Western Digital WD2500YD: Enterprise on the Desktop
by Gary Key on June 24, 2006 10:00 AM EST- Posted in
- Storage
Our application time tests are designed to show application performance results with times being reported in minutes / seconds or seconds only with lower scores being better. While these tests will show some differences between the drives it is important to understand we are no longer measuring the pure performance of the hard drive but how well our platform performs with each individual drive. The performance of a hard drive is an integral part of the computer platform but other factors such as memory, CPU, core logic, and even driver choice can play a major role in determining how well the hard drive performs in any given task.
Game Load Tests
In our Half-Life 2: Lost Coast test we measure the time it takes to load the game with the application timer starting when the play game icon is initiated in the Steam menu until the Main game menu appears. The results follow our overall iPEAK game results with the Western Digital Raptor performing up to 10% better in this benchmark. The WD 2500YD continues to show a pattern of finishing slightly behind the other drives but the performance difference requires a benchmark to notice and most people won't be able to tell the difference during actual gameplay.
Our Sims 2: Open for Business test measures the time it takes to load the initial portion of the game. Our application timer starts when the game icon is initiated until the neighborhood menu appears. The results are basically the same as our Half Life 2 results as the WD Raptor continues to lead all drives, but the Seagate 7200.10 finishes ahead of the RE2 drives this time.
Game Level Load
These tests center around the actual loading of a playable level within our game selections.
The Battlefield 2 test measures the time it takes to load the Daqing Oilfields level. We begin timing right after initiating a single player game and stop when the join game icon is visible.
The Half-Life 2: Lost Coast test measures the time it takes to load a new game. Our application timer starts when the start new game option is selected and ends when the character is on screen with the 357 magnum visible.
The Oblivion test measures the time it takes to load the Weye level in our saved game files. We measure the amount of time from loading the saved game until the character is visible on screen.
The Sims 2: Open for Business test measures the time it takes to load the Downtown sector of the game from Veronaville. We start our application timer when the Downtown game icon is selected and stop when the downtown graphics are visible.
The WD Raptor continues its pattern of being the best available drive for the gaming enthusiast, although with a limited storage capacity it is certainly an expensive proposition for the general desktop user who typically will sacrifice speed for storage. Our WD2500YD continues to finish in the middle or at the back of the pack in these tests with the only noticeable differences being in our Oblivion and Sims 2 levels where there was some separation between the Raptor and our test drive.
WinRAR 3.51
Our WinRAR tests measure the time it takes to compress our test folder that contains 444 files, 10 folders, and contains 602MB of data. This is same test folder utilized in our iPEAK test suite. While the benchmark is extremely CPU intensive for the compression test it still requires a fast storage system to keep pace with the CPU.
The compression tests mimic our iPEAK results with the WD RE2 500GB drive having the top score, followed by the Seagate 7200.10 unit. While the WD2500YD was competitive in the file compression tests and even bested the RE2 400GB drive, the performance in the decompression test is abysmal finishing twelve seconds behind the Raptor and seven seconds behind the Seagate 500GB drive. Upon noticing this result, we generated several other compress/decompress test scenarios with the same basic results.
AnyDVD 5.9.6
Our next test has us utilizing the "ripping" function of AnyDVD to copy the Office Space DVD file from our source drive to our test drive. Our DVD features 29 files totaling 7.55GB of data and is an excellent test for determining the write speed of a drive.
The test results show what we all know: speed kills. In this case, the WD Raptor posts yet another first place score but is followed very closely by the RE2 drives. The WD2500YD finishes up to 50 seconds behind the top WD drives in this test. If you spend a lot time converting your movie collection or generating video files then buying the fastest drive you can afford can lead to a significant time savings.
Nero Audio Encode
Our last test has us utilizing the audio encoding functions of Nero to convert our INXS Greatest Hits audio files from MP4 format to a high quality variable rate MP3 file for our portable player. Our benchmark features 16 files totaling 137MB of data and is an excellent test for determining the read and write speed of a drive.
The test results show once again the amount of time a fast hard drive like the WD Raptor can save over the course of audio or video file manipulation session. The two RE2 drives are close behind the Raptor with the WD2500YD finishing near last again, although the difference is substantially less than in the video tests.
Game Load Tests
In our Half-Life 2: Lost Coast test we measure the time it takes to load the game with the application timer starting when the play game icon is initiated in the Steam menu until the Main game menu appears. The results follow our overall iPEAK game results with the Western Digital Raptor performing up to 10% better in this benchmark. The WD 2500YD continues to show a pattern of finishing slightly behind the other drives but the performance difference requires a benchmark to notice and most people won't be able to tell the difference during actual gameplay.
Our Sims 2: Open for Business test measures the time it takes to load the initial portion of the game. Our application timer starts when the game icon is initiated until the neighborhood menu appears. The results are basically the same as our Half Life 2 results as the WD Raptor continues to lead all drives, but the Seagate 7200.10 finishes ahead of the RE2 drives this time.
Game Level Load
These tests center around the actual loading of a playable level within our game selections.
The Battlefield 2 test measures the time it takes to load the Daqing Oilfields level. We begin timing right after initiating a single player game and stop when the join game icon is visible.
The Half-Life 2: Lost Coast test measures the time it takes to load a new game. Our application timer starts when the start new game option is selected and ends when the character is on screen with the 357 magnum visible.
The Oblivion test measures the time it takes to load the Weye level in our saved game files. We measure the amount of time from loading the saved game until the character is visible on screen.
The Sims 2: Open for Business test measures the time it takes to load the Downtown sector of the game from Veronaville. We start our application timer when the Downtown game icon is selected and stop when the downtown graphics are visible.
