| WD VelociRaptor 300GB SATA HDD WD3000HLFS |
| Reviews - Featured Reviews: Storage | ||||
| Written by Olin Coles | ||||
| Tuesday, 28 July 2009 | ||||
WD VelociRaptor Hard DriveConsidering the state of the global economy, along with local recession and unemployment, performance computer builders have had to make some difficult decisions. It's not easy to convince enthusiasts that they should invest their money in mechanical hard disk products in the age of Solid State Drives, especially when performance favors SSD's almost two-fold. But the cost of high-performance HDDs has remained very affordable, and the capacity is ever-expanding. In this article, Benchmark Reviews tests the 300GB Western Digital VelociRaptor WD3000HLFS 10,000 RPM SATA Hard Disk Drive against a large field of high-performance storage solutions. Anyone familiar with articles published here at Benchmark Reviews should be very well-aware of our obsession with Solid State Drive technology. They're complex, and every SSD is different than the next. SSDs are nothing like Hard Disk Drive (HDD) technology, which improves as spindle speed and cache buffer are increased. The battle between SSD and HDD technology teeters between performance, price, and capacity. This is why we offer so much coverage on the topic: it's interesting and exciting. Western Digital has enjoyed a long history of successful hard disk product lines, and the two most popular desktop products have come from the WD Raptor and WD VelociRaptor series. For the past six years, the Raptor series has stood strong as the go-to hard drive for performance enthusiasts and impatient gamers. In 2008 the Raptor product line was replaced with the VelociRaptor series, which doubled the capacity and improved cooling with an attached "IcePack" 3.5" heatsink tray.
Nevertheless, gamers and performance enthusiasts have been keeping notes on SSD technology for a while now, and until recently the price and performance of Solid State Drives were not within reach for casual consumers. SSD products have quickly moved into the mainstream, and former marketing points like power consumption is now the least impressive of all benefits a Solid State Drive delivers. The real payoff is in the practically instant response time and high-performance throughput. Capacity and price were once the major hurdles keeping SSDs from replacing HDDs, but now it's just capacity. While SSDs have a decent speed advantage over HDDs, cost and capacity still favor products like the WD VelociRaptor. The WD VelociRaptor still packs an impressive punch for just over $1/GB, but as of August 2009 there are now Solid State Drive storage devices selling online for nearly $2 per gigabyte. Data storage capacity is the tallest obstacle for SSDs, but not in the high-performance sector where the WD VelociRaptor offers 300GB of storage space and most mainstream SSD models offer 256GB. So it seems that the age of the hard drive may soon be relegated to high-capacity applications, unless products like the VelociRaptor can put up a good fight. In this article Benchmark Reviews discovers what life is like for the Western Digital VeliciRaptor, in the age of the Solid State Drive. About WD: Western Digital Corporation
WD is the brand name for Western Digital Corporation. WD, one of the storage industry's pioneers and long-time leaders, provides products and services for people and organizations that collect, manage and use digital information. The company produces reliable, high-performance drives that keep users' data accessible and secure from loss. WD applies its storage expertise to consumer products for external, portable and shared storage applications. WD was founded in 1970. The company's storage products are marketed to leading systems manufacturers, selected resellers and retailers under the Western Digital and WD brand names. Visit the Investor section of the company's Web site (www.westerndigital.com) to access a variety of financial and investor information. WD VelociRaptor FeaturesWD Raptor has evolved! PC enthusiasts' favorite 10,000 RPM SATA drive is now faster than ever and available in a 300 GB capacity. Engineered for maximum speed, WD VelociRaptor combines a SATA 3Gb/s interface and 16 MB cache, to deliver performance that's up to 35% faster than its speedy older brother. With 1.4 million hours MTBF, these drives have the highest available reliability rating on a high-capacity SATA drive and are designed and manufactured to enterprise-class standards to provide enterprise reliability in high duty cycle environments.
Key Features
Ideal for performance enthusiast systems, workstations, and low-end servers. Compatibility:
WD3000HLFS SpecificationsWD Raptor has evolved! PC enthusiasts' favorite 10,000 RPM SATA drive is now faster than ever and available in a 300 GB capacity. Engineered for maximum speed, WD VelociRaptor combines a SATA 3Gb/s interface and 16 MB cache, to deliver performance that's up to 35% faster than its speedy older brother. With 1.4 million hours MTBF, these drives have the highest available reliability rating on a high-capacity SATA drive and are designed and manufactured to enterprise-class standards to provide enterprise reliability in high duty cycle environments.
