New 6Gbps Velociraptor

[silekonn]

Hello,

http://wdc.custhelp.com/cgi-bin/wdc...mNoX3RleHQ9d2QzMDAwaGxmcw!!&p_li=&p_topview=1 points to the Enterprise Raptor. It has up to 600GB's of capacity. When will we have reviews of these drives?

Silekonn

 

[onza]

6Gbps hmm

 

[vj8usa]

I thought Raptors don't come close to saturating SATA 3Gbps anyways. What's the point?

 

[blackangst1]

I thought Raptors don't come close to saturating SATA 3Gbps anyways. What's the point?

They dont. Its a marketing gimmik.

 

[Zap]

Hello Silekonn, and welcome to Anandtech forums.

the Enterprise Raptor. It has up to 600GB's of capacity. When will we have reviews of these drives?

The drive was first announced late last year. It has yet to show up on Western Digital's site as a product, though your link was definately interesting. AFAIK Western Digital has not announced a release date, and reviews often coincide with availability.

I thought Raptors don't come close to saturating SATA 3Gbps anyways. What's the point?

Raptors did not, and nor did VelociRaptors (4th Generation Raptors) though I'm sure the burst rate from cache got close. The 600GB VelociRaptors are the next generation. This article has more info but I'll put it succinctly:

600GB VelociRaptor has DOUBLE the data density of the current VelociRaptors.

This means in theory they should have double the raw transfer speeds, meaning close to 250Mbps which is SSD territory. It has a bit lower seek times, though SSDs of course will spank it in that respect. It should also be around $300 MSRP for the 600GB drive. Yes, SSDs are faster, but how much will it cost for 600GB worth of SSDs?

If you have a need for high sequential read speeds for cheaper than SSDs, the VelociRaptor might be a contender.

 

[Rubycon]

The point of 6Gbps SAS is to allow for more disks per channel without reaching the saturation point. This was true for U160 vs. U320 SCSI. Single disks it never mattered.

I don't know of any enterprise solution that would use these drives. For that reason it's pure marketing. Especially today - folks concerned with performance are best suited with a SSD and a larger 7200 RPM disk for storage.

 

[CKTurbo128]

Interesting, I did a quick Google search on the 2.5" 600 GB VelociRaptor model (WD6000BLHX) listed in the op's WD link and found this:

http://www.harddrivebenchmark.net/hdd_lookup.php?cpu=WDC+WD6000BLHX

Nice speeds, but still nowhere near the speeds of an Intel SSD.

 

[Zap]

St. Patrick's day avatar?

I don't know of any enterprise solution that would use these drives. For that reason it's pure marketing. Especially today - folks concerned with performance are best suited with a SSD and a larger 7200 RPM disk for storage.

So, you don't see a point in variety? In manufacturers hitting different performance/price/capacity points?

 

[Rubycon]

St. Patrick's day avatar?



So, you don't see a point in variety? In manufacturers hitting different performance/price/capacity points?

Yes I'm sort of an ogre green. The darker green looked too much like mister yuck! Don't want people making stickers and putting them on bottles of bleach.

just have no interest in it. If I want speed AND capacity I will hitch a dozen smallish SSD to a fast host and stripe them. Before mainstream SSD this was done with lots of 15K disks. (which are hot and noisy like a machine gun swap meet - and equally expensive and potentially dangerous hehe)

I suppose the "build it and they'll buy it" saying works but I would not expect people to beating down the doors at the local Microcenter/Frys/CompUSA etc to buy them in droves!

 

[silekonn]

Hello,

My interest in these drives is the performance improvement over the previous generation (view HLFS numbers), the capacity increase and the (reasonable) price. They are a rich man's mechanical drive but time tested (...and never need T.R.I.M.'ing).

@CKTurbo128
Fast fingers on the Search'r, I wistfully tried the 2.5 models and had no results.

If these drives are available soon they will undoubtedly carry the sales strength of their brethren.

Silekonn

 

[Rubycon]

Hello,

My interest in these drives is the performance improvement over the previous generation (view HLFS numbers), the capacity increase and the (reasonable) price. They are a rich man's mechanical drive but time tested (...and never need T.R.I.M.'ing).

@CKTurbo128
Fast fingers on the Search'r, I wistfully tried the 2.5 models and had no results.

If these drives are available soon they will undoubtedly carry the sales strength of their brethren.

Silekonn

Ugh - no! Anyone that needs fastest mechanical drives is running 15K SAS all the way. I've had both and the velociraptor is much slower in comparison. Good news is even larger 15K drives are coming way down in price.

Now if the SAS SSD market would follow suit.

