Hard drives remain the last great bottleneck in performance computing. Processors and RAM constantly get faster and more complex, due to being solid state electronics. Since hard drives consist of moving parts, they have been left behind in this race. Sure solid state drives have become available in the past year, but they are extremely cost prohibitive. So over the years companies have had to find creative ways of squeezing more and more performance out of the 50 year old hard drive. Western Digital is one of those companies.
Their Raptor line of hard drives have included features usually only seen in enterprise class SCSI hard drives. Released in 2003, the first Raptor had a rather small 36GB capacity, but more than made up for it in performance. The 10,000 RPM spindle speed allowed the drive to out-perform all comers from the consumer hard drive market. The drive even came close to matching contemporary 10,000 RPM SCSI drives in sequential performance. The SCSI drives still outclassed the Raptors in a multi-user environment, but that didn’t matter. The combination of high performance and low installation cost (relatively speaking, the drives were still pricey but they didn’t require a discrete and usually even more expensive controller card) meant that the drives were a hit with the PC gamer and enthusiast market.
Fast forward to April 2008, when the fourth generation Raptor is announced. Titled the VelociRaptor, this new drive increases its maximum capacity to 300GB using two 150GB platters, reduces its form factor from 3.5″ to 2.5″, and includes a 3.5″ mounting bracket that doubles as a massive heatsink. Western Digital bills it as an “enterprise-class” drive, and claims it’s 35% faster than any previous generation of Raptor. We’ll have to see about that, but first let’s take a quick look at the specs.
The complete specifications for the VelociRaptor can of course be found on the product home page. As for pricing, the VelociRaptor rings in at $299 USD. For those who have problems with division, that’s $1 per GB. Now several years ago that was considered a good price for storage, but in the terabyte age that may seem rather pricey. So is the high cost of entry worth it? We we’ll have to find out.
Visual Inspection
As I mentioned in the intro, the Western Digital VelociRaptor is actually a 2.5″ form factor drive mounted into a 3.5″ frame. This frame, dubbed “IcePack” by Western Digital, doubles as a huge heatsink. Through four contact points on the bottom of the drive, the IcePack helps wick away heat and allows the VelociRaptor run cool and smooth.
Front to back the drive is essentially the same size as a standard 3.5″ hard drive. It also has the same heft thanks to the added heatsink. The IcePack is removable, but doing so will void your warranty. Since Enterprise Level 2.5″ SAS drives are already running in dense servers without added cooling, I can only surmise that the IcePack is more of an adapter than an actual aid to cooling.
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Maybe I’ll Toss This in My Gaming Laptop…
Before you start salivating over placing this in your laptop to replace the existing 2.5″ hard drive you should know two things. The first is that the drive is 15cm tall, which would make things difficult as most laptops will only accept drives up to 9.5mm tall. The second is the afore mentioned heat generated by the drive. Though the use of the IcePack is primarily for form factor conversion, a 10,000 RPM drive can generate a fair degree of heat. This isn’t something you’d want trapped in the cramped quarters of a laptop. This is meant to be a desktop drive, through and through.
The only other downside with the IcePack comes into play if you decide to use this drive for what it’s billed as an enterprise level storage solution. The position of the SATA and power connectors breaks the standard used on every SATA drive since inception. This means that it will not be compatible with any SATA or SAS backplane. In addition to that, you wouldn’t be able to mount this drive into many external drive enclosures. This also rules out hard drive docks like the Thermaltake BlacX Dock and the Vantec Nexstar Dock. Though that’s not as big a concern if you think about it. However, if you had an awesome server case with a backplane and you wanted four of these drives in RAID0 or RAID5, you couldn’t do it.
Really this is purely an enthusiast drive. When speaking strictly about the form factor, it’s not meant for server duty, however, WD is thinking of selling the VelociRaptor without IcePack to the enterprise market. As it stands, this drive is at home in a single installation or two drive array, mounted in a standard ATX case. These aren’t neccesarily bad points, and they will be mitigated as long as performance is up where it would be.
Time To Benchmark
To test the Western Digital VelociRaptor, I installed it into my standard test bed. The specifications are as follows:
- AMD Phenom 9850 2.5GHz Quad Core CPU
- Asus M3A32-MVP Deluxe/WiFi-AP 790FX Motherboard
- OCZ Platinum XTC REV.2 PC2-6400 2GB 2X1GB DDR2-800 Memory Kit
- ZOTAC GeForce GTX 280 Video Card
- Western Digital 640GB Caviar SE16 7200rpm SATA2 Hard Drive
- NZXT Tempest Midtower ATX Case
- Thermaltake Toughpower 1000W Power Supply
Of particular note is the hard drive used in this test rig. This particular model employs two 320GB platters, and has been tested as one of the fastest standard SATA hard drives available. This is perfect for testing the VelociRaptor against. Testing itself consisted of running through some software benchmarks, and measuring one important load time. Here we go.