As used for storage capacity, one megabyte (MB) = one million bytes, one gigabyte (GB) = one billion bytes, and one terabyte (TB) = one trillion bytes. Total accessible capacity varies depending on operating environment. As used for buffer or cache, one megabyte (MB) = 1,048,576 bytes. As used for transfer rate or interface, megabyte per second (MB/s) = one million bytes per second, megabit per second (Mb/s) = one million bits per second, and gigabit per second (Gb/s) = one billion bits per second. Closer Look: WD VelociRaptorMost would agree that the large "IcePack" heatsink tray attached to the Western Digital VelociRaptor looks just as cool as it performs. But the downside to permanently placing a 2.5" hard drive in a 3.5" tray is that you've just cut out the largest growing market segment of computers: notebooks. It's great to know that Western Digital offers a 5-year warranty on the entire Raptor/VelociRaptor series, but removing the IcePack unit will cut this to zero.
Western Digital offers the VelociRaptor in 150- and 300GB capacities. For our tests in the past, the 150GB version served well. For this performance review, the 300GB WD3000HLFS model will be used for benchmark testing. The WD VelociRaptor is the last remaining high-performance hard drive product on the desktop storage market segment. Performance Enthusiasts have several choices available to them, but high-capacity storage devices are quickly catching up with the Raptor/VelociRaptor's 10,000 RPM spindle speed performance by adding larger cache buffer DRAM amounts.
While competing Hard Disk Drive products feature 32MB cache buffers, WD held firm to 16MB for the VelociRaptor. The previous generation of Raptor HDDs used a standard-size magnetic platter, but the new VelociRaptor improves response time with a smaller 2.5-inch (64 mm) platter. Unfortunately, the WD VelociRaptor does not offer perpendicular recording technology like that found on other Western Digital storage products. 
Without sounding bias towards SSD technology, which is difficult to avoid considering our healthy selection of articles on the topic, our 300GB VelociRaptor WD3000HLFS hard drive will be compared and contrasted to the competing product space. Benchmark Reviews knows both HDD and SSD technologies inside and out, so this article should offer fair judgment of strengths and weaknesses as we head into our testing section. Drive Testing MethodologyComparing a Solid State Disk to a standard Hard Disk Drives is always relative; even when you're comparing the fastest rotational spindle speeds. One is going to be much faster in response time (SSD's), while the other is usually going to have higher throughput bandwidth (HDD's). Additionally, there are certain factors which can affect the results of a test which we do our best to avoid. Solid State Drives have traveled a long winding course to finally get where they are today. Up to this point in technology, there have been several key differences separating Solid State Drives from magnetic rotational Hard Disk Drives. While the DRAM-based buffer size on desktop HDD's has recently reached 32 MB and is ever-increasing, there is still a hefty delay in the initial response time. This is one key area in which flash-based Solid State Drives continually dominates because they lack moving parts to "get up to speed". However the benefits inherent to SSD's have traditionally fallen off once the throughput begins, even though data reads or writes are executed at a high constant rate whereas the HDD tapers off in performance. This makes the average transaction speed of a SSD comparable to the data burst rate mentioned in HDD tests, albeit usually lower than the HDD's speed. Disclaimer: SSD TestingBenchmark Reviews recently published an article which details Solid State Drive (SSD) Benchmark Performance Testing. The research and discussion that went into producing that article changed the way we now test SSD products. Our previous perceptions of this technology were lost on one particular difference: the wear leveling algorithm that makes data a moving target. Without conclusive linear bandwidth testing or some other method of total-capacity testing, our previous performance results were rough estimates at best. It's critically important to understand that no software for the Microsoft Windows platform can accurately measure SSD performance with perfect precision and in a comparable fashion. Synthetic benchmark tools such as HD Tach and ATTO Disk Benchmark are helpful indicators, but should not be considered the ultimate determining factor. That factor should be measured in actual user experience of real-world applications. Benchmark Reviews includes both bandwidth benchmarks and application speed tests to present a conclusive measurement of product performance. Test System
Drive Hardware
Test Tools
System Speed TestI doubt that when DOS was put to rest, Vladimir Afanasiev ever thought he would see his System Speed Test software used again in professional reviews. This program offers comprehensive system information, but it also has a powerful benchmarking tool for memory, processor, and disks. In terms of disk performance, it measures interface and physical transfer rates, seek and access times at the hardware level, and it does so without delay or interference from Operating System software or running processes. This is why Benchmark Reviews will continue to use this test: it polls its results directly from the hardware without the need for Windows! System Speed Test does not require a partition to be present for testing, so all of our Random Access Time benchmarks are completed prior to drive formatting. To detect the Random Access Time, each device runs the full test routine a total of five times. The highest and lowest scores were ignored, and the remainder was averaged. This would be prove pointless however, because the access time benchmark for every single SSD recorded identical test results between runs.