 

[RaistlinZ]

Hello,

My interest in these drives is the performance improvement over the previous generation (view HLFS numbers), the capacity increase and the (reasonable) price. They are a rich man's mechanical drive but time tested (...and never need T.R.I.M.'ing).

@CKTurbo128
Fast fingers on the Search'r, I wistfully tried the 2.5 models and had no results.

If these drives are available soon they will undoubtedly carry the sales strength of their brethren.

Silekonn

I still don't see the allure of getting this over an SSD. Unless you have 600GB worth of programs that HAVE to be run on a high performance drive.

 

[taltamir]

They dont. Its a marketing gimmik.

to be fair, the original raptors were SATA1 (1.5gbps) and everyone ragged on them for being "merely" SATA1 when all other drives were SATA2 (3gbps), even though the raptors were much faster.

WD learned from it and continues to press forward with the numbering scheme and now moved to SATA3 (6gbps). The only spindle drives that need 3gbps SATA are 15K RPM drives.

 

[Rubycon]

The only spindle drives that need 3gbps SATA are 15K RPM drives.

Such a beast does not exist.

If one wants 15K they must wander into the realm of SAS/SCSI. (Which I must say there is nothing wrong here! Come in! The water's fine!)

 

[taltamir]

Such a beast does not exist.

If one wants 15K they must wander into the realm of SAS/SCSI. (Which I must say there is nothing wrong here! Come in! The water's fine!)

Ha, good point... but SAS is compatible with SATA so you can take a 15k SAS drive and plug it into a SATA mobo and it will work (but not vice versa).
but yes, my whole point was actually that it is highly likely that he has never used a spindle drive that needed more then SATA1 speed

 

[Rubycon]

Ha, good point... but SAS is compatible with SATA so you can take a 15k SAS drive and plug it into a SATA mobo and it will work (but not vice versa).
but yes, my whole point was actually that it is highly likely that he has never used a spindle drive that needed more then SATA1 speed

No it won't - you have it the other way around.
A SATA drive will work on a SAS host but a SAS drive will NOT work on a SATA host. If that were true a lot of people would be plugging SAS drives into their motherboards.

 

[taltamir]

No it won't - you have it the other way around.
A SATA drive will work on a SAS host but a SAS drive will NOT work on a SATA host. If that were true a lot of people would be plugging SAS drives into their motherboards.

ah oops. I got those two backwards then.

 

[silekonn]

Hello,

@Rubycon
A box here with Athlon MP's is running RAID'd 15k's. The joke was a 'rich man' who couldn't afford SSD (but could spend a bit extra on mechanicals). I am all for SAS 15k's, but you have to remember the price of the controller, etc...

These drives improve every speed at least 10% from the last-gen.'s, and double the size... and they are available in 2.5"!

Silekonn

 

[Anubis]

Such a beast does not exist.

If one wants 15K they must wander into the realm of SAS/SCSI. (Which I must say there is nothing wrong here! Come in! The water's fine!)

i dont like wearing earplugs when in at my computer

 

[Rubycon]

i dont like wearing earplugs when in at my computer

15K "noise" today is a myth. These drives are quiet - certainly don't necessitate the need for earplugs! Sheesh!

I miss the sound of seeking drives. I was considering building a small circuit that would use the disk activity header to produce clicks like mechanical drives. I know it's ridiculous.

As far as VRs go and the controller the performance comes from having the raid controller! Putting the drives on your motherboard is not very efficient except perhaps when you use a pair of drives. For real raid arrays with 6-20+ disks a controller is definitely required.

 

[Mark R]

I don't know of any enterprise solution that would use these drives. For that reason it's pure marketing. Especially today - folks concerned with performance are best suited with a SSD and a larger 7200 RPM disk for storage.

I'm guessing the target market is entry-level servers - where you want a bit more speed than a 7200 rpm drive would give you, in a multi-user or transactional environment; I can imagine a workgroup file server wanting more than 1 or 2 7k2 drives, in order not to bog down under multi-user load.

WD already do a line of 10k 2.5" drives - the S25 series, which seem to be equivalent to the incumbent velociraptor. I wonder what the real differences between these drives is.

 

[Rubycon]

I'm guessing the target market is entry-level servers - where you want a bit more speed than a 7200 rpm drive would give you, in a multi-user or transactional environment; I can imagine a workgroup file server wanting more than 1 or 2 7k2 drives, in order not to bog down under multi-user load.

WD already do a line of 10k 2.5" drives - the S25 series, which seem to be equivalent to the incumbent velociraptor. I wonder what the real differences between these drives is.

Seagate has their Savio series which are far better suited to a multi user environment than the VR which is tuned for enthusiast desktop use.