Western Digital VelociRaptor 300GB WD3000BLFS
http://www.storagereview.com/WD3000BLFS.sr
http://anandtech.com/storage/showdoc.aspx?i=3291

10,000rpm 2.5" 300GB hard drive
low power, low noise, low profile (2.5"), high performance.
"WD estimates that individual units will hit distribution in mid-May"

me want.

4/22/2008 11:20:27 AM

meh...for the price ($110), my seagate ST9200420AS is pretty impressive:

2.5"
200gb
7200rpm
16mb cache
perpendicular recording
5-year warranty

i would love the wd drive, but it's going to cost $rhodeisland...i can't imagine it providing much in the way of laptop performance (though desktop RAID setups that use the 2.5" factor would probably benefit the most)

4/22/2008 11:31:29 AM

^and servers

this is meant for desktops anyways, hence the IcePAK that they put around it to fit in a standard 3.5" bay

[Edited on April 22, 2008 at 11:36 AM. Reason : .]

4/22/2008 11:35:34 AM

oh, i didn't see that...i guess i automatically think "how would this benefit me?"

4/22/2008 11:38:15 AM

well the Raptors in general have been geared for gaming/enthusiasts and servers where there's a lot of impact on random access times and I/O

I think most people will still opt for the Samsung F1 or the WD SE16, since they have proven to be nearly as fast with the least amount of platters and a lot less expensive ($120 for 640-750GB)

[Edited on April 22, 2008 at 11:47 AM. Reason : ,]

4/22/2008 11:40:13 AM

screw this

next big thing is SSD - our next large server purchase will include systems with SSD.

and we've had 300GB SAS drives for a while now... aren't they at least 10,000RPM?

imma run downstairs and check real quick, one second

4/22/2008 11:44:45 AM

Show me 300GB for $300 in SSD, right now it's 64GB for $1k

If you read the first review, they compare it to the industry-standard Cheetah SAS drive, yes they are 10,000rpm 15k hard drive

I just meant they would be good in a server, not meant to replace. But these use 50% less power than the SAS Cheetah, and are quieter, and noticeably faster in a lot of regards

[Edited on April 22, 2008 at 11:57 AM. Reason : .]

4/22/2008 11:51:34 AM

quieter is not an issue, at least not in our datacenters, haha

faster, sure... less power, not really an issue.



we can justify the price increase for SSD because a) we have some awesome contracts with dell, b) the memory architectures will be going to 16 DIMM sockets per processor... so we can use the muuuuuuch cheaper 2gb dimms as opposed to 4gb dimms (4gb dimm: around $800, 2gb dimm: around $150). when you've got servers with 128gb of ram, it makes a huge difference.

4/22/2008 11:56:23 AM

^it's sad to hear that you aren't concerned about using less power. less power = less heat = less power on A/C to cool = less money x2

ok, well then let me rephrase it.

Quote :

"well the Raptors in general have been geared for gaming/enthusiasts and home servers where there's a lot of impact on random access times and I/O"

i can't believe some of you have never heard of the original Raptor, they've been the #1 desktop hard drive (in terms of performance for gamers/enthusiasts) for like the last 3-4 years.

[Edited on April 22, 2008 at 12:03 PM. Reason : .]

4/22/2008 11:59:02 AM

no, we are, it's just not nearly as important to us as speed and capacity

we have as much power as we want

4/22/2008 12:12:01 PM

so speed and capacity at whatever cost... i get it.

4/22/2008 12:15:05 PM

pretty much

4/22/2008 12:23:24 PM

Wow, for as much as evan tries to be uber IT geek, the fact that he dropped the ball on power requirements and industry trends for data centers is astounding.

4/22/2008 12:24:23 PM

Quote :

"Wow, for as much as evan tries to be uber IT geek, the fact that he dropped the ball on power requirements and industry trends for data centers is astounding."

what?

also, when you work in R&D and the only products that can support what your users demand suck up power like whoa, the rules are a little different

thanks for playing though

4/22/2008 12:26:56 PM

Your data center must be pretty small if you aren't concerned with power consumption.

4/22/2008 12:37:56 PM

i don't really get all the talk about data centers and such. this drive is meant for the home/enthusiast market, not corporate servers. is this even a server class drive anyway?

4/22/2008 1:05:46 PM

^yes, in fact the original Raptor was too, but because it didn't have command queuing, it didn't perform as well as SCSI in multi-user performance, the VelociRaptor does significantly better.

the reason they made the 2.5" drive is because more and more enterprise solutions are looking at 2.5" drives to install more drives into the same footprint

i wish people would read the reviews i posted in the OP, it explains all this

[Edited on April 22, 2008 at 1:14 PM. Reason : ,]

4/22/2008 1:12:46 PM

but it seems like people would only use these drives for the entry level servers. from what i can tell the current 15K SAS drives are still far superior performers (for people who demand the best performance)

4/22/2008 1:16:30 PM

if performance is your only matrix than yes, then again, SSD is fastest altogether

this is what the discussion is about, look at ALL the factors, size, price, heat, power, etc... this isn't that bad of an option.

SSD will solve a lot of these issues, but at the current price of SSD/GB, it's still more cost effective to pay for the extra power for the drives & cooling than it is to pay for SSD

unless you're evan

[Edited on April 22, 2008 at 1:28 PM. Reason : .]

4/22/2008 1:20:47 PM

hahahaha

4/22/2008 1:33:15 PM

Power is a pretty big DC concern by the way.

