300Gb Velociraptor - $99 @ the egg

[foolish501]

Yes i know SSD's are faster, but i love my drive, and seriously thinking of getting another and raiding them at this price


http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16822136322

 

[muskie32]

What are the Read/Write speeds?

 

[DominionSeraph]

I'm pretty sure the HLFS is the previous generation. It would be outperformed by a Spinpoint F3 which gives you 3x the capacity for 70% the cost.

 

[WhoBeDaPlaya]

What are the Read/Write speeds?

Seq or random? If you're asking random, SSDs are like *insert sexy celeb* sex vids, whereas the Raptor is like a donkey show

 

[DisgruntledVirus]

Seq or random? If you're asking random, SSDs are like *insert sexy celeb* sex vids, whereas the Raptor is like a donkey show

Perhaps I'm into donkey shows. :hmm:

 

[WhoBeDaPlaya]

Perhaps I'm into donkey shows. :hmm:

It's interspecies erotica f*cko

 

[Zap]

I'm pretty sure the HLFS is the previous generation. It would be outperformed by a Spinpoint F3 which gives you 3x the capacity for 70% the cost.

Part of what makes SSDs fast are the next to nil access times. VelociRaptor is a lot faster for access time than the F3, so in random reads/writes it should beat any current 3.5" 7200RPM HDD. Also, the 600GB VelociRaptor can (barely) beat the 7200RPM drives in STR, but of course costs a lot.

This reminds me... I need to RMA two of my four 300GB VelociRaptors.

 

[Fanatical Meat]

I agree I've never owned one but from reviews it never seemed to justify the extra cost.

 

[Zap]

I agree I've never owned one but from reviews it never seemed to justify the extra cost.

It all depends...

BITD they were the fastest thing going. If you want performance, you paid for it - just like now with SSDs. I do believe there is a place for these as long as WD is willing to adjust pricing. At $99 these are more tempting. Now if WD will only reduce the street pricing of the 600GB VR to under $200, I will buy three (one for main rig, one for wife's rig, one for LAN party rig). The reason is that I want performance, yet I still cannot afford to have EVERYTHING on SSDs. I currently have 120GB of games installed on my 300GB VR in my main rig (SSD as boot drive) and I only have a fraction of my games installed, with less than half of my Steam games plus only BFBC2/SC2/COD. Nothing else! If I install other games that I play only now and again, I'd easily more than fill up the drive. Since ~400GB of SSD will still run closer to $800, a $150-200 600GB VR is the next best thing without resorting to RAID0 (I know people with VR300 on RAID0 just for games).

WD, are you listening? $150 for a VR600 before the next gen SSDs come out and I'll buy 3 of them STAT!

 

[cuti7399]

I have a 300g VR and have not seen any 7200rpm drives can compete with it. Raid 0 with 2+ would be sweet.

 

[edplayer]

pretty cool deal!


... for 2008.

 

[ArchAngel777]

Part of what makes SSDs fast are the next to nil access times. VelociRaptor is a lot faster for access time than the F3, so in random reads/writes it should beat any current 3.5" 7200RPM HDD. Also, the 600GB VelociRaptor can (barely) beat the 7200RPM drives in STR, but of course costs a lot.

This reminds me... I need to RMA two of my four 300GB VelociRaptors.

Which is why getting a Raptor does not make a lot of sense. You do not gain anything in the way of sequential reads and writes over a larger platter drive and access time is improved only ~100% whereas with an SSD the access time would improve ~10,000%.

 

[Peremptor]

If you are going to spend this much on a 'fast' hard drive you might as well go with a real speed demon like this one:

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00...ef=oss_product

I got one last night. 60GB should be more than enough for my boot drive needs.

 

[DominionSeraph]

VelociRaptor is a lot faster for access time than the F3, so in random reads/writes it should beat any current 3.5" 7200RPM HDD.

Desktop access patterns aren't random.

