Buying retired WD Velociraptors... Smart or foolish?

[cbn]

Most new HDs, they have their data density at 1TB per platter.
That, combined with their speed 5xxx or 7200 RPM makes them faster than raptors in almost all areas except seeking.

Yes, that is right. 1TB per 3.5" platter was the highest capacity till the WD Black 6TB was released (~September 2015) with 5 x 1.2TB 3.5" platters. Meanwhile the highest capacity 2.5" platter I have seen listed so far is 750GB.

Now regarding Raptors, 4th, 5th and 6th generation drives had 2.5" platter capacities of 150GB/160GB, 200GB, 250GB or 334GB according to the Hard drive platter data base:

http://rml527.blogspot.com/2010/10/hdd-platter-database-western-digital-25_3956.html

First generation Raptors (released 2003) and second generation Raptors ( released 2004) had 36GB platters according this review. The third generation Raptor (released in 2006) according to the same review achieved a capacity of 150GB with two platters (suggesting platters of 80GB or slightly less).

So in summary:

1st and 2nd generation (2003/2004): 36GB platters, 8MB cache
3rd generation (2006): 75 or 80GB platters, 16MB cache
4th generation (2008): 150GB or 160GB platters, 16MB cache
5th generation (2010/2011): 200GB platters, 32MB cache
6th generation (2012): 250GB or 334 GB platters, 64MB Cache.

 

[nerp]

On ebay, Go hard drive has listings for New white label 10,000 rpm drives (which look identical to fourth generation Raptors (introduced 2008) with the exception of the label and 2.5" to 3.5" adapter).

150GB with 16MB cache: $19.99 (or best offer) free shipping
120GB with 16MB cache: $14.95 (or best offer) free shipping

That is pretty cheap, in the ballpark of various NOS lower capacity 7200rpm drives.

They are not new. They are poorly wiped to hide the SMART data. They in fact have 50,000 hours or more of use on them. goHardrive is a scammer company. Read the reviews on amazon and newegg. Sort by 1 star ratings. You will see. Avoid that company at all costs. Scam scam scam.

 

[Puffnstuff]

I would avoid them and find another solution. A new veloraptor is priced about the same as a decent ssd of the same capacity.

 

[hectorsm]

They are not new. They are poorly wiped to hide the SMART data. They in fact have 50,000 hours or more of use on them. goHardrive is a scammer company. Read the reviews on amazon and newegg. Sort by 1 star ratings. You will see. Avoid that company at all costs. Scam scam scam.

Were did you see the info on the SMART data being wiped out by GoHardDrive? I looked around in Amazon and new egg and got tired of reading reviews. I did not see that mentioned anywhere. Maybe the user bought a refurbished item. I know I always check to see if they say "New" before buying.

I bought a 3TB from them about 3 months ago and it's been great. It was new and sealed in the anti static bag and very well packaged. After reading your post I installed the latest version of CDI to check my drive. It only had 620 hours which is about right for the time I had it. The health info is "Good" and no signs of being a refurbish item.

Hector

 

[tweakboy]

Foolish, don't do it my friend, your gonna open a big can of worms....

 

[cbn]

On ebay, Go hard drive has listings for New white label 10,000 rpm drives (which look identical to fourth generation Raptors (introduced 2008) with the exception of the label and 2.5" to 3.5" adapter).

150GB with 16MB cache: $19.99 (or best offer) free shipping
120GB with 16MB cache: $14.95 (or best offer) free shipping

That is pretty cheap, in the ballpark of various NOS lower capacity 7200rpm drives.

They are not new. They are poorly wiped to hide the SMART data. They in fact have 50,000 hours or more of use on them. goHardrive is a scammer company. Read the reviews on amazon and newegg. Sort by 1 star ratings. You will see. Avoid that company at all costs. Scam scam scam.

Were did you see the info on the SMART data being wiped out by GoHardDrive? I looked around in Amazon and new egg and got tired of reading reviews. I did not see that mentioned anywhere. Maybe the user bought a refurbished item. I know I always check to see if they say "New" before buying.

