Western Digital VelociRaptor WD1000DHTZ Review

[Guest]

Western Digital recently sent us its latest-generation VelociRaptor, a 1 TB update to what was already the fastest 3.5" disk drive available. Once again, it stymies the mechanical competition with significantly higher performance.

Western Digital VelociRaptor WD1000DHTZ Review : Read more

 

[acyuta]

The Velociraptor at this price is simply not workable for me and for most people. For the cost of 1TB and some money saved, one can buy a good 120GB SSD and a Seagate 3TB. Seagate 3TB is not in the charts but I bet it will be only 10% slower than Velociraptor. This solution smokes out Raptor as a boot device and nearly matches it as a storage device.

Even on a standalone basis, for me Seagate 3TB at $145 and 85-90% of Raptor's performance makes more sense that Raptor 1TB at $300.

WD is living in a fools' world if they think that the premium they are charging on normal hard disks (because of `shortages') will be extendable to Raptor.

 

[Guest]

>mfw no ssd in comparison

 

[vladutztg]

Did you test it without the heat sink ?
What would be its temperature if you'd have done it ?
Could it fit into a performance desktop replacement notebook like a M18x or a Clevo mobile workstation ?

 

[belardo]

Where is the noise test? I bet anyone $1Million dollars, its louder than any SSD.

Yes, its a fast drive. It is most likely the last Raptor to ever be made. For video work, a typical 5400~7200RPM 2~3TB HD will do just fine. Can buy two 2TB drives + a 120Gb SSD for a tad bit more money... and still have a much quieter running system.

 

[aznshinobi]

For the price you could get a 1TB drive and the Crucial Adrenaline 50GB and combo them for a 1TB+50GB SSD cache. Half the price and probably just as fast.

 

[Smeg45]

Why would I want an SSD in a gaming system? I need bulk capacity and this offers it in a fast package.

 

[dragonsqrrl]

Damn that's a fast drive. Would make a great high performance scratch disk.

The market for these drives has certainly shrunk in the past few years, and I doubt many enthusiasts and gamers would even consider buying one anymore. It's value is limited to those who need more performance out of their storage devices than your typical 7200RPM 3.5" drive can deliver. Production pros working with large volumes of high res assets and complex project files would probably see the most benefit from a drive like this.

 

[dalauder]

I'm just confused...what is this drive for? It would get absolutely destroyed by an OCZ Agility 3 240GB, which I've seen for $130, I think--$140 for sure.

If you're doing something where you specifically need 1TB of data accessible quickly all the time, this may have a niche, but it's a VERY SMALL niche. Almost everyone would find better performance paring a 240GB SSD with a 1TB HDD, using up 60GB on Intel's SRT, and 180GB for the SSD to be used as usual (Windows, programs, +60GB for projects/scratch).

Considering the 256GB Vertex 4 is at $165 and the 256GB M4 hits $150, I'm just completely puzzled by Western Digital throwing money into developing such a device.

 

[dragonsqrrl]

[citation][nom]acyuta[/nom]Seagate 3TB is not in the charts but I bet it will be only 10% slower than Velociraptor. This solution smokes out Raptor as a boot device and nearly matches it as a storage device.[/citation]
No, the raptor is actually quite a bit further ahead than that, especially in random i/o, where it has as much as a 2x performance lead on the 3/4TB Barracuda XT's. Even in sequential reads/writes (generally the performance strong point of 7200RPM drives) it still has around a 50% performance advantage.

http://www.anandtech.com/show/5729/western-digital-velociraptor-1tb-wd1000dhtz-review/2

 

[rantoc]

The enthusiasts already have SSD's for at least their boot drive (or the whole system like me), a few might consider those for "bulk" storage drives but beside that i doubt its much market for the drive sadly. It don't no matter how impressive it is as a mechanical drive because it cannot compete with the SSD's. Still remember the first raptor, darn was it fast compared to the HDD's of that time before the SSD's came and change everything.

 

[mayankleoboy1]

i think the power consumption tests should include the total consumption of the system. If the drive itself takes lesser power, but because the whole system is in an active state while data is read/written, the overall total system energy consumption increases.

 

[ojas]

I see a lot of people missing the point here.