The random access time of a 7200RPM drive hasn't changed in a decade. That doesn't mean that you're just as well off with a drive from 1999 as a Spinpoint F3.
15k SCSI has always beat every Raptor in access times, never mind 7200RPM. I wouldn't put one in a desktop, though. It's been shown time and time again that a 7200RPM desktop drive performs just as well as an equivalent generation 15k server drive in a desktop environment. So it isn't the underlying seek times that's the difference. The firmware on server drives is optimized for random seeks, whereas desktops have a localized access pattern. (Unless you have a lot of data turnover with no defragmentation/free space consolidation.)
If you keep your drive in decent shape the OS will lay down an install in one block. Because of the way a single user works, the next piece of data he requests will likely be in that block. In fact, it will likely be the next thing laid out sequentially. Desktop drives take advantage of this. But a Raptor can't do any more with this than a 7200RPM drive can. Its performance advantage in random seeks doesn't help it with predictive caching or translate to an equivalent advantage in localized seeks. The increased areal density of a more modern hard drive makes up for what performance differences are left.

The difference with SSD is the level of performance increase. You have no mechanical seeks, you have no rotational latency, and you have the media transfer rate. Usually.
Try to write with certain SSD's and you're gonna wish you were writing to a mechanical.

Put an older Raptor in a server? Sure. In a desktop? Not unless it's at an equivalent price. And $99 for 300GB is not equivalent.

(Here's a 5400RPM Caviar Green blowing away a 15,000RPM Cheetah in single user performance.)

Expensive + 10,000RPM does not necessarily mean "Better."

 

[Elixer]

This reminds me... I need to RMA two of my four 300GB VelociRaptors.

Two of them failed at the same time ? Ouch!
Did you see any SMART warnings, or did they just die ?

 

[lazarus000]

SSD for you main drive and then these for your 'storage' drives

 

[OILFIELDTRASH]

But aren't random read/writes where this would beat a 1tb drive better served as your OS drive? How much does random read/write come into play on a secondary drive for storage/games?

 

[Zap]

Which is why getting a Raptor does not make a lot of sense.

Just because it doesn't make sense to your particular computer needs doesn't mean it can't to someone else.

The difference with SSD is the level of performance increase. You have no mechanical seeks, you have no rotational latency, and you have the media transfer rate. Usually.
Try to write with certain SSD's and you're gonna wish you were writing to a mechanical.

Look dude, I know exactly what an SSD can do. Let me count how many I've gotten in the past 1½ years... FOURTEEN! One Intel G1, the rest a mix of Indilinx Barefoot and Intel G2. I'm considering picking up one of the cheap 60/64GB Sandforce drives since I've never personally tried one of those controllers. You're preaching to the choir here.

The funny thing is that I still believe there is room (albeit a decreasing niche) for a drive like the VelociRaptor. Here's why...

There is no such thing as Black and White. There is no such thing as Fastest and Slowest. Why does Intel make desktop CPUs that sell for $40 and desktop CPUs that sell for $1000? Well, because there are people who are willing to buy one, and there are people that are willing to buy the other, that's why. So, where does that put all the in-between priced CPUs? Who buys those?

The other thing is that of course product value is not linear. Some products just give better bang/buck at their price point than other products at another price point. That's a fact. That's why a Core i5 750/760 is such a hot ticket item for budget conscious enthusiasts/gamers, because it give good... there's a hooker joke somewhere in here...

So where does that leave the VelociRaptor?

It leaves the VR as an in-between priced product that is at a disadvantageous value at its current price point. Does that mean it shouldn't exist as a product? No. Who buys an Intel Core i7 960 when the Core i7 950 is such a killer value? Well, people obviously do, whether or not you can comprehend why they would. Just because you (I'm using the generic "you") wouldn't buy it doesn't mean someone else won't.

Basically someone who wants snappier performance than a 7200RPM drive but has too many games to fit on an affordable SSD can aim between the two with a VelociRaptor. Like me!

Put an older Raptor in a server? Sure. In a desktop? Not unless it's at an equivalent price. And $99 for 300GB is not equivalent.

(Here's a 5400RPM Caviar Green blowing away a 15,000RPM Cheetah in single user performance.)

Expensive + 10,000RPM does not necessarily mean "Better."

How about this comparison?

I wish that they had the VelociRaptor 600GB as well as one of the newer 7200RPM 500GB/platter drives in the list, but ah well. The WD Black is one of the faster 7200RPM drives anyways, even with 3 platters. It handily beats the Green drive, and is in turn beaten by the VR. No surprise that the slowest drive is the cheapest and the fastest the most expensive. SSDs are even faster, and even more expensive (talking about $/GB).

Two of them failed at the same time ? Ouch!
Did you see any SMART warnings, or did they just die ?

