Western Digital VelociRaptor Is Launched but what about the Numbers...
by Gary Key on April 21, 2008 12:00 AM EST- Posted in
- Gary's First Looks
Western Digital is finally launching a successor to the Raptor EL150 family of drives that has been around since 2003. This enterprise designed drive series is one that quickly made its home on just about every enthusiast desktop. Capacities started at 36GB, soon grew to 76GB, and then topped out at 150GB for what seemed like an eternity. The new drive appropriately goes by the name, VelociRaptor, and is part of the upcoming VR150 product family. Western Digital is launching this drive at a 300GB capacity point with other capacity points potentially available in the near future.
One of the most interesting aspects of the new drive is its 2.5" form factor. This little wonder packs two 150GB platters featuring 10K-RPM spindle speeds into a 2.5" drive placed in a new 3.5" carrier design dubbed the "IcePAK". This sled features 13 cooling fins that dissipates heat quickly and still allows it to fit in a standard 3.5" drive bay.
We have looked forward to putting this drive through its paces for the past several months since WD first hinted at a Raptor replacement. Our interest grew to a fever pitch last month after being briefed by Western Digital on the VelociRaptor's specifications and knowing a release date had been set for April. We anxiously awaited for test-drives to arrive a couple of weeks ago. As it turns out we received the drive just a few days ago, but were excited at the prospect of a sleepless weekend to see just how well this drive would stack up to the latest competition.
A sleepless weekend is what we got all right, just for all the wrong reasons. We kept noticing the performance of the drive was just not "right". It was certainly faster than its predecessor, but not by the margin, we expected. At times, the benchmark numbers were actually slower than several current 7200RPM drives and this brought out the yellow flag.
Our HDTune and HDTach results kept indicating a massive drop in transfer rates on the outer diameter of the platters, an area where the drive should be the fastest and not the slowest. This pattern continued with our IPEAK and file transfer tests. Eventually, we noticed this speed bump also occurred in several of our application tests where the drive just never seemed to get out of the gates quickly but would eventually catch up with and at times surpass our other drives.
Western Digital informed us the press review samples were engineering drives with early firmware. In fact, Western Digital felt so strongly about this that they included errata in the press kit stating the firmware was about 90% completed. We agree with them. WD confirmed our performance problems and erratic results late yesterday. It turns out the performance drops at the outer diameter are related to the tuning of the servo algorithm. WD had not finalized this tuning when the press sample drives shipped with firmware 03.03VOX.
Western Digital will have this performance drop out fixed before releasing the drives to Alienware next week or retail channels in late May. That said, our “preview” of the drive will be published shortly. We did not want to post a review that offered inconclusive or inconsistent results until we verified problems encountered during testing. As such, we do not plan to “review” the drive until final firmware is available.
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hans007 - Monday, April 21, 2008 - link
the original raptors were also 2.5" drives internally. it just looked differently.you cant make a 10k 3.5" disk, the weight of the platters is too much for the motors to handle heat and strain wise.
prety much all SAS 10k and 15k drives are 2.5" also.
GTVic - Monday, April 21, 2008 - link
Congratulations, you must be psychic. You've won the retarded post of the year award.There is no loss in performance, it is the fastest drive out there.
Sure they could have made it 3.5" and then it would run hotter and with lower seek times and higher power draw and noisier. I'm sure many people would prefer that, not.
It sure would be awsome if they had made it a 2.5" drive instead of a TWO AND A HALF INCH drive. Maybe you could just remove it from the heatsink yourself after you buy it, if you want some other installation method.
Discord - Monday, April 21, 2008 - link
LOL, not that knowledgably in HD technology are you? It may be the fastest drive out there but it would be substantially faster if it were a 3.5" platter (not to mention a lot more space). Compare any similar density and RPM speed 2.5" drive to a 3.5" and the larger platters destroy the smaller drives. While there is a hit on seek times the faster transfer rates more than make up for it. Also a new 3.5" Raptor would still have superior seek times compared to any other 3.5" drive out there. As for heat, power and noise, older 3.5 Raptors have had to settle with these "shortcomings" and yet they sold very well. When people want the absolute fastest option out there they don't care about these characteristics."Gee my drag racer sure is fast but it is so noisy and burns so much gas I can't stand it!"
GTVic - Monday, April 21, 2008 - link
Yes, I be "knowledgably" in HD technology (thanks for the English lesson).The points you made are theoretical only. There are a number of other factors that affect transfer rate and seek time (eg. drive tuning for lower power use, reduced noise or reduced heat output).
Previous to this, there are almost no 2.5" drives out there that are tuned/built for high performance so you cannot relate those previous comparisons to this drive.
Also, there are big tradeoffs with these types of choices. WD has made some choices based on their expertise, their evaluation of what customer's want and many other factors. When you call those choices "retarted" you only show off your own ignorance. Unless you care to build a better drive and prove them wrong...
Deusfaux - Monday, April 21, 2008 - link
#1. Tech Report says:"Western Digital says it's also working on a single-platter version of the drive, but that's not ready yet."
Gary can you verify this one way or another? What would the timeframe be?
#2. I have a couple spike drops when I bench one of my 2 Raptors with HDTach/HDTune. They're not right at the start, but they're there all the same.
What do they mean? I don't have them on my other Raptor.
johnsonx - Monday, April 21, 2008 - link
Why send out press-sample drives with incomplete firmware exhibiting poor performance? What does WD hope to gain by that other than bad press?Gary Key - Monday, April 21, 2008 - link
So far, all of the press looks really good on it. I am a bit of skeptic right now after running application benchmarks. ;) The synthetics still look really good, but the read rate problems we encountered with this firmware have not exactly left me convinced the drive deserves review status yet. I am finishing the charts on the preview now.I was quite surprised when the drive arrived a couple of days ago with the errata explaining the firmware not being finished yet. I had a bad feeling from that point on. However, WD was upfront about it and that is refreshing to some degree. I do not know why they pushed the review samples without firmware finalization, nor would I guess at this point.
n7 - Monday, April 21, 2008 - link
Have you seen the reviews out there of this new beast?90% ready of not, this thing is a beast.
Easily beating everything else out there on average, including the Samsung F1 in most tests.
http://www.techreport.com/articles.x/14583">http://www.techreport.com/articles.x/14583
Sivar - Monday, April 21, 2008 - link
This drive has probably the biggest leap in performance since... I don't know, I don't think even the original Raptor blew everything else away by this much of a margin. And according to StorageReview ( http://www.storagereview.com/WD3000BLFS.sr">http://www.storagereview.com/WD3000BLFS.sr ), the drive is "only about 90% optimized."chizow - Monday, April 21, 2008 - link
I don't think an updated firmware will help performance that much if it only cleans up those drop offs around the outer edges. Those burst and sustained transfer rates aren't too far off from my Raptor 150s and Samsung F1, although access time improves around 1ms.What did you think about acoustics Gary? That's probably my main complaint besides the price/size on Raptors. My first Raptor X was unbearably loud. I later purchased one from BB and it was much quieter, so I RMA'd the first (due solely to noise) and got an even quieter normal version with no window. Its still louder than the F1 by quite a bit, but its bearable compared to the first Raptor X I received. I'm sure anyone who runs Vista will agree quiet hard drives takes on added significance compared to XP.