Western Digital VelociRaptor sale date?

[JasonandBecky]

Anyone hear when these will actually be for sale? No date that I could see on WD's site. The early product review units have been out for about a month now so I am hoping pretty soon.

 

[Rubycon]

They're shipping but not to retail channels. Expect to see them in enthusiast machines first.

 

[JasonandBecky]

Thanks Ruby. I am unsure what I want to do ATM, I really like my Raptor on my main system and I just built a new E8400 setup and I am using a old WD800 for now to test max overclock and stability and such. I hate to buy another Raptor 150 when the new one is right around the corner, yet I also hate to wait 4-6 weeks for a half decent HDD!

 

[LightningRider]

I've heard May 25th and June 1st. I'm eagerly waiting for them as well.

 

[Mango1970]

Jeesh I am still waiting for the WD 640 drives... I can't find them anywhere here in Canada (locally) and even NCIX does not have them as of yet.

 

[JasonandBecky]

Originally posted by: LightningRider
I've heard May 25th and June 1st. I'm eagerly waiting for them as well.

That would be awesome if so!

 

[Sheninat0r]

I heard mid-May to June, with immediate availability in Alienware stuff first... it's now mid-May to June, so they should be in retail soon, I hope.

 

[T9D]

I'm getting one too. Probably be my last rotational drive until I move to SSD.

 

[Rubycon]

Text

Right around the corner and like new video cards they're over MSRP. :laugh:

 

[trung1977]

Originally posted by: Mango1970
Jeesh I am still waiting for the WD 640 drives... I can't find them anywhere here in Canada (locally) and even NCIX does not have them as of yet.

Try Anitec.ca, they have it for $89.00 + tax. I picked up 2 a few days ago. Still had plenty on the shelf.

 

[Old Hippie]

I was shooting for one of these, but I don't need 300GB.

I'm waiting for the little brother 150GB VelociRaptor.

Hopefully, they won't be too far behind.

 

[Rubycon]

$299 at AT's fav place

 

[DarkRogue]

Nice, if I had the money I'd grab it before Newegg starts hitting NY with tax.

Any idea when the 150GB version will be out?

 

[LightningRider]

Shouldn't be long until Canadian stores get them now. I heard any day now.

 

[theAnimal]

Originally posted by: Mango1970
Jeesh I am still waiting for the WD 640 drives... I can't find them anywhere here in Canada (locally) and even NCIX does not have them as of yet.

They are now available from NCIX.

 

[LightningRider]

I bought mine yesterday from infonec, but I think they only have 1 left in stock now. Shame too cause they are charging 20$ less than NCIX.

I still don't see any In Stock from ncix either.

Either way... mine's on its way soon

 

[DarkRogue]

Nice, LightningRider.

I'm interested in its noise during seek and active use though. StorageReview ranked it extremely quiet at idle, second only to the WD GP series, but made no mention of its seek noise. If you don't mind could you tell us how it goes when you get yours?

 

[996GT2]

With the new WD 640s being so fast, is there really a need for a Velociraptor at 3x the price and half the capacity? My WD6400AAKS gets 98.9 MB/s average read speeds in HD Tach (long 32MB bench zones). I doubt the Velociraptor can do much better than that.

If you're really looking for absolute maximum performance and price is no object, get an SSD.

 

[LightningRider]

The Velociraptor does only a bit better in average read speeds (105MB/sec I read) but what the Raptor has that the WD6400AAKS doesn't have is the seek times. Seek times make all the difference for an OS drive and if you can complain that the Velociraptor is expensive at 300$ for 300GB, how can you go out and recommend someone an SSD which is many times more expensive per gigabyte, not to mention you get less of them.

SSD's are also unproven tech. I want to see them progress and mature a little before I trust my data to them.

To DarkRogue, yeah I will post my HDTune results when I get it installed, though I don't think I will have it until next week if all goes well... I'm interested in the noise levels also. I read that it's only slightly more noisy than a 7200.11 / F1 when it is seeking though.

 

[DarkRogue]

Thanks LightningRider.

For those that want to see some benchmarks, here's an early preview from StorageReview. I'm not sure if anything changed since their pre-release sample and the current release though.
http://www.storagereview.com/WD3000BLFS.sr

 

[Xed]

Received mine today, build date May 17th. It'll probably be a few days before I have time to test the noise levels but I'll post when I do.

 

[Zap]

Xed, looking forward to your impressions of the drive. I'm considering one for my next LAN party build. Currently using a Raptor X, but haven't decided if I'm going to carry that over to the next system or get a VelociRaptor. What HDDs did you have before the VelociRaptor?

 

[Xed]

Currently using the older raptor 150, so it should be easy to compare them =)

 

[Zap]

Excellent! That should correlate well with my intentions.

 

[LightningRider]

Mine shipped out today so I'll probably have it Monday or Tuesday.