The WD Raptor continues its pattern of being the best available drive for the gaming enthusiast, although with a limited storage capacity it is certainly an expensive proposition for the general desktop user who typically will sacrifice speed for storage. Our WD2500YD continues to finish in the middle or at the back of the pack in these tests with the only noticeable differences being in our Oblivion and Sims 2 levels where there was some separation between the Raptor and our test drive.
WinRAR 3.51
Our WinRAR tests measure the time it takes to compress our test folder that contains 444 files, 10 folders, and contains 602MB of data. This is same test folder utilized in our iPEAK test suite. While the benchmark is extremely CPU intensive for the compression test it still requires a fast storage system to keep pace with the CPU.
The compression tests mimic our iPEAK results with the WD RE2 500GB drive having the top score, followed by the Seagate 7200.10 unit. While the WD2500YD was competitive in the file compression tests and even bested the RE2 400GB drive, the performance in the decompression test is abysmal finishing twelve seconds behind the Raptor and seven seconds behind the Seagate 500GB drive. Upon noticing this result, we generated several other compress/decompress test scenarios with the same basic results.
AnyDVD 5.9.6
Our next test has us utilizing the "ripping" function of AnyDVD to copy the Office Space DVD file from our source drive to our test drive. Our DVD features 29 files totaling 7.55GB of data and is an excellent test for determining the write speed of a drive.
The test results show what we all know: speed kills. In this case, the WD Raptor posts yet another first place score but is followed very closely by the RE2 drives. The WD2500YD finishes up to 50 seconds behind the top WD drives in this test. If you spend a lot time converting your movie collection or generating video files then buying the fastest drive you can afford can lead to a significant time savings.
Nero Audio Encode
Our last test has us utilizing the audio encoding functions of Nero to convert our INXS Greatest Hits audio files from MP4 format to a high quality variable rate MP3 file for our portable player. Our benchmark features 16 files totaling 137MB of data and is an excellent test for determining the read and write speed of a drive.
The test results show once again the amount of time a fast hard drive like the WD Raptor can save over the course of audio or video file manipulation session. The two RE2 drives are close behind the Raptor with the WD2500YD finishing near last again, although the difference is substantially less than in the video tests.
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11 Comments
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driveguy - Monday, June 26, 2006 - link
I do not understand why the YD family was reviewed so late in it's life.The YS familily has been introduced from 160-500GB on a common platform.
It would make much more sense to review the current product.
Gary Key - Monday, June 26, 2006 - link
We reviewed the recent product life update to the YD family that changed it to the RE16 family with 16MB cache and 3GB/s SATA support. The YS family (160GB~320GB range) just started shipping in volume earlier this month and samples are arriving shortly in the 160GB and 250GB sizes. We received the 320GB YS today that will be tested against the other 320GB drives from Western Digital and Seagate in the near future. Thank you for the comments.
driveguy - Tuesday, June 27, 2006 - link
Hi Gary,Thank you for your response.
YS goes from 160GB to 500GB. The real attraction for the RE products is reliability more than performance. This is really not something you can review because you will not have access to field failure rates but these drives have done quite well in high duty cycle envirements. They have crushed STX NL models in the market with the absolute lion's share of this market.
Gary Key - Wednesday, June 28, 2006 - link
Hi,I could have been a little clearer in my 160GB~320GB statement, my point was those drive sizes just started shipping in volume this month. The 400GB and 500GB drives were shipping in May although we have not received the 400GB sample yet. I think with the YS series WD has brought the nearline performance up to and at times exceeding the SE16 line now. I think it will be interesting comparing the NL35.2 to the WD YS series since both are new product releases. We are implementing a 16 drive RAID chassis for enterprise/benchmark testing shortly so we should be able to look at some failure rate information this time next year in this market segment.
Thanks...
Squidward - Monday, June 26, 2006 - link
By looking at this article and others I've seen the Raptor is hands down the best drive you can get without going into SCSI drives. How does that apply to real usage, is the difference that notable versus the other drives in this article? I've been considering buying one if the difference is truly noticable, particularly as it applies to game loading times and recording tv programs.tallman45 - Saturday, June 24, 2006 - link
Nice job as always with the review.A more valuable comparison IMHO though would have been like cost competitors such as the new 74GB 16mb cache Raptor and the 7200.10 320gb Seagate. It stands to reason that a $300 150GB Raptor had better outperform a $90 250gb YD
Gary Key - Saturday, June 24, 2006 - link
Hi,We have the new 74GB 16MB cache Raptor arriving in about 10 days. We have completed our testing on the Seagate 320GB 7200.10 and are in the process of completing several other 200GB~320GB drives for a desktop roundup shortly in what we believe is the best price to performance range at this time. Our 500GB roundup and PVR article will be available in late July. As stated in the article we will also do a separate review on RAID performance with both nearline enterprise and desktop drives in the near future. The process of adding additional multi-tasking benchmarks along with doing both hardware (Areca) RAID and soft (nF500) RAID is painstakingly slow. ;->
The other process we have setup is an additional test bench that is currently running previously reviewed drives 24/7 with varying stress tests so we can start reporting on reliability and doing a quick follow-up on the drives performance every few months. In about two weeks, you should start seeing storage articles from us about every 10 days.
Thank you for the comments.
Gary Key - Saturday, June 24, 2006 - link
Where is the edit button? :) I meant to end my reply with "storage reviews from us about every 10 days or less."dhei - Saturday, June 24, 2006 - link
150gig raptor is around $200 now...dhei - Saturday, June 24, 2006 - link
forgot to add the 75gig Raptor is only $130. In terms of pure performance most people would go for the little premium in price for Raptor than more hd space. They just get a 200+gig drive for backup and install main apps on raptor.