WD Velociraptor

[fallstoofast]

I'm thinking about getting the WD Velociraptor, but it's VERY expensive. So before I waste my money, I'd like to know if it's really worth it.

Like system booting speed, file reading speed. Would it be significantly different from my 7200RPM HDD?

 

[DSF]

If your reaction to the price is, "Yikes, that's VERY expensive," then I wouldn't bother.

Here's the "real-world" section of AT's own benchmarks on the subject:
http://www.anandtech.com/stora...howdoc.aspx?i=3291&p=8

In other reports I had seen, the decrease in loading times compared to other modern SATA drives like the 640GB Caviar was at most 3 seconds. What you have to decide is whether saving 3 seconds of bootup time and 1-1.5 seconds of game level load times is worth an extra $200 to you. Personally I'd stick to a fast 7200RPM drive like the 640 Caviar.

 

[Warren21]

I was wondering this also for a new RAID array for my Vista install. Seems that the new 320GB platter WD drives are pretty much as fast as the 10K drives.

Is there any way to confirm if the WD HDDs I buy are the NEW single 320GB platter 320 drives? I was thinking 3 of the new 320GB drives in RAID-5 would be mighty juicy.

(I apologize if this is a thread jack, it isn't meant to be).

 

[fallstoofast]

Hmm, I guess I'll drop velociraptor.

So the WD R2 750GB drives are slower?

 

[GarfieldtheCat]

Originally posted by: fallstoofast
Hmm, I guess I'll drop velociraptor.

So the WD R2 750GB drives are slower?

Yes. In general higher platter density = "faster" HD. (all other things being equal)

The new Samsung 1Tb and WD 640Gig have the highest density platters, at 333 (320 for the WD) Gig per platter.

The older designs are either 166, 200 or 250Gig per platter.

 

[Mwing]

Booting time, application initializations, game level loading, compared to my WD640, is like 10% faster, I noticed the speed increase over WD640 most is when I open a folder with 100+ movie files with thumbnail on. File copy in Vista 32bit, first 10 or so second, 100 mb/s, sustaining 60-70 mb/s (a 120 gb folder containing different size of files from 20mb to 3gb)

Those are not benchmarks, those are my experience.

 

[SZ]

WD velociraptor is famous of its fatest speed.
and the price also goes up along with the speed too.
so if ur current HDD speed is ok for you already, then be a rational man.

 

[LightningRider]

I don't regret the decision to purchase a Velociraptor. It makes the system feel very snappy and responsive because of the seek times. Something you will not have even on the WD640. Sure it's a small difference but I can always tell when I'm using a 7200RPM drive and a 10000RPM drive. The 10000RPM makes your system recognizably more responsive.