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  (Source: Ron Reznick)

Western Digital's 300 GB VelociRaptor  (Source: Western Digital)
Western Digital takes the fight to SSDs with next generation VelociRaptor

With all of the talk these days in the storage industry swirling around solid-state drives (SSDs), it's easy to forget that advances are being made in the hard disk drive (HDD) market as well for consumers. That fact is even more pertinent today with the announcement of the long-awaited update to Western Digital's line of 10,000 RPM Raptor HDDs: the 300 GB VelociRaptor.

The new VelociRaptor takes an untraditional approach for a desktop HDD with its 2.5" drive design. The 2.5" form factor allows the drive to be smaller, lighter, and more power efficient than its 3.5" rivals.

But what good is a 2.5" HDD in a desktop system which typically accommodates 3.5" HDDs? Western Digital addressed that issue by affixing the VelociRaptor to an "IcePack" heatsink which allows the drive to fit into a standard 3.5" drive bay.

"Demand for ever-higher PC performance continues to increase and WD is the leader in this category with the WD Raptor. We created WD VelociRaptor hard drives to lead PC enthusiasts into the next era of PC and Mac storage performance and satisfy their insatiable thirst for computing speed," said Western Digital's Tom McDorman. "The new WD VelociRaptor delivers the greatest performance and reliability of all SATA hard drives currently on the market."

When it comes to performance, Western Digital promises a 30% increase in performance through its SATA 3Gb/sec interface, 1.4 million MTBF, and Rotary Acceleration Feed Forward (RAFF) to improve performance in vibration-heavy environments.

The 300 GB VelociRaptor will be available in Alienware's high-performance ALX desktop system later this month, while end-users can purchase the drive in mid-May for $299.99.

For full performance specs on the amazing VelociRaptor, there is no shortage of reviews highlighting the new drive. You can read reviews from PC Perspective, Hot Hardware, Maximum PC and The Tech Report.

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Mobile version?? *Pretty please!*
By phaxmohdem on 4/21/2008 9:07:02 AM , Rating: 2
I wonder if it can be unmounted from the Icepack and used in mobile workstations and gaming notebooks.




RE: Mobile version?? *Pretty please!*
By mmntech on 4/21/2008 9:30:29 AM , Rating: 3
Or dare I say, mounted in the PS3.

There's probably a good reason the heatsink is there. I can imagine it puts out a lot of heat at 10,000rpm. Even the 5200rpm drives can get quite hot. It's still pretty impressive for a 2.5'' drive. $300 actually isn't too bad for a drive like that. I was just browsing Newegg, and I see there a Fujitsu 300gb, 10,000rpm drive selling for $425. It's SCSI though which explains the price difference.


By TheSpaniard on 4/21/2008 9:45:09 AM , Rating: 3
but going from 5400 --> 7200 RPM hard drive only really nets a 2-3 C difference (in the PS3). I wonder how much hotter this will get?


RE: Mobile version?? *Pretty please!*
By Hare on 4/22/2008 4:11:13 AM , Rating: 2
quote:
It's still pretty impressive for a 2.5'' drive.
Actually most high-speed drives have 2.5" platters.


By superkdogg on 4/21/2008 1:06:20 PM , Rating: 2
If that option was mentioned at all in the reviews, it was to say that it can't be done.

I don't believe them. WD probably just doesn't want to warrantee it, but citing 'excessive power requirements' or heat as reasons it won't work don't cut it for me. It sounds like it's pretty likely to work if you get a good modder in there.

Even using USB 2.0 might be faster than a 4k/5.4k RPM laptop drive.


Why only WD
By phatboye on 4/21/2008 10:01:56 AM , Rating: 3
Why is it that only WD makes 10,000rpm SATA hard drives? There are plenty of 10,000rpm SCSI hard drives but for some reason WD is the only one who makes them available via SATA. I would have upgraded a long time ago if I could get a 10,000rpm hard drive that wasn't seriously over priced like WD raptor line but still I have yet to find a hard drive company that will sell such a hard drive. Do these hard drive companies not want my money? Give me a reason to upgrade my existing hard drives other than larger space because my current hard drives aren't anywhere close to being half full, and do it at a reasonable price unlike these overpriced raptors.




RE: Why only WD
By gyranthir on 4/21/2008 10:15:36 AM , Rating: 2
I think it's because WD is the only company really willing to gamble like this.

Even though 10k rpm enterprise drives are common in Enterprise solutions, SAS and SCSi drives aren't cheap at all. You may be able to find refurb, knockoff, seconds, and resale ones online in places, buying them new is not cheap.

Changing them over to SATA and then running thru the consumer testing gauntlet, won't be a cheap or logistically simple process.

I am glad WD is looking at this, I love my 150gb raptor, and am now thinking about one of these badboys...


RE: Why only WD
By RamboZZo on 4/21/2008 11:43:43 AM , Rating: 2
Raptors aren't exactly terribly overprices. It's just 10K rpm drives are by definition going to be more expensive to make regardless of being scsi or sata. There is no such thing as making budget 10K rpm drives unless they are obsolete models. The reason no one else makes them is because there is probably a limited market for people willing to pay the cost of such a drive ousite of enterprise and corporate markets which would typically go for scsi or fc anyway.


RE: Why only WD
By steven975 on 4/21/2008 4:22:24 PM , Rating: 3
The reason only WD does this is because they don't have an enterprise market to defend. If Seagate did this they would see their SAS/SCSI sales fall and SATA (lower margin) sales rise.

