Western Digital Retail Raptor...Fast but could we get cheese with that?!

[sharkeeper]

Funny title because these drives WHINE like crazy. Not your typical whine that people complain about with desktop drives. I'm talking IBM Ultrastar Whine! :Q

Story time:

A friend of mine called me yesterday and asked me for help. He wanted to buy a pair of Raptors and run them in RAID0. Rather than talk him out, I was constructive and helped with the project...

It turns out that the Best Buy store in Springfield, VA had these things falling off the shelves... $199 for Retail Raptor with a SIIG SATA-150 controller. Not bad.

Well it gets better because the SATA controller can be flashed with the Silicon Image RAID BIOS and it's instantly a RAID controller. No soldering or wiring required! Splendid.

So I wound up doing all of the technical stuff for him. I also noticed that the card is PCI 3.3 volts and appears to be 33/66 MHz compatible. I said "well all be damned! "Let's get this running at 66!" (PCI-X slot)

After sucessfully flashing the card to make it a RAID card, I mounted the drives and connected everything. Hit the switch and was greeted with a high pitched whine. If this had been at work, I wouldn't have noticed! (as I've played with these drives before and they seemed so quiet--oh well!) It's NOT that BZZZZZZZINNNNG! sound you hear from typcial WDC ball bearing motors. It's much higher, probably a good 14 KHz. Tell you what, it sounds similar to my Tektronix scope here that has a noisy flyback. Like a TV but not in the 15k range. Well maybe but I'm not going to break out the B&K to find out! The damn thing SQUEALS!

My friend doesn't really notice (probably all those KISS, Floyd, Dead, etc. concerts taking their toll!) the noise, so all is well.

I get out the XP CD and load it and am up running in about 11 minutes! Pretty damn quick! Without a doubt, this was the fastest XP load I've ever seen! My SCSI arrays are faster, but when you add the boot delays, etc. the overall time is longer than this was...

Ok, I've run some benchies for those interested!

Here are some results

All I can say is WOW! For $400 (plus 4.5% sales tax) you have a kick ass (or he does) storage system. There is no cheaper way than this. I am impressed and I must say that I don't impress easily at all.

Like always, your mileage may (will) vary. Not everyone is going to see results like this, but they should be very close. When in doubt, ask questions! There is no such thing as a dumb question except the one that you never ask!

-DAK-

 

[Tab]

I heard they were no louder than their previous SE models... I wish they would make a large version of the Raptors though

 

[sharkeeper]

I heard they were no louder than their previous SE models...

Nope. I will make a recording of this...

-DAK-

 

[Davegod]

need something to compare it to though, else its as loud as winamp...

these drives seem great for me, my 40gb disk is only about half full, though i dont have broadband yet Really not into noisy drives though, not after this effectively silent 40gb barracuda.

 

[sharkeeper]

The ROAR of the nvidia cooler will be a good comparison!

Also, I'll leave the mic on through bootup. Speaker beep and floppy scan will present which is a good comparison. Keep in mind, this is a very high frequency noise. A lot of people probably cannot even hear this!

-DAK-

 

[Jeff7181]

Originally posted by: Tabb
I heard they were no louder than their previous SE models... I wish they would make a large version of the Raptors though

You miss the point of the Raptor... it's not designed to give you GB and GB of porn in a flash... it's purpose is speed, not space. In other words, the Raptor should be your boot drive with all your programs on it, and you put your porn on a separate drive that's not as fast, but has a lot more storage space.

 

[jaeger66]

The Raptor is sort of an archaic drive, with ball bearings and a bridged interface. Waiting for a next generation 10K SATA drive seems wise at this point.

 

[nowayout99]

No personal experience with the Raptor whine, but most people have said that it's a high pitched whine that isn't very noticable inside a closed case. Or, rather, you have to listen for it to hear it.

But noise is always subjective. What others have called "migraine-inducing" I called no big friggin' deal.

 

[Lonyo]

Dayumn that's fast.

With that speed I doubt noise would bother me, plus I always have music on.
The speed is worth the noise.

 

[LED]

Nice job shuttle team...seems like the 66 kicks in and gives much more speed...may have to try it and it now goes to show with that card SATA runs faster then on board RAID

 

[bjc112]

Originally posted by: Jeff7181

Originally posted by: Tabb
I heard they were no louder than their previous SE models... I wish they would make a large version of the Raptors though

You miss the point of the Raptor... it's not designed to give you GB and GB of porn in a flash... it's purpose is speed, not space. In other words, the Raptor should be your boot drive with all your programs on it, and you put your porn on a separate drive that's not as fast, but has a lot more storage space.

