WD Launches Newest VelociRaptor, The Fastest SATA Hard Drive With Twice the Capacity

[Roph]

A 500GB platter 7200RPM 3.5" will net you ~130MB/s, this drive is pointless.

 

[Kantastic]

People seem to not understand that access times are what makes Velociraptors so good.

 

[CDdude55]

My current 300GB WD Velociraptor is doing just fine.

 

[phanbuey]

People seem to not understand that access times are what makes Velociraptors so good.

yeah but if you short stroke a 1tb the access times fall just the same... hell if you short stroke one to 100GB you can get 3.6ms. For $100.

 

[Airbrushkid]

I don't think there to compete against standard hard drives. They put them out as a option over the ssd drives.

Because they also have to compete with standard Hard Drives. For me to be inticed to move to a VelociRaptor over my standard 7200RPM Drive, they need to be reasonably priced.



And the average Joe doesn't need an SSD either...

 

[v12dock]

meh

 

[Kenshai]

SSD for OS drive is actually moot for people who dont reboot/shutdown their PC's often.. after the OS loads the benefits of SSD for OS drive is gone, I had a X25-E for my OS drive and I only reboot for like once a month or a significant driver update. Never felt the benefits of SSD as an OS drive.

Boot times aren't the only thing improved. With my SSD everything in windows is a whole lot snappier than it is on any of my HDD PC's. It's for the OS but the access time is really where it's at on an SSD. I can feel the difference switching from PC to PC.

would it work in a PS3?
it might overheat without the heatsink, tho, wont it?

*just a tech question. never gonna do it.

No they won't work in a PS3 even with the heatsink off, this is because it is thicker than he standard 2.5" drive.


The thing I don't like about these reviews is that it's not putting the HDD against any SSD at all. Unless I'm mistaken they're marketed as an alternative to SSD's both in price and speed.

 

[newtekie1]

A 500GB platter 7200RPM 3.5" will net you ~130MB/s, this drive is pointless.

AND 3ms access times?

yeah but if you short stroke a 1tb the access times fall just the same... hell if you short stroke one to 100GB you can get 3.6ms. For $100.

Indeed, but most do not know about short stroking, or even the practice of putting a small partition at the beginning of the drive and leaving the rest unallocated so the heads never move off that partition...the easy way to short stroke a drive.

I don't think there to compete against standard hard drives. They put them out as a option over the ssd drives.

They compete against both. They are trying to fill a niche, the area between SSDs and standard HDDs, to capture the people that want faster drives but don't want to pay out the nose for the capacity they need. This is why they actually compete against both markets.

 

[Beertintedgoggles]

So are you guys suggesting you short stroke the drives so that only the inermost section of the drive is used? I could see that helping access times slightly but slowing down overall transfer speeds. I mostly only hear of short stroking a drive so it only writes on the outermost parts of the platters, thus your transfer speeds will be faster due to the linear velocity being faster the further you get from the center of the platter. Latency wise, you have to wait for the platter to rotate around to the given read/write position. This gives you the following formula: 1 / (RPM / 60 seconds). Therefore a 7200 RPM drive will give you pretty much on avg. 8.333.... ms access times. A 10000 RPM drive then reduces that down to 6 ms. Of course if you factor in native command queuing then these numbers can be reduced more, and those numbers were assuming worst case scenario where the drive has to perform a full rotation before the heads are positioned at the correct address. But still, RPM's rule latencies.