I bought a 3TB from them about 3 months ago and it's been great. It was new and sealed in the anti static bag and very well packaged. After reading your post I installed the latest version of CDI to check my drive. It only had 620 hours which is about right for the time I had it. The health info is "Good" and no signs of being a refurbish item.

Hector

Here are the reviews from Newegg:

http://www.newegg.com/Mktplace/Sell...gesize=100&SelectedRating=-1&Page=1&Keywords=

I didn't see mention of SMART being wiped on any of the one egg reviews. I did see complaints about new drives having a old manufacture date though (which is fine for a NOS or pull from a new machine). Other complaints were that the "new drives" had logged significant power-on hours (which is not fine).

P.S. Some info on my own experience with Go Hard drive here and here. (My New WD3200AAJS drive had 1 hour on it when I checked it....but then again this was after a very long Windows install where I left the machine unattended for about 1 hour...so true hours upon arrival at my house was probably zero)

 

[cbn]

Looking back on this Anandtech hard drive review from it is interesting see the results of a 3rd generation 150GB Raptor (80GB 2.5" platters, 16MB cache) vs. WD1600AJS (160GB 3.5" platter, 8MB cache):

I figure the areal density of 80GB 2.5" platter is about the same as the 160GB 3.5" platter, but the 2.5" platter needs more rpms to cover the same area per unit of time.

Still the Raptor wins in this test. Perhaps it is a combination of access time and sequential transfer rate at work here? (Still researching)

 

[cbn]

With those results in mind I do wonder how a fourth generation Raptor (160GB 2.5" platter, 16MB cache) would compare to the best 160GB 7200 rpm that I can think of (500 3.5" platter/short stroked, 8MB cache)

 

[nerp]

Were did you see the info on the SMART data being wiped out by GoHardDrive? I looked around in Amazon and new egg and got tired of reading reviews. I did not see that mentioned anywhere. Maybe the user bought a refurbished item. I know I always check to see if they say "New" before buying.

I bought a 3TB from them about 3 months ago and it's been great. It was new and sealed in the anti static bag and very well packaged. After reading your post I installed the latest version of CDI to check my drive. It only had 620 hours which is about right for the time I had it. The health info is "Good" and no signs of being a refurbish item.

Hector

Read their company reviews on amazon. Not all drives they sell are old. But an alarming number are.

 

[cbn]

Read their company reviews on amazon. Not all drives they sell are old. But an alarming number are.

Amazon reviews can't be sort by rating, so it is hard to find the negative ones.

But on ebay, I only saw one negative review (out of their 60,000+ feedback) complaining about old hard drive being sold as new.

 

[sdifox]

Amazon reviews can't be sort by rating, so it is hard to find the negative ones.

But on ebay, I only saw one negative review (out of their 60,000+ feedback) complaining about old hard drive being sold as new.

You can filter by number of stars.

 

[cbn]

You can filter by number of stars.

Here is the page I am able to find:

http://www.amazon.com/sp?_encoding=...derID=&seller=A10GIQVUTYZMGS&tab=&vasStoreID=

 

[sdifox]

Here is the page I am able to find:

http://www.amazon.com/sp?_encoding=...derID=&seller=A10GIQVUTYZMGS&tab=&vasStoreID=

go to one of the products and look at the one star reviews.


example

http://www.amazon.com/HGST-Travelst...?ie=UTF8&filterBy=addOneStar&showViewpoints=0

 

[cbn]

go to one of the products and look at the one star reviews.


example

http://www.amazon.com/HGST-Travelst...?ie=UTF8&filterBy=addOneStar&showViewpoints=0

Those are reviews on the hard drive from multitude of suppliers, not just Go Hard drive.