PCMark Vantage
The first benchmark we subjected our test hard drives to was Futuremark’s latest system benchmark suite; PCMark Vantage. The two tests we focused on were the PCMark composite test and the Hard Drive specific test. The myriad of other tests in PCMark Vantage don’t specifically test HD performance. Rather they lump together a bunch of aspects into their own composite score. As for the test itself, they are synthetic, but they borrow code from real world apps for testing.
The results produced by PCMark were rather noticeable, with the VelociRaptor taking a decidedly decent lead over our base hard drive. In the composite test the VelociRaptor posted a 13% performance increase over our base drive, and the HDD test posted a whopping 35% boost in favour of the VelociRaptor. Hopefully these marks carry on into our other tests.
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HD Tune
Next up we take a look at raw speed and performance using the HDTune testing tool. Unlike PCMark Vantage, HDTune is a purely sythetic test. It tests the raw speed of the drive, without any consideration for data or applications.
The results start to get a little more muddy here. The VelociRaptor is definitely faster than the 640GB SE16, but by how much depends on what you need. When it comes to burst speeds, the VelociRaptor is 19% faster than our base drive. Average speed on the other hand offers little variation, with the VelociRaptor only posting a 4% advantage over the base drive.
Write testing didn’t faire much better. The results themselves were almost a 1:1 ratio with the read tests, and they replicated the general outcome nearly as perfectly. In write testing, the VelociRaptor was 22% faster than the 640GB SE16 drive for burst rates, and 3 % faster for average transfer rate. So how do we interpret these results? Well it’s easy to say that the Raptor is fast at burst and random access, and application performance is nothing to sneeze at. This drive is definitely much more suited to single user environments, where small amounts of data are accessed in spurts.
This interpretation is further reinforced by the difference is Access Times (aka seek times) between the two drives. The 640GB SE16 nearly doubles the VelociRaptor in seek times, which would lead to those higher burst rates. This means the drive has the ability to perform well in an environment where there is access to many small files in spurts; an environment like that of a gaming or performance computer system.
Windows Vista
Finally we decided to see if the VelociRaptor could reduce the length of the dreaded Windows boot time. The stop watch was run from the pressing of the power button, to when Windows was loaded and the hard drive light was off. This boot up includes drivers for all the hardware, and a couple utilities used in test. Even with all that, our test bed with the VelociRaptor installed managed to boot into Windows Vista in under 1 minute. The exact numbers translate into a 22% performance boost in favour of the Western Digital VelociRaptor 300GB hard drive.
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Final Thoughts and Conclusion
In the end, we are left asking one question. Is this the fastest hard drive available today? The short answer is no. That dubious honour is still held by many solid state hard drives. However, the Western Digital VelociRaptor does close the gap between mechanical and solid state drives when it comes to performance. The upside is that you don’t have to rob a bank to afford one.
The Western Digital VelociRaptor 300GB hard drive is a definite performer. Its fast burst speeds and low access times places it right in the crosshairs of any enthusiast looking for a speedy drive for their performance rig. It’s also extremely quiet; something not shared by previous Raptor-class drives.
There’s still the nagging issue of SATA standards, and how this drive breaks them by design. The rear connectors make this drive very difficult to install in a 3.5″ hotswap bay, or on a backplane in a decent server chassis. It’s really unfortunate that Western Digital is targeting most of their marketing for these drives to the Enterprise sector, because these drives are much more suited to the enthusiast market. Those enthusiasts may be paying what appears to be a high premium for this level of performance, but when one considers all the factors pointed out here it’s still worth it.
So where does that leave us? Well we have a longer version of the answer to the question I first posed. The Western Digital VelociRaptor 300GB is the fastest drive you can have for a desktop system, without having to win the lottery. I’d recommend this drive to any enthusiast looking for the drive that will load their system faster then it drains their bank account.
The Good
- Quiet
- Burst performance is quick
- Slick looking chassis
The Bad
- High price per GB
- Doesn’t follow SATA connector standards
Overall Rating: 9.0/10.0
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