Using the System Speed Test software, the top Random Access Time benchmarks places the OCZ Vertex EX, Mtron Pro 7500, and ACARD ANS-9010 at the very top of our results. With a lightning-fast 0.08 ms access time, every other SSD is forced to live in the shadow that these products have just created. The 0.9 ms performers include: MemoRight GT, Mtron Pro 7000, Mtron MOBI 3500, Intel 80GB X25-M. with the OCZ Vertex, Patriot Torqx, Super Talent UltraDrive ME, Mtron MOBI 3000, and lastly the OCZ Summit completing the remainder of sub-0.1 ms SSD products. The DRAM cache buffer is common link between request and response time. Solid State Drive devices have the advantage of a nearly instantaneous NAND storage bank reponding to an even faster DRAM buffer. Conversely, Hard Disk Drive products depend on a fast spindle speed to reduce the delay before the buffer transmits data. Although the SSDs at the slower end of our Response Time chart may seem less impressive, in reality you couldn't begin to perceive these subtle differences in real-world applications. Still, the slowest SSD product (0.51ms) is 14x more responsive than the fastest desktop hard drive. Hard Disk Drive alternatives are much slower to react, regardless of spindle speed and cache buffer size. Even the very best of the desktop hard drive products, such as Western Digital's VelociRaptor, only produced a best response time of 7.15 ms. The older Western Digital Raptor took 8.53ms to respond, followed by 12.99ms for the Seagate 7200.11, and 15.39ms for the 7200 RPM Hitachi Travelstar 7K100 notebook drive. The worst performer was the standard 5400 RPM notebook drive (Hitachi Travelstar 5K160 HTS541640J9SA00), which recorded a painfully slow 17.41ms Random Access Time. Drive Hardware
ATTO Disk BenchmarkThe ATTO Disk Benchmark program is free, and offers a comprehensive set of test variables to work with. In terms of disk performance, it measures interface transfer rates at various intervals for a user-specified length and then reports read and write speeds for these spot-tests. There are some minor improvements made to the 2.34 version of the program, but the benchmark is still limited to non-linear samples up to 256MB. ATTO Disk Benchmark requires that an active partition be set on the drive being tested. While the bandwidth results are not realistic for determining the maximum drive speeds, ATTO Disk Benchmark is still a good tool for illustrating bandwidth using various file size chunks. Please consider the results displayed by this benchmark to be basic bandwidth performance indicators.
Our basic I/O bandwidth tests begin with the Western Digital VelociRaptor connected to the integrated Intel ICH10R Southbridge chip, as the ATTO Disk Benchmark tools performs file transfers ranging from 0.5 KB to 8192 KB. The 300GB WD3000HLFS model reveals a 130 MBps read plateau from 32-8192 KB file chunks, while the 130 MBps write performance plateaus from 32-8192 KB. Compared to other hard drives, the WD VelociRaptor is unparalleled. However, when compared to SSD products that directly compete for the high-performance desktop sector, the VelociRaptor falls near the bottom of Solid State Drive performance. Drive HardwareIn our next section, Benchmark Reviews compares random access IOPS performance among high-end storage devices using HD Tune Pro... HD Tune Pro BenchmarksIn the past, Benchmark Reviews has avoided HD Tune benchmarks because the software was so similar to others already being used in our articles. However, EFD Software has released several versions of the program, which add functionality and features with each revision. The latest edition of HD Tune Pro allows random access read and write testing, a feature not available to other software tools. HD Tune is a low-level test that will not operate on a drive which contains a partition, so Benchmark Reviews uses DISKPART to prepare hardware for these tests. Random Access tests are divided into 512b, 4KB, 64KB, 1MB and random size test files sizes. The Random Access test measures the performance of random read or write operations. The amount of data which will be read varies from 512 bytes to 1 MB. Performance is reported in operations per second (IOPS), average access time, and average speed. Because it is our intent to compare one product against another, Benchmark Reviews has focused on random transfer size IOPS performance. 