(Also notice the price listed in your link is different than the price Go hard drive charges for the drive),

 

[cbn]

Just finished some preliminary testing of 5th generation 160GB Raptor (160GB using a short stroked 2.5" 200GB platter, 32MB cache) vs. WD1600AAJS-75M0A0 (160GB using a short stroked 3.5" 500GB platter, 8MB cache according to HD platter database here)

Using HD Tune here is what I got averaged over 5 runs:

5th generation 160GB Raptor: ~123 MB/s, 7.3 ms access time

WD1600AAJS: 87 MB/s, 15.8 ms access time

So definitely the Raptor is much faster than the 7200 rpm 160GB (using a short stroked 3.5" 500GB platter)

P.S. Would be interesting at this point to also compare a 4th generation Raptor (platter capacity decreases from 200GB to 160GB and cache decreases from 32MB to 16MB compared to the fifth generation Raptor).

 

[cbn]

Regarding the noise, I didn't notice any difference between my 5th generation 160GB Raptor (WD1600HLHX) and the other 7200 rpm drives I have used with this desktop.

And more importantly, the performance with 2GB RAM is like night and day in Linux Mint compared to a 80GB 7200rpm Seagate drive (80GB using 160GB 3.5" short stroked platter). So finally a cheap HDD that addresses my concern that I described here about 2GB Core 2 machines and small drives.

I would just imagine that anyone looking for an internal SATA disk of such paltry capacity will just go SSD. I have some 160GB WDC drives sitting around that I test an OS on once in a blue moon.

Not often, because I am reminded just how slow they are at booting an OS.

Yes, booting will be faster with SSD.

But coming out of sleep is still very fast even with 80GB HDD.

With that mentioned, the situation that makes me want a faster HDD (or SSD) the most is when RAM is 2GB. (re: With 2GB RAM system slow downs caused by disk swapping are more prevalent than when there is 4GB or more of RAM).

P.S. I haven't tested 2GB RAM with 160GB 3.5" HDD yet, but 2GB RAM + 80GB HDD is really slow. 2GB RAM + 64GB SSD or 4GB RAM + 80GB HDD (fresh install) is much faster.

 

[cbn]

I still have four old 74GB ones. They are very noisy now and sitting in a box, but originally they were great in a single RAID0 array.

These were 2nd generation (WD740GB, introduced 2004) or 3rd generation (WD740ADFD, introduced 2006) Raptors?

Also curious how much RAM you were using? 1GB, 2GB or 4GB?

 

[bradly1101]

A pair of each, but they worked great all together. I think I had 2GB, then 12GB when they were in my X58 system.

 

[cbn]

A pair of each, but they worked great all together. I think I had 2GB, then 12GB when they were in my X58 system.

Yes, as I recall with socket 939 (and maybe even with LGA 775) a person could only overclock with 2 DIMMs populated, So with that RAM limitation, those Raptors must have been just awesome.

 

[MongGrel]

I had 5 on one X58 gaming rig at one time on RAID0, but it really did not increase much speed wise after 3 even on a hardware RAID card. I was picking the ADFD's up cheap at the time and experimenting.

Have 4 old ones laying around here somewhere I guess, couple still work but do not use them.

Heh, I guess my main rig is still X58, but has a OC'd X5680 in it.

 

[cbn]

An old thread on the White label Raptors from Overclock.net:

http://www.overclock.net/t/1196006/gohdd-velociraptor-deals-150gb-49-95-300gb-89-95

Here is a screen shot of the HD tune results of the 300GB version:

100.9 MB/s with 7.2ms access time.

 

[MongGrel]

I think I used to get around 250 MBs with 3 in a RAID0.

A cheap SSD will easily blow them out of the water these days.

 

[cbn]

A cheap SSD will easily blow them out of the water these days.

That is true, but a cheap 120GB SSD is ~triple the price of the 120GB White label Raptor (which I believe has the same platter as that 300GB version).

And for a cheap rebuild of a desktop that is big difference in price.

 

[MongGrel]

I don't need a P.S.

Knock yourself out I guess.

 

[cbn]

I don't need a P.S.

Knock yourself out I guess.

I'm thinking the best use of these is for Core 2 desktops with two DIMM slots.

So cheap rebuild of a machine with 2GB of RAM.

(This rather than buying 2 x 2GB DDR2 and using with slower HDD),