LOL..

 

[Yoshi]

They are fast. I have a single Raptor and a 80Gb WD JB SE HDD in my PC. The JB makes more noise than the Raptor.

 

[Megatomic]

Those benches are amazing especially considering it's not a top of the line SCSI setup. But I was curious... What are the rest of the system specs?

 

[Insane3D]

You might want to change your thread to say the two Raptors you got whine badly. Most people around here with Raptors consider them very quiet and they just have louder seeks. My Raptor @ idle is almost dead silent....much quieter than my JB's. Sorry to hear you got some noisy ones...

 

[sharkeeper]

You might want to change your thread to say the two Raptors you got whine badly. Most people around here with Raptors consider them very quiet and they just have louder seeks. My Raptor @ idle is almost dead silent....much quieter than my JB's. Sorry to hear you got some noisy ones...

I would be willing to bet all of them whine like this!

So far three other people have said they are extremely quiet. My hearing is extremely sensitive in the last octave. I can tell when anyone in the same house turns on a TV!

The system is a Super Micro X5DAE with dual 3.06 GHz Xeons, 8GB RAM, Quadro FX, Creamware Luna, etc. Not your typical PC. Plenty of PCI bandwidth.

I've tried different stripe sizes as well as PCI latency and have seen over 180 MB/S burst on HDT and 3200 on PCMark02. Impressive for such cheap hardware, especially the card! :Q

-DAK-

 

[Insane3D]

I would be willing to bet all of them whine like this!

So far three other people have said they are extremely quiet. My hearing is extremely sensitive in the last octave. I can tell when anyone in the same house turns on a TV!

Well, then maybe you should clarify that the two you listened to, had a audible whine that bothered your ears.. I would say that two Raptors would not constitute an accurate cross section of the Raptor's shipped to date. I have used one, and have one, so I'll try to avoid blanket statements snce my experience is limited as well. As you probably know, everyone's ears are different and are bothered by certain sounds while others are not. You also have to factor into that manufacturing variances and the like, ie "bad batches" with "louder" or "quieter" bearings. YMMV probably applies here...

All I can speak from is my experience. On the system I have the Raptor in, I only have a Antec PSU and one Panaflo 21CFM on the CPU, and I can't hear anything other than the Raptor's seeks.

 

[Sheriff]

I have 2 Raptors in RAID and they are quieter then the WD JB's they replaced...

 

[sharkeeper]

Both Raptors sound practically identical. In the past with WDC, I've seen considerable variance with noise between drives. This is why I believe that all of them are probably emitting this noise. Like I said before, everyone else that has heard them (the cover has always been off) say they cannot hear the noise that I'm pointing out. It's a very high pitch. It is NOT bearing noise that causes all of the complaints with their 7200 RPM Caviar Line!!! I wish more clients would ask for them because I'm curious to see if many samples would be the same.

Seeks on these drives are definitely louder than any WD IDE drive. (well recent ones...their '97 era Caviars were machine guns!)

Overall, it's a good drive. I'd rate it a solid 9.50 out of 10! The owner of the system is ecstatic!

-DAK-

 

[Schadenfroh]

mine is making the high pitched sound constantly, any way to stop it?

 

[Mavrick007]

You must have dog hearing man hehe.

Go to a few loud concerts until everything sounds like it's coming from a long wind tunnel

I've been thinking about getting a WD Raptor lately, but I would still like them to be a bit larger in capacity, say 60-80gigs minimum.

 

[Tab]

Sometimes 2x36GB isnt good enough.

 

[sharkeeper]

Go to a few loud concerts until everything sounds like it's coming from a long wind tunnel

That's quite OK. I prefer a concert that I can enjoy WITHOUT earplugs.

I'll save the earplugs and muffs for the launchpad and block fields.

Sometimes 2x36GB isnt good enough.

Yep! That's what 8x36GB is for!

-DAK-

 

[Schadenfroh]

Yep! That's what 8x36GB is for!

-DAK-

wth, 8 15,000 rpm scsi drives? omg

 

[TerryMathews]

Benches would probably go up if the stripe size was 16KB instead of 4... However, that is a destructive change to the array.

BTW, benches are very impressive for a 2-drive stripe.

 

[sharkeeper]

Benches would probably go up if the stripe size was 16KB instead of 4... However, that is a destructive change to the array.

Tried all from 4KB to 128KB. 8KB seemed to produce strongest results across the board in this environment.

-DAK-