Benchmark Reviews has tested the Western Digital VelociRaptor against a collection of top-performing storage drives for our random IOPS benchmarks. Hard Disk Drive products generally offer a tighter range of IOPS performance than SSDs.
The tight range of IO is an indicator of operational bottlenecks. For example, the WD VelociRaptor WD3000HLFS SATA Hard Disk Drive indicates a read-IOPS range of 56-145 whereas the average SSD might offer 100-10,000. Conversely, SSDs offer a much higher IO in most cases.
In the chart above, the WD VelociRaptor occupies a low position in the random IOPS ratings. The OCZ Vertex SSD enjoys the benefit of SLC construction, which delivers traditionally better IOPS performance. The OCZ Vertex (MLC) has the advantage of TRIM enhancements to the firmware, with the Patriot Torqx and Super Talent UltraDrive ME showing signs of reduced write-to IOPS performance. Hopefully these two companies will address this issue with future firmware updates. Despite their premium pricing, all of these products are in the same general vicinity as the mainstream OCZ Agility SSD in terms of IOPS performance. All of the above-mentioned SSDs appear to be well ahead of the OCZ Apex and G.Skill Titan SSDs, which utilize the dual JMicron controller in an internal RAID-0 array. The JMicron controller exhibits an inherent I/O weakness, producing miserably low single-digit IOPS performance, but the new Samsung controller appears no better for the OCZ Summit. Even the much older SLC products, OCZ's OCZSSD2 and the Mtron MOBI 3000 or 3500, all perform better during write-to testing. Drive Hardware
Iometer IOPS PerformanceIometer is an I/O subsystem measurement and characterization tool for single and clustered systems. Iometer does for a computer's I/O subsystem what a dynamometer does for an engine: it measures performance under a controlled load. Iometer was originally developed by the Intel Corporation and formerly known as "Galileo". Intel has discontinued work on Iometer, and has gifted it to the Open Source Development Lab (OSDL). Iometer is both a workload generator (that is, it performs I/O operations in order to stress the system) and a measurement tool (that is, it examines and records the performance of its I/O operations and their impact on the system). It can be configured to emulate the disk or network I/O load of any program or benchmark, or can be used to generate entirely synthetic I/O loads. It can generate and measure loads on single or multiple (networked) systems. Benchmark Reviews has resisted publishing Iometer results because there are hundreds of different configuration variables available, making it impossible to reproduce our tests without having our Iometer configuration file. To measure random I/O response time as well as total I/O's per second, Iometer is set to use 4KB file size chunks over a 100% random sequential distribution. The tests are given a 50% read and 50% write distribution. Our charts show the Read and Write IOPS performance as well as I/O response time (measured in ms).
Iometer was configured to test for 120 seconds, and after five tests the average is displayed in our benchmark results. The first tests included random read and write IOPS performance, where a higher I/O is preferred. In this test the single layer cell OCZ Vertex EX rendered 3106/3091 I/O's and outperformed all other products. A set of RAID-0 Vertex 120GB MLC SSDs performed at 1517/1515, which is just slightly ahead of a single Vertex SSD which renders 1197 for read and write IOPS. Sharing the same architecture and design, the OCZ Agility SSD trails behind the Vertex with 857/858 IO's. The OCZ Summit MLC SSD completed 730/733 IO's, with every other product thereafter performing far beneath the above-listed products and are not suggested for high input/output applications. While offering better IO than any other desktop hard drive (and most first- and second-generation SSDs), the Western Digital VelociRaptor still fell short on IOPS performance compared with several current-generation SSDs and produced only 134/138 IO's. The Mtron MOBI 3000 performed 107 read and write IOPS, while the Western Digital WD5001AALS rendered 86 and the Seagate 7200.11 completing 77. The Seagate Momentus 5400.6, which is a 5400 RPM notebook hard drive, produced 60/59 IO's. The newer Mtron MOBI 3500 rendered 58 IOPS, which was worse than the older 3000 model. The OCZ Apex struggled to complete 9 IOPS, and its identically-designed G.Skill Titan managed only 8 IOPS. Clearly, the twin RAID-0 JMicron controllers are built for speed and not input/output operations. Next comes the average I/O response time tests...