Interesting bit of trivia: The first raptor came out because WD failed to break into the enterprise market. They had put all of the work into a SCSI drive design and couldn't sell it...so they adapted it to ATA instead. Note the old raptors do not use 3.5" platters; they use ~3" ones that are much thicker than other desktop drives.


2.5" gives no performance penalty?
By Sunrise089 on 4/21/2008 10:13:31 AM , Rating: 2
I was under the impression that one of the reasons for the lower performance of notebook drives was that smaller drives were slower than larger ones at the same RPM. In other words, I thought the 1.8" Macbook Air drive would be slower than a desktop 3.5" drive even if both spun at 7,200rpm. Was I mistaken? Otherwise, how does the Raptor not loose out to 3.5" 10k drives?




RE: 2.5" gives no performance penalty?
By nafhan on 4/21/2008 11:31:47 AM , Rating: 2
From my understanding, size has nothing to do with read/write speed, and the slower access times are mostly due to power saving features. Seek time can actually improve with smaller disk area (head does not need to travel as far).

Also, as the article states, most enterprise drives are 2.5" at this point.


By ChronoReverse on 4/21/2008 12:05:39 PM , Rating: 2
Read/Write is actually faster with a larger platter at the outer edge because the actual speed of the edge is greater. Access times are better with a smaller platter though.


By rudolphna on 4/27/2008 10:22:30 AM , Rating: 2
In most cases, yes that would be true. However, you have to consider the density of the platters. you are cramming 300GB onto 2 tiny platters, each spinning at 10,000 RPM. The Data density on this drive is going to be extremely high, and if you saw anandtechs preview, the outermost edges had up to 130MB/s read speeds, absolutely devastating the older 3.5" Raptor. Unfortunately, they could not finish testing because incomplete firmware caused actuator issues, which severely degraded performance in some spots of the disks (primarily the high-performance outer edge)


modding
By Pessimism on 4/21/2008 9:05:41 AM , Rating: 2
I can see people attempting to jam these into their sata laptops, if only they were standard 9mm height instead of 15mm




RE: modding
By superkdogg on 4/21/2008 1:11:42 PM , Rating: 2
If I had the $$$ to buy one, I'd do it.

You'd want to re-work the cover anyway for air flow to keep it cool, so worst case scenario in many designs is that you have a lump out the bottom of your laptop that is not as high as the feet in most cases, meaning it still can be set down on a table with no ill effect.

The only reason I won't be doing this is the cost, but if I had $600 to throw at my laptop, it has 2 HDD bays and allows RAID. I wonder how much my e-peen would grow if I had a 10k Raid-0 array and 600 GB of storage in a laptop?


RE: modding
By Frallan on 4/22/2008 5:42:27 AM , Rating: 2
Well I for sure will have a look in my Lappy to see if I can squeeze it in.


It's useless
By xNIBx on 4/21/2008 2:34:18 PM , Rating: 2
High volume/high performance disks arent that useful. Using a drive like this for storing media, is stupid. So 300gB is overkill. This would have been a lot better offer if it was 120-150gB and at half price. Then someone could spend 100-150$, get a fast disk, put his OS and games/applications there and enjoy relatively high performance without breaking the bank.

Having a high cost/high volume disk means that you are selling your disk at the same price that SSDs sell for. And SSD performance will soon be leagues ahead of magnetic disks. Especially when you consider that the biggest advantage of raptors is their low latency, SSDs already soundly beat them on that.

Even though SSD will offer less space for the same price, this isnt that important for the enthusiast(as i explained).




RE: It's useless
By Yawgm0th on 4/21/2008 3:42:49 PM , Rating: 2
The products you are describing are the previous Raptor drives... Lower capacity, but the same spindle rate (and comparable, but slower speeds all around) and approximate cost/byte. They have been moderately successful, but the second most common complaint (first being price) is the size. Clearly, the consumer wants a bigger, faster drive.

I can easily use more than 150GB for games and other applications on a single volume, and the ability to store much more than just software on a single, fast hard disk is definitely worth it. I routinely do parity checks and extraction of large sets of .rar archives which is almost always limited by my hard drive these days. I also do transfers of large files or sets of files over the network, and once again, my hard drives limit that. A fast, high-cost disk or multiple high-cost disks in RAID are perfect for such applications.

SSDs cost much more than fast hard disk. Even a 15000RPM SAS disk is going to be 2-3 times cheaper than a SSD, and have significantly better throughput at a cost to seek times (which are not as important as average read and write throughput in most applications). SSDs have a long way to go to be at the same level as a 10,000RPM SATA disk.


RE: It's useless
By Frallan on 4/22/2008 5:45:26 AM , Rating: 2
Bull§hit

I use my lappy for everything incl. gaming and Im stuck on a 5400 rpm drive that only had 150Gb. It would be heaven to have 300GB on a fast drive it would allow me to have MORE media as well as getting into the pistolround in CS:S.


Bout time
By Macuser89 on 4/21/2008 9:11:04 AM , Rating: 2
About time WD releases a new version of the Raptor. The 150GB version was release in January 06.




RE: Bout time
By pnyffeler on 4/21/2008 9:41:11 AM , Rating: 2
While cost remains an issue...

I'm drooling all over my keyboard.


Jeebus. Did you see how loud they are on SEEKS
By PAPutzback on 4/21/2008 10:16:13 AM , Rating: 2
Did any of the reviews compare Average Reads to a Raid 0 array.