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
PCMark 7 Performance
For workloads that are particularly read intensive and small enough to make good use of the on-board NAND, the Momentus XT cannot be beat. The VelociRaptor does come very close however, and it does win in enough other benchmarks to make it clearly the better overall performer. Philosophically I understand why Western Digital opted against equipping the VR with any NAND (cached operations do sort of defeat the purpose of having a 10,000 RPM spindle speed), but that doesn't change the fact that it would've made for one pretty impressive hard drive.
Power Consumption
Despite its 2.5" form factor (the drive itself), the VelociRaptor's 15mm height prevented it from being used as a notebook drive. Even if you had a thick enough notebook, the VR's power consumption is more in-line with a 5400RPM 3.5" drive than a standard 2.5" mobile drive. That being said, as a 10,000RPM 3.5" drive the VelociRaptor is quite power efficient. Idle power is competitive with WD's Caviar Green (and lower in the case of load power).
Power consumption is down compared to the previous generation as well. Once again, compared to an SSD however the drive isn't anywhere near efficient.
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bozdee - Monday, April 16, 2012 - link
Anand, you've used the French spelling for 'cheap' down the bottom of the first page - great writeup otherwise!Sufo - Monday, April 16, 2012 - link
Cheaper? The comparative form of cheap? I didn't realise this was French.PyroHoltz - Monday, April 16, 2012 - link
Huh?cheaper(French) --> cheaper(English)
http://translate.google.com/?hl=en&q=cheaper%2...
Mr.T - Monday, April 16, 2012 - link
There is no French spelling for cheap (or cheaper or cheapest); Cheap translates to "Pas cher" (Not expensive) or "Bon marché" (Good deal) in French.dananski - Monday, April 16, 2012 - link
IIRC, bon marché is often mistakenly translated literally to well priced / good deal, but it actually means cheap - an indication of qualitiy as well as price. Quite amusing for the Bon Marché chain of clothes shops in the UK, which obviously aims for the former interpretation, or for an assumption that a Frenchy sounding name makes it well posh.safcman84 - Wednesday, April 18, 2012 - link
Where did you get that from?Bon Marche means good deal. There is no French word for Cheap.
Mr T got it right.
bigboxes - Monday, April 16, 2012 - link
In English, something that could be considered inexpensive would be called "cheap." In a comparison of the cost of two or more items the item that is cheapest would be called "cheaper". Next time, stay awake in class. LOLbozdee - Monday, April 16, 2012 - link
When the article was first published it read "... however, the VRs are still cheape ..." and has been changed since. When I saw 'cheap' written as 'cheape' it reminded me of how a French person would say the English word 'cheap'.It all made sense in my head but I could see how my choice of words (or lack thereof) led to all of the comments below. All I really wanted to do was correct the typo.
Tunnah - Monday, April 16, 2012 - link
..The Raptor holds fond memories for me, when I first got enough money to build a serious rig, I used the original Raptor as my boot drive.It always stood out as the geek's bootdrive, and WD could easily reclaim that title if they coupled it with some NAND.
I'd ditch my primary SSD in a heartbeat if they released a VR HDD/SDD combo drive!
Makaveli - Monday, April 16, 2012 - link
Good luck with that.I wouldn't care if they slapped a 1GB of ram on the hard drive its still a hard drive.