|
Western Digital VelociRaptor |
|
|
|
Written by Marko Nesovic
|
|
Friday, 15 May 2009 |
|
Page 1 of 4  One of the most important (subsystem) components in any PC configuration is hard drive (or storage in general), because its performances have direct impact on performances of whole system. Since all our data is stored on hard drive(s) (storage) it is clear that HDD can be performance bottle neck. Some users solve these problems by creating RAID disk systems, while others are using SSD drives. SSD technology, although offer better performance levels, still have two major problems: limited number of write cycles per cell and high price-per-megabyte. Compromise between those two is high performance hard disk drives like WD VelociRaptor that we got in our test lab.
Hard drives from Raptor series are characterized by fast rotation speed of plates (10,000 RPM) and low access times that combined in one drive provide great performances. Model that we got belongs to new VelociRaptor series designed for servers, workstations and enthusiasts that need fastest storage solution. Capacity of 300GB and SATAII interface make VelociRaptor fastest drive in Raptor series. This is 2.5 inch drive that is enclosed in 3.5 inch mounting frame (IcePack). Since this is 2.5 inch in enclosure, when enclosure is taken off this disk can be even used in a laptop or other small factor configurations. IcePack enclosure is, beside its primary role of providing support for standard mounting bays, designed as passive cooler for hard drive. Twice the capacity of previous model and lower power consumption combined with cooling system sounds good on paper, but to see if all this is good as it sounds we will have to pace this small factor drive through the battery of benchmarks.
|
|
|
Two problems of all hard drives are: heating up and vibrations (noise). IcePack enclosure (and similar technologies) is used to solve either problems or just one of them. After we run all tests we were pleasantly surprised with performances of VelociRaptor. Write and Read speed curves can be seen on pictures and compare them with “standard” WD drive with 320GB capacity and 7200RPM. Although it would be better to compare performances of VelociRaptor to a RAID system we concluded that most of the users don’t have RAID systems and best comparison is one drive. Beside that fact, RAID system performances are influenced by RAID controlled itself, and we got performance levels of VelociRaptor and second WD drive on same controller.
|
