. This new drive is considerably faster, even compared to the 2TB Black (WD2001FASS).http://gigglehd.com/zbxe/files/attach/images/89985...
Imperceptible - Tuesday, April 6, 2010 - link
Not according to this review: http://pcper.com/article.php?aid=870&type=expe...Belard - Tuesday, April 6, 2010 - link
Er... either way... that is more up to the user.RAID 0 adds several additional points of failure... Considering how fast G2 as it is. G3 with SATA 3.0 would be more exciting thou... :)
I'd still go with a single drive. That is me.
Imperceptible - Wednesday, April 7, 2010 - link
Replying to the wrong comment? This has nothing to do with RAID. Just simply mentioning that the WD Black 2TB is the fastest single mechanical drive and it would have been nice if it was used in this review. But in the real world, I'd only ever use it as a storage hdd, with an SSD as the main drive.deputc26 - Tuesday, April 6, 2010 - link
I as thinking the same, 2Tb Black is this drives nearest non-SSD competitor.Romulous - Monday, August 30, 2010 - link
I concur. The WD2003FYYS is no slouch.vol7ron - Tuesday, April 6, 2010 - link
First pass:there in while -> there in a while
Also when typing a comment, if you forget the subject, this is the error message:
"Account creation was unsuccessful. Please correct the errors and try again."
I think "account creation" is a little misleading. Perhaps a "Please type in a subject" would be okay.
DanNeely - Tuesday, April 6, 2010 - link
I'm a bit confused. If these are using 200GB platters both the 450 and 600GB versions are both 3 platter drives which doesn't really make sense. A 2 platter 400GB model would be a more reasonable step down from the top.vol7ron - Tuesday, April 6, 2010 - link
Perhaps the 450GB drives, which as Anand has indicated is using 150GB platters, are really using damaged 200GB platters due to the manufacturing anomalies.- just a hypothesis that needs testing.
vol7ron
DanNeely - Tuesday, April 6, 2010 - link
Where does it indicate that the 450 is using a 150GB platter? The table on the first page lists it as a 200GB. The 150 is the prior generation model.