One was in my main rig, with all my games on it. It started to have strange slowdowns over a couple weeks, but I didn't pay it much attention. Then I started to get SMART errors on POST, and it died within a day or two from that point. I've had this drive in continuous use for probably just over 2 years. The funny thing was that as soon as I started getting SMART errors on POST, I immediately suspected my Seagate 7200.11 drive. However, the Seagate is still doing fine (I had updated the firmware BITD as recommended by Seagate).

The second one was a spare drive that was purchased a while back, but still brand new/unused in a sealed anti-static bag. It was dead fresh out of the bag. Maybe it was really DOA, or maybe in the interim it got handled too much. I don't know.

I'm now using yet another one (I have four total) and it works fine as a replacement for the first one that died, in the same system hooked up the same way.

 

[DominionSeraph]

Basically someone who wants snappier performance than a 7200RPM drive but has too many games to fit on an affordable SSD can aim between the two with a VelociRaptor. Like me!

Snappier performance -- which you can get with the NEW Velociraptor. That does not mean that you can get it with the OLD Velociraptors.
If you want snappier performance than a 2TB 5400RPM Caviar Green do you switch to an ATA-66 DiamondMax DM+40? It's a 7200RPM drive!
I wouldn't suggest it. The difference in performance between 10GB platters and 500GB platters is quite large, even if the 10GB platters are rotating 33% faster.

If someone was offering a DM+40 for $99 as an upgrade over a new 5400RPM drive, I'd point out that, even though it has a 2ms advantage in random access times, it's not necessarily an upgrade.

How about this comparison?

The Spinpoint F3's average transfer rate is higher than the WD1001FALS' maximum.

Wow, look at that Raptor go.
Sub 9ms access times doesn't seem to help it much. Yet you seem to think that that would make it a good buy.
There is more to a drive's performance than just access times.

Oh, duh. Anand has a review with this drive and a 500GB/platter Caviar Black.
http://www.anandtech.com/show/3636/...ociraptor-vr200m-10k-rpm-at-450gb-and-600gb/6
Beats it in 9/15 tests.

Tom's
http://www.tomshardware.com/charts/...tml?prod[4398]=on&prod[3016]=on&prod[2367]=on

 

[Zap]

Wow, look at that Raptor go.
Sub 9ms access times doesn't seem to help it much. Yet you seem to think that that would make it a good buy.
There is more to a drive's performance than just access times.

"No duh" that the ancient first gen 36GB Raptor gets spanked by any current generation 7200RPM drive. Why are you intentionally picking older gen fast spindle drives for your comparisons to newer gen 7200RPM drives?

How about a better comparison?

VR300 vs Black 1TB

The VR300 bests the Black in everything, and still does it with less than half the platter density.

There is more to a drive's performance than just platter density.

Obviously the best performance spindle drive would couple the 10k RPM with highest platter densities, but alas I don't foresee that happening.

You're right about snappier in games, however, because seems as if most (but not all) games are more sequential reads. So, 7200RPM drives are better for most games than the 300GB VR.

I think I'll still be keeping my VR300 drives. Maybe I'll RMA my drives and then run RAID. Get low access times AND high STR.

 

[goobee]

Doesn't the limited write-to limitation of SSDs figure in the comparison? Many folks get around this by unloading write activities to a hard drive. Until the technology gets better, I'll stick to mechanical hard drives.

 

[mshan]

Can anyone comment on the platter density / number of platters, and how silent / quiet this drive is in terms of idle whine and seeks noises?

 

[ArchAngel777]

Just because it doesn't make sense to your particular computer needs doesn't mean it can't to someone else.

Actually, I believe you did not read my post correctly. I believe that I said 'it doesn't make a lot of sense.' Nowhere did I say it did not make any sense. But don't let me hold you back from buying 20 of these things... Hell you pretty much have an open wallet when it comes to stuff anyway. Never met someone who buys more of this stuff than they can even use. I guess I don't have money to piss away

 

[ArchAngel777]

Can anyone comment on the platter density / number of platters, and how silent / quiet this drive is in terms of idle whine and seeks noises?

I cannot comment on it for these models. My older 74GB was rather loud... It sounds like Zap has some of these. I am sure he will let you know.

 

[MrCoyote]

So the Samsung F3 and F4 are still slower than the VR? On this chart, the Samsung gets better scores.

http://www.harddrivebenchmark.net/high_end_drives.html