Western Digital VelociRaptor 1TB (WD1000DHTZ) Review
by Anand Lal Shimpi on April 16, 2012 8:00 AM EST- Posted in
- Storage
- HDDs
- Western Digital
- VelociRaptor
Final Words
The new VelociRaptor does reclaim its title as world's fastest client hard drive, and I do appreciate the fact that WD hasn't raised prices on the drive in the past two years either. Compared to any 3.5" drive on the market today, the new VR is significantly faster without a doubt. Random IO performance is at least double most 3.5" drives, and sequential performance is almost 50% better than the fastest competitors. Most impressive is the fact that power consumption is actually competitive with modern 3.5" green drives as well, another benefit of the VR's 2.5" package.
The biggest problem for the new VR today is the same issue we had two years ago: SSDs are much faster, and are quickly becoming more affordable. As a primary drive I wouldn't recommend the VelociRaptor simply because you can get a better overall experience with an SSD. We have a number of very reliable, reasonably affordable (128GB), high-performing SSD options to choose from. Intel's lineup, Samsung's SSD 830 and Crucial's m4 all come to mind.
As secondary storage, the new VelociRaptor appeals to those users who need more capacity than an SSD can affordably offer, for active use. Launching applications, games, and working on (not just streaming for playback) large data files are all going to be quicker on the VR than on a standard 3.5" drive. If you're building the ultimate workstation, you could use an SSD + VR for internal storage coupled with some larger, slower drives in RAID as a backup or for your more passive data (movies, music, edited photos). For most users however, I'd honestly recommend an SSD plus a couple of large, 5400/7200RPM drives in RAID-1 for everything you can't store on your SSD. While the Raptor line was quickly embraced by the enthusiast, I believe it has transitioned exclusively to a workstation role.
I have to admit I was disappointed to see that Western Digital went conservative on the new VelociRaptor design and didn't include any on-board NAND to really mix things up. What I was hoping for was a combination of the VelociRaptor and Seagate's Momentus XT. Perhaps that doesn't make sense given the available SSD caching solutions available today, but I don't see the harm in pairing even a small amount of NAND with the drive. I don't see hard drives going away anytime soon, so we might as well try to make accessing them as quick as possible.
Then there's the extreme option. I would love to see a manufacturer treat a hard drive as an SSD with a mechanical counterpart, rather than a hard drive with some NAND on it. I'm curious to see what a VelociRaptor (or any other 2.5" HDD) with 64GB of NAND used as a read/write cache would behave like. If users are able to fit all of their program, apps and data into a 128GB SSD, I have to believe that a well managed cache can deliver compelling performance with half that space.
Unfortunately most hard drive companies seem slow to adopt NAND into their designs, so I suspect much of this will have to be a dream for now. The new VelociRaptor is a great evolution of the design and it's truly a very fast hard drive. Just as before, if I needed to buy a high-performance mechanical hard drive, it's the one I'd pick.
Facebook
Twitter
RSS
92 Comments
View All Comments
ltcommanderdata - Monday, April 16, 2012 - link
I admittedly only did a quick read of the article so I may have missed it, but were there any comments on noise and vibration compared to previous VelociRaptors and other mechanical drives?Sabresiberian - Monday, April 16, 2012 - link
My Raptors have always been smoother and quieter than other drives. I have 2 of the first-gen 2.5" mounted on the 3.5" form factor heat sink, and I can't even tell they are running, except to see the drive light on the front of the computer flicker (and, of course, the computer is running properly).;)
retrospooty - Monday, April 16, 2012 - link
I agree with the conclusion... "if I needed to buy a high-performance mechanical hard drive, it's the one I'd pick."I always had a raptor until SSD became affordable to me (about the time of the Vertex2's release). With a 120gb Vertex 3 drive currently $139 after $20 rebate at Newegg, why bother?
Use the SSD as your OS and apps and several of your favorite games and a large cheap HDD for storage, movies MP3's old games, etc - things that don't need fast access. 120gb is plenty big for that. My Vertex3 is set up that way and has 50% space free still. Fast as hell.
Is so fast it doesn't even allow the Win7 colors to touch on the launch screen. Before the 4 colors swirl and then come together and strobe, its it Windows. sigh...
mcnabney - Monday, April 16, 2012 - link
Anybody know how the multiple drive setups will work under Win8?Apparently the Drive Extender from the original Windows Home Server (which was ripped out of the sequel) is part of Windows 8. What kind of control will be available concerning which files go where when using this in Win8?
Sufo - Monday, April 16, 2012 - link
It's irresponsible to recommend the Vertex 3.LB-ID - Monday, April 16, 2012 - link
It's irresponsible to recommend OCZ products, period. Their strategy of bringing products to market six months early, then using their customers for the validation phase has long since shown its true colors. Combine that with a policy of ridiculing anyone who dares question them has turned me from a customer to running away from anything they produce.dananski - Monday, April 16, 2012 - link
I have somewhat mixed opinions about Vertex 3's since we upgraded to them at work. Probably about 50% extra cost hidden in the man hours wasted trying to sort out firmware, and we're still not completely BSOD-free. The price has come down and they're fast, but not faster than my problem-free Intel 510.But to generalise to all OCZ products is unfair. My reapers are still great after 4 years, and the SSD bugs are partly down to Sandforce.
Samus - Monday, April 16, 2012 - link
LOL, it's irresponsible to recommend ANY OCZ SSD ;)landerf - Monday, April 16, 2012 - link
Access time?Scott314159 - Monday, April 16, 2012 - link
I think there is still a role for the raptor in the budget server market where enterprise SSDs are still too expensive. While in the consumer SSD space confidence and longevity are still not where they need to be (any disagreements or counter arguments with references??).I will probably use these drives in my next server build...