The Iometer random IOPS average response time test results were nearly an inverse order of the IOPS performance results. It's no surprise that SLC drives perform I/O processes far better than their MLC versions, but that gap is slowly closing as controller technology improves the differences and enhances cache buffer space. In our Read/Write IOPS performance the SLC OCZ Vertex EX achieves a dramatic lead ahead of the other SSDs tested. OCZ's Vertex EX offered the fastest read and write response time, measuring 0.26/0.06ms, and showing strength in write requests. The RAID-0 set of Vertex MLC SSD's scored 0.58/0.07ms, dramatically improving the write-to response time over a single Vertex SSD which offered 0.42/0.77ms. The mainstream Agility SSD produced 1.01/0.06ms with write response times actually better than the Vertex's. The OCZ Summit responded to read requests in 0.78ms while write requests were a bit quicker at 0.59ms. The Western Digital VelociRaptor did very well compared against SSD products, producing 6.59/0.82ms. These times were collectively the best available, as each product measured hereafter performed much slower. The Mtron MOBI 3000 offered a fast 0.42ms read response time, but suffered a slower 8.97ms write response. Both the WD5001AALS and Seagate 7200.11 hard drives performed around 11ms read and 1.2ms write. The Seagate Momentus 5400.6 offered 15.3/1.36ms response times. Mtron's newer MOBI 3500 offered great read response times at 0.19ms, but suffered poor write responses at 17.19ms. The worst was yet to come, as the G.Skill Titan and OCZ Apex offered decent 0.42ms read response times but absolutely unacceptable 127ms write times. Drive Hardware
In our next section, we test linear read and write bandwidth performance of the WD VelociRaptor and compare its speed against several other top storage products. Benchmark Reviews feels that linear tests are excellent for rating SSDs, however HDDs are put at a disadvantage with these tests whenever capacity is high. EVEREST Disk BenchmarkMany enthusiasts are familiar with the EVEREST benchmark suite by Lavalys, but very few are aware of the Disk Benchmark tool available inside the program. The EVEREST Disk Benchmark performs linear read and write bandwidth tests on each drive, and can be configured to use file chunk sizes up to 1MB (which speeds up testing and minimizes jitter in the waveform). Because of the full sector-by-sector nature of linear testing, Benchmark Reviews endorses this method for testing SSD products, as detailed in our Solid State Drive Benchmark Performance Testing article. However, Hard Disk Drive products suffer a lower average bandwidth as the capacity draws linear read/write speed down into the inner-portion of the disk platter. EVEREST Disk Benchmark does not require a partition to be present for testing, so all of our benchmarks are completed prior to drive formatting. The high-performance storage products tested with EVEREST Disk Benchmark are connected to the Intel ICH10R SATA controller resident on the Gigabyte GA-EX58-UD4P motherboard. Using the 1MB block size, read performance of the Western Digital VelociRaptor 300GB WD3000HLFS 10,000 RPM SATA Hard Disk Drive measured an average 103.2 MBps with a maximum peak of 124.1 MBps. Linear write-to tests were next...
Linear disk benchmarks are superior tools in my opinion, because they scan from the first physical sector to the last. A side affect of many linear write-performance test tools is that the data is erased as it writes to every sector on the drive. Normally this isn't an issue, but it has been shown that partition tables will occasionally play a role in overall SSD performance (HDDs are more mature products and don't suffer this problem). The 16MB buffer on the WD VelociRaptor helped improve results in our linear testing, as shown in the waveform chart below. Although the chart makes the linear write performance appear unsteady in a few areas, the results seen here are actually very good compared to most other HDD products we've tested in the past. The WD VelociRaptor recorded an average linear write-to speed of 102.4 MBps , with a maximum performance of 124.2 MBps. Unlike SSDs, hard disk products generally share very similar read/write bandwidth performance.
