Western Digital VelociRaptor 300GB SATA Hard Drive

[Apoptosis]

Nice first post. I've yet to read the report, but I wonder if the cooling meant climate controlled fridge type server rooms.

It's been noted somewhere in a review, that this is thicker than a standard 2.5" drive. So wouldn't fit in a laptop if that was your plan.

the actual mechanics are housed in a 2.5" HDA drive with a 15mm z-height, similar to standard notebook hard drives--only taller.

Found the quote I was looking for, it was via hot hardware.

Dan

Or you could have found it on our review on page one in the second to last paragraph

The VelociRaptor VR150 hard drive is not actually a 3.5" hard drive as one would expect. It's actually a 2.5" HDA drive! If you are thinking about sticking one of these drives in a notebook you might want to think again as the 15mm z-height is higher than a standard notebook.

[DMB2000uk]

See I searched all of your review pages for laptop, when you had written notebook.

Explains why I couldn't find it.

Dan

[colymore]

I felt like registering just to say 3 things after I read the review:
- I would like to see some raid0 results, although I guess they will be sick! Time to fill the ICH controller is approaching i guess...
- The price is my only issue with the raptor series. The RaptorX could be bought at $150 at times (incl. shipping) but the current lowest is $169.
What you are talking about in the article are open box/refurb units for $143.
My opinion is that $300 is WAY to much...put that in perspective with the new high-density WD 640GB drives that are doing much better too...
and also with the fact that the market niche they are targeting (enthusiast) will be going for a raid0 with those puppies.
After that $600+ for the gaming hard disk space of your dreams sounds really alot of money.
(it has been like that I guess but I will wait until the raid0 comparisons with the WD6400AAKS surface... )
- The temps look nice with the icepak heatsink even without that many fins - anyone knows what is it made out of?

Chris.

[martini161]

I felt like registering just to say 3 things after I read the review:
- I would like to see some raid0 results, although I guess they will be sick! Time to fill the ICH controller is approaching i guess...
- The price is my only issue with the raptor series. The RaptorX could be bought at $150 at times (incl. shipping) but the current lowest is $169.
What you are talking about in the article are open box/refurb units for $143.
My opinion is that $300 is WAY to much...put that in perspective with the new high-density WD 640GB drives that are doing much better too...
and also with the fact that the market niche they are targeting (enthusiast) will be going for a raid0 with those puppies.
After that $600+ for the gaming hard disk space of your dreams sounds really alot of money.
(it has been like that I guess but I will wait until the raid0 comparisons with the WD6400AAKS surface... )
- The temps look nice with the icepak heatsink even without that many fins - anyone knows what is it made out of?

Chris.

1. LR is lucky to get one sent to them, let alone two!
2. Its the same price per gigabyte as the original raptor, and considering these perform as well or better than SSDs that cost 6k+ dollars, i think its a good price)
3. Just plain plastic would be my guess

[Apoptosis]

1) as noted on page two the firmware isn't final, so all the numbers we get not are not going to be what you buy. I'm not sure WD sent out two drives to any one site as supply was so tight on this batch.
2) Just noticed that about the refurb
3) The IcePAK is metal (Aluminum is my guess as it's not magnitic)

[Apoptosis]

Just to update everyone.... Over the weekend I was running some tests and installing Vista SP1 when the drive got the death knock and never came back. I uploaded a video of this to YouTube in case anyone wanted to take a look.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0HAuXN1G5Tg

[DMB2000uk]

Vista killed it!!!

Man that sucks that it died, I guess it's the luck you sometimes get with the pre-prouction samples though. Heh, at least you didn't have to pay lots for it ;)

Dan

[stopthekilling77]

sad stuff... hopefully this won't be a trend

[Apoptosis]

I got the replacement drive from Western Digital today and it has a newer firmware version on it that fixes some of the servo problems we had and is what we think ended up killing this engineering sample drive. Western Digital kindly asked me to remove the video from YouTube, so I made it private. This was after all a engineering driver with a firmware version that was never going public. As stopthekilling77 noted they don't want rumors of dead drives going around and the new one doesn't click or knock. ;)

[martini161]

this a bit off topic but nate why do you do your reviews on vista ultimate? wouldnt XP or at least vista premium have less overhead?

[Apoptosis]

I do it for 64-bit and to use all of the 4GB memory kit we use for testing. You'll notice for the HTPC reviews like the 690G and 780G chipsets I used Vista 32-bit, but everything else on LR that I do at least is 64-bit. I still firmly believe that 64-bit is the future of computing and that Microsoft F'D up by released Vista in a 32-bit form.

[colymore]

wow...interesting sequence of events. Looks like this drive is possessed
I still wonder how it would compare agains a typical WD6400AAKS RAID0.
Also, I'm not fascinated by the heatsink and the fact that if you remove it you void the warranty .

Re Vista64 I was reading somewhere else that 8GB of RAM do improve overall system efficiency and performance.
32-bit apps like photoshop will be able to use up to 3 though...

[FeRaL]

If price is an issue for people wanting to run two of these in RAID 0, WD has on their website that they will be producing these in 150 GB flavors as well...

http://www.wdc.com/en/library/2178-001010.pdf

[DMB2000uk]

If price is an issue for people wanting to run two of these in RAID 0, WD has on their website that they will be producing these in 150 GB flavors as well...

http://www.wdc.com/en/library/2178-001010.pdf

I wonder if it will reduce the noise they make having one platter in the drive.

Dan

[pwcmed]

So whats the release date on this bad boy??

[Apoptosis]

you can have one right now if you order an Alienware computer

alienware_velociraptor.jpg (68.61 KiB) Viewed 1305 times

If you want to buy the drive alone you'll have to wait another week or two.

[FeRaL]

That's awesome news. The thing I am most interested in finding out is when their 150 GB Velociraptors will be out, as well as their performance.