4/22/2008 1:33:38 PM

It is a bad idea to allow velociraptors into your house. Avoid them at all costs if you value your life.



(Nice job by Seagate though)

4/22/2008 1:47:00 PM

Quote :

"if performance is your only matrix than yes, then again, SSD is fastest altogether"

Only at reading. SSD has a LONG way to go before it can match current spindle technology.

And the velociraptor is as fast or faster than most of the SAS 15k drives in all but server benchmarks.

4/22/2008 2:52:34 PM

my roommates and i all use the original raptors. Going from 7200rpm to 10,000rpm was great. Everything sped up from bootup time, to map loading times in games, to opening large raw files in ps.

4/22/2008 6:31:01 PM

Quote :

"next big thing is SSD - our next large server purchase will include systems with SSD."

our newest test boxes have SSD. one of them was only a 15gb drive, though

4/22/2008 8:36:05 PM

how'd they perform?

4/22/2008 8:37:13 PM

doesnt solid state memory have a limited amount of read/writes before it goes bad?

4/22/2008 8:53:43 PM

http://www.google.com/search?q=ssd+limited+read+writes&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&client=firefox-a

[Edited on April 22, 2008 at 8:59 PM. Reason : link]

4/22/2008 8:59:01 PM

OCZ's SSD is listed as MTBF of 2,000,000 hours

4/23/2008 12:06:31 AM

Quote :

"Your data center must be pretty small if you aren't concerned with power consumption."

try again

i also never said we weren't concerned about it, it's just secondary to performance. our power infrastructure isn't anywhere near capacity right now, and we've got two new datacenters in the works.

4/23/2008 12:39:48 AM

this has great potential, specially in the mid-grade to compact server systems. Considering it has a 1.4 million MTBF hours, that's almost double conventional SATA drives and really cutting into lower end SCSI market. At work we just got a pair of 1U servers with 5 74GB 2.5 SCSI drives in each. The servers are pretty expensive for being a small business and I'd assume having a 1U compact server solution with SATA and these drives would knock off some capital investment.

What's the expected MSRP?

4/23/2008 1:53:19 AM

300$ for 300gb i believe.

4/23/2008 4:38:11 AM

Quote :

"try again i also never said we weren't concerned about it, it's just secondary to performance. our power infrastructure isn't anywhere near capacity right now, and we've got two new datacenters in the works."

Now I am curious about this datacenter you are claiming to be running. Power consumption has been the leading trend in this regard for a year or so now for any reasonably sized center. It doesn't have anything to do with power infrastructure and everything to do with the cost of power. That's it.

4/23/2008 9:29:09 AM

if you knew who i worked for you'd understand

yes, we are concerned, we've virtualized as much as we can and consolidated a bunch of outdated equipment to blades, but that's pretty much it

4/23/2008 1:14:01 PM

For a data center, I think what Evan is trying to convey is the fact they can already handle higher power, higher noise, higher AC cooling, so performance is their main focus no matter the cost. If a new product comes up where it lowers all three and either has similar or better performance, it's a win win situation for a data center. And SSD offers all four aspects, but at a higher cost that would turn away most other's.

I'd say that while the new raptors are fast and have their place in the market, they won't touch high-end scsi drives currently on the server market. Only thing that comes close are SSD's. Considering 300GB SCSI 15k drives are still about $600+ a pop, speed and performance is definately the premium they are willing to pay. Specially when you get like 50 drives in raid 60.

4/23/2008 2:59:16 PM

Quote :

"For a data center, I think what Evan is trying to convey is the fact they can already handle higher power, higher noise, higher AC cooling, so performance is their main focus no matter the cost. If a new product comes up where it lowers all three and either has similar or better performance, it's a win win situation for a data center. And SSD offers all four aspects, but at a higher cost that would turn away most other's."

i'm glad to see there are people on tdub that aren't idiots. thx2u jbaz

4/23/2008 4:29:36 PM

JBaz hit the nail on the head, but evan's datacenters are not all datacenters, different servers have different needs

4/23/2008 4:46:48 PM

I'd rather be more interested in a hybrid HDD where it uses a large SSD buffer so you can install the OS on it. Doesn't one manufacturer makes it or will make it this year? That would be a nice boost in performance paired with a 10k raptor for the consumer aspect, without costing 1k. I think this technology is slated for the next windows OS... whenever that is. I've heard 2011 but new rumors say 2009 due to vista suckage.

4/23/2008 7:20:21 PM

Quote :

"due to vista suckage."

your moms suckage.

Thought this was cool. If you got any old CF flash cards you don't use:
http://www.engadget.com/2008/04/23/centurys-sata-adapter-supports-3-cf-cards-cheap-ssds-for-all/

4/23/2008 7:25:30 PM

Vista is really bloated, It works fine... if you have a fast machine.

As for that SATA CF adapter, that's pretty cool, and it does 0/5 raid. Neato

4/23/2008 7:37:04 PM

Quote :

"It works fine... if you have a fast machine."

Yeah you're right. The only people who complain about vista are people who don't use it, or people who use it on outdated hardware.

My biggest thing is i want lots of ram which i can't do on xp 32 bit, and support for xp64 bit sucks. Vista 64 bit support on the other hand is great. All the new games work on it, and there's plenty of drivers out there for it. So vista 64 is really the only choice if you want lots of ram and don't want to deal with xp 64 bit.

4/23/2008 7:46:31 PM