The chart below shows the average linear read and write bandwidth for a cross-section of other SATA drives attached to the Intel ICH10 Southbridge:
Linear bandwidth certainly benefits the Solid State Drive, since there's very little fluctuation in transfer speed. Hard Disk Drive products decline in performance as the spindle reaches the inner-most sectors on the magnetic platter. I personally consider linear tests to be the single most important comparison of storage drive products, although hard disk drive products decrease performance as they reach the edge of the spindle, SSD products operate at a relatively smooth speed from start to finish. Drive HardwareCrystalDiskMark TestsCrystalDiskMark is a very basic read and write benchmark tool by Crystal Dew World that offers performance speed results using sequential, 512KB random, and 4KB random samples. For our tests, sequential read and write performance was measured using a 1000MB file size, with 50, 100, and 500MB being the other available options. CrystalDiskMark requires that an active partition be set on the drive being tested. Benchmark Reviews uses CrystalDiskMark to confirm manufacturer suggested bandwidth speeds. In addition to our other tests, the sequential read and write benchmarks allow us to determine if the maximum stated speed of any storage product is within reasonable specification. In the chart below illustrated below, our sequential read and write performance speeds are organized from highest to lowest based on total bandwidth. Enjoying a noticeable lead atop of our sequential performance chart, the OCZ Vertex EX Single-Layer Cell SSD offers the highest bandwidth. Followed closely behind by the OCZ Summit MLC SSD with 128MB cache buffer. Not far behind the top leaders is the OCZ Apex, and it's twin cousin the G.Skill Titan. Next comes the Patriot Torqx, followed by the Super Talent UltraDrive ME which has slightly better performance than the OCZ Vertex MLC SSD. The OCZ Agility followed closely behind the Vertex SSD and shared the same sequential write speed penalty. Although the remaining drives are much older models, the SLC construction keeps the OCZSSD2, Mtron MOBI 3500, and MOBI 3000 all within respectable range. Even though the high-performance VelociRaptor hard drive is made to look low-end by the results charted below, it's actually very encouraging to see that a hard disk can still keep pace with a few SSDs. The WD VelociRaptor offers sequential read and write performance comparable to the Mtron MOBI 3500 and the first-generation OCZ SLC SSD.
Drive Hardware
HD Tach RW ResultsAlthough HD Tach (and also HD Tune or Crystal Disk Benchmark) are all excellent tools for measuring Hard Disk Drive products, they fail to offer the same precision with Solid State Drive products. These programs offer only an approximate estimate of bandwidth speed through their quick-result sample-testing mechanisms, as I have proven in the Solid State Drive (SSD) Benchmark Performance Testing article published not long ago. Nevertheless, HD Tach is still useful for offering an alternative perspective at performance, even if it isn't precisely correct when used with SSD architecture. HD Tach is a software program for Microsoft Windows that tests the sequential read, random access and interface burst speeds of the attached storage device. For the record. every single product tested was brand new and never used. HD Tach allows write-bandwidth tests only if no partition is present. Additionally, each and every product was tested five times with the highest and lowest results removed before having the average result displayed here. The graphical user interface (GUI) of the Windows-based benchmark tool HD Tach is very convenient. and allows the test product to be compared against others collected on your system or those registered into the Simpli Software database. HD Tach will not test write performance if a partition is present, so all of our benchmarks are completed prior to drive formatting. In the tests below, Benchmark Reviews utilizes the HD TachRW tool to compare the fastest collection of desktop hard drives and competing SSD's we can get our hands on. Using the Intel ICH10R SATA controller on the Gigabyte GA-EX58-UD4P, HD Tach was used to benchmark the test SSD five times with the best results displayed below. It's important to note that HD Tach's Burst Speed result should be ignored for Solid State Drives due to the cache methods inherent to each memory controller architecture. There are times where this number will be extremely high, which is a result of the optimized cache used for SSD's. The important numbers used for comparison are the sustained read and write bandwidth speeds, which indicate an approximate performance level of the product. Our featured test item, the 300GB Western Digital VelociRaptor WD3000HLFS, performed at an average 107.6 MBps best sustained read speed and a best average of 99.4 MBps sustained write bandwidth. While the read performance is about half the speed of current-generation SSDs, the write performance is fairly competitive.
The chart below illustrates the collected averages for benchmark results using HD Tach RW on the Intel ICH10 SATA controller, with the read and write bandwidth results added together to determine rank placement. The first group is a collection of high-performance storage products. With an improved write performance, the SLC Vertex EX finds itself positioned in first place and well ahead of the MLC Patriot Torqx, UltraDrive, and Vertex in single or RAID-0, as well as a set of Western Digital VelociRaptor hard drives paired into a RAID-0 stripe array. The ACARD ANS-9010 RAM-Disk, OCZ Summit SSD, OCZ Agility SSD, OCZ Apex SSD, and Intel X25-M SSD all trail behind in overall performance and finish out the top five positions. Nearly every other storage product trails distantly behind these leaders, which all recorded a combined HD Tach bandwidth to over 300 MBps for each. A single (non RAID-0) VelociRaptor and Seagate 7200.11 hard drive begin the next segment of upper midrange performers, offering nearly 200 MBps of combined bandwidth. Trailed by a closely-packed group consisting of the Patriot Warp v2 SSD, Silicon Power SP032GBSSD750S25, and G.Skill FM-25S2S-64GB, are SSDs generating between 168-172 MBps of combined average bandwidth.
The lower-midrange SSD products begin with the Western Digital Raptor, scoring a combined total bandwidth of 154 MBps delivering half the performance of the leaders. Yesterday's high-performance SSD is today's low-performance drive, and the Mtron MOBI 3500, OCZ OCZSSD2-1S32G SSD, Super Talent MasterDrive MX SSD and Mtron MOBI 3000 all comprise products with less combined performance than Hard Disk Drive alternatives (except in regard to response time). Drive Hardware
Please continue on to the Final Thoughts sections, where the Data Storage market sector is put under analysis. Storage Media Final ThoughtsNew technology always has one major hurdle to face: the consumer. I have long maintained my opinion that DDR3 system memory is every bit an excellent replacement to the aging DDR2 standard, but the argument of high price and limited adoption by manufacturers has hushed my position. Of course, everything changes in time, and an economic recession actually helped DDR3 make its way mainstream. Faced with a similar situation, Solid State Drive technology has suffered the same difficult transition towards widespread use and it's a matter of time before the SSD replaces Hard Disk Drive technology completely. Like most electronics, it wasn't a question of how much of a technology improvement was evident, it was price. There's no argument that HDDs still capture the capacity-hungry market segment; especially since SSDs cannot compete there. But the premium high-performance desktop storage market is losing patience with Hard Disk Drive technology, and as a result consumers are turning to Solid State Drive technology in large numbers. It's no surprise then that the industries premier names in high-performance HDD technology have also invested in SSD solutions. As of August 2009, the Western Digital SiliconDrive III SSD has been launched, but retail enthusiasm has been very mild. While Western Digital Solid State Storage (official name of SSD division) may have a leg up on Seagate in regard to SSD options, the SiliconDrive series is hardly a threat to more familiar SSD marketshare leaders like Samsung, Mtron, Intel, and OCZ.
Back in May of 2008 when I reviewed the OCZ SATA-II 32GB SSD it seemed like $17 per gigabyte was a relatively good price for SSDs at the time. Consider for a moment that before then, SSD's such the elite-level 32 GB MemoRight GT cost on the level of $33 per gigabyte. Even products like the entry-level 32 GB Mtron MOBI 3000 were still selling for $14 per gigabyte, making the price of admission seem quite high for even the lower-level SKU's. So when OCZ announced a 64GB SSD that would sell for under $259 in July of 2008, I really wasn't sure if the news was believable. It didn't take long to realize these claims were all true, because shortly thereafter NewEgg began listing these SSDs exactly as predicted. This event in itself should have probably started the long-awaited dawn of widespread consumer acceptance for SSD products... but there was a problem. As it turned out, the first generation (v1) OCZ Core Series SSD I touted in my review was prone to long-term data corruption and occasional delay stuttering. Making matters worse was that the mail-in rebate nullified consumer ability to return the defective product for a refund. Nothing hurts progress more than an angry customer, and this incident created plenty. Later on, OCZ would issue a second version (v2) of the CORE series, and even though most problems were ironed out with firmware updates, a lingering fear of product reliability associated with Solid State Drives remained. Once again, everything tends to change over time, and Solid State Drive sale prices are much different now. When it comes to computer hardware, generally speaking the newer, faster, and better performing products traditionally cost more than their older predecessors... but this is not the case with SSD's. I recognize that SSD bandwidth speeds range from abysmal to phenomenal and everywhere in-between, but the prices don't seem to correspond to performance. SSD's are filling store shelves, and several Solid State Drive models now sell for as low as $2.07 per gigabyte, which is getting dangerously close to Western Digital's VelociRaptor at $0.76 per gigabyte of storage. WD VelociRaptor HDD ConclusionNot every product we test here at Benchmark Reviews receives a warm conclusion, complete with happy ending and high recommendations. Fortunately, the WD VelociRaptor has just enough perk still going for it to benefit gamers and enthusiasts. Price and capacity are the two biggest reasons to choose a VelociRaptor over any of the current-generation SSD products, with performance becoming somewhat less comparable with each new generation of Solid State Drive products. Still, these key reasons are very good selling points that contrast the drawbacks of SSD technology. While the 300GB VelociRaptor WD3000HLFS model is the highest-capacity 10,000 RPM SATA hard drive Western Digital offers, it takes a steep departure from the median price of other HDDs. Considering the costs, a $229 model WD3000HLFS VelociRaptor sells for more than twice the price of their 1TB Caviar Black WD1001FALS. Clearly, the storage capacity argument is a double-edged sword; especially when you compare against high-capacity HDD products. Solid State Drive technology offers a very different perspective, however. Although the closest SSD in price and capacity is the Super Talent MasterDrive OX for $589, the closest price-comparable SSD is the recently-introduced OCZ Agility that offers a 60GB SSD for $199. In other words, there just isn't a SSD product that can directly compare (yet). Let's use some basic math to compare the capacity to prince ratio for the 300GB WD VelociRaptor against a 256GB Super Talent MasterDrive OX. The VelociRaptor factors to only $0.76 per gigabyte, whereas the least-expensive SSD with a similar capacity costs a hefty $2.30 per gigabyte. If you're willing to sacrifice capacity then there are SSDs for as low as $2.07 per gigabyte, but even despite the performance gains there's a huge deficit in cost. Obviously the WD VelociRaptor delivers considerable storage capacity and decent performance for a price that SSD products cannot compete with.
Touting a five-year warranty helps to position the WD VelociRaptor ahead of most other storage products, even though the high operating temperature of these disks is sure to cause many continuous-use systems to make use of this promise. Having first-hand experience with Western Digital's warranty service, I can safely say that they offer post-sale customer and warranty care second to none. Western Digital even offers an online interface to check the status of a WD product warranty. Because Hard Disk Drive technology is so mature, there are nearly no issues with VelociRaptor in terms of compatibility or firmware functionality. Western Digital delivers industry-leading quality and construction in all of their products, and the premium high-performance VelociRaptor series is the end-result of years of industry experience. Based on the current condition of the desktop storage sector, it's still very much a hard drive heavy world. While SSD technology will undoubtedly replace HDDs one day, the 300GB Western Digital VelociRaptor WD3000HLFS 10,000 RPM SATA Hard Disk Drive resists the tide of change for at least a short while longer. The affordable cost to capacity ratio put the VelociRaptor ahead of SSDs by a long-shot, while the impressive bandwidth performance speeds still top every other desktop Hard Disk Drive storage solution available. For gamers and performance enthusiasts on a measured budget, the WD VelociRaptor is an exceptional drive with plenty of value. Pros:
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Comments
This review said it all, it's the best HD on the market right now and its price still beats SSD's - but not for long, I'd expect that by the end of 2010 they will be very nearly neck and neck
I installed six of this drive on three servers with two mirrored on each. After one month one of then died. And after six months another one died. Good thing I had them mirrored.
I got the first one replaced and will have to replace the other one.
So be prepared.
VIVA WD VelociRaptor :-)