I completely agree that for people like us, an SSD+cheap storage drive is the way to go, but i don't think we're the target market.

If you're a pro into a lot of content creation, be it video or 3D animation/rendering stuff, this IS the drive for you, IMO. I mean, you could pair up a 256GB SSD as your OS+productivity suit drive, with a few of these drives for the actual work. Would save a lot of time and money, plus be low on power consumption. Power consumption is a bonus for RAID configs.

Seriously, find me an affordable 1TB SSD that you can RAID?

 

[zander1983]

Yes this is not as fast as an SSD, but it is not designed to compete with SSDs.

This drive is much more reliable than any SSD out there. And will absolutely be magical if you put them in a large RAID array if you need tons of space on fast disks. Yes you can put 8x 240GB SSDs in RAID, but that will give you just under 2Tb of space (RAID0) and performance bottlenecked by the RAID controller.

I for one will use these in a NAS that requires large storage space used by multiple users.

 

[dthx]

It is realy a great drive for some specific uses (Use this for video editing output or scratch disk, ...) but this is indeed a niche market and it will continue to schrink over time.
For most people, a SSD/HDD combination will work much better and and those who need fast and large storage in a laptop can't use this anyway (this is where hybrid drives shine).

 

[hannibal]

I would really like to see this new Velocity raptor as an hyprid HD. It is fast and small SSD part would make it faster. Maybe it would then be too expensive, I don't know, but even Velocity is not as fast as SSD disk are, it is very reliable and robust drive. My big modded games run from older 600 Gb velocity and I am guite happy with the loading speeds. I am going to upgrade the system disk to SSD during the next year, but I think that I will leave that old and obsolete war horse to run those huge games...

 

[Draven35]

"Combining high performance and high reliability, the disk should be well-suited for applications like professional office machines, rendering boxes, high-end video and picture editing, small servers, and enthusiast-oriented desktops in need of a fast hard disk."

Rendering boxes don't need fast hard disks, they read data and save their frames over the network to your workstation or server.

"We measured the minimum sequential write performance of the new VelociRaptor at 114 MB/s, which can be an absolutely critical number in applications that rely on fast write performance, like digital recording of multiple high-definition video streams."

uncompressed 10-bit YUV (4:2:2 video):
1280x720 @ 60p - 141 MB/s
1920x1080 @ 24PsF - 127 MB/s
1920x1080 @ 60i - 158 MB/s

uncompressed RGB (4:4:4 video):
1280x720 @ 60p - 211 MB/s
1920x1080 @ 24PsF - 190 MB/s
1920x1080 @ 60i - 237MB/s

These drives are still not enough to write one stream of uncompressed HD, much less multiple streams.

 

[assafbt]

The lack of a budget 256GB SSD in benches for comparison, renders this article, well, uninteresting.

 

[alidan]

[citation][nom]aznshinobi[/nom]For the price you could get a 1TB drive and the Crucial Adrenaline 50GB and combo them for a 1TB+50GB SSD cache. Half the price and probably just as fast.[/citation]
no, not even close. the 50gb ssd only cashes 50gb, the raptor is more for storage needs, and large storage/scratch disc at a budget price (a comparable ssd size wise would cost 1000$ or 600 if you are willing to raid 0 4 bargan deal 256 drives.)

the 50gb cashe is great for normal users, but people who would use a VelociRaptor are not normal.

[citation][nom]Smeg45[/nom]Why would I want an SSD in a gaming system? I need bulk capacity and this offers it in a fast package.[/citation]

you would want it as a boot, trust me when i say that moving my boot off a hdd make that hdd close to 1000 times more responsive, take into account my hdd was hammered so hard that it wasn't even getting 1mb a second at times. now its back into the 90-120 range where it should be.

[citation][nom]dragonsqrrl[/nom]Damn that's a fast drive. Would make a great high performance scratch disk. The market for these drives has certainly shrunk in the past few years, and I doubt many enthusiasts and gamers would even consider buying one anymore. It's value is limited to those who need more performance out of their storage devices than your typical 7200RPM 3.5" drive can deliver. Production pros working with large volumes of high res assets and complex project files would probably see the most benefit from a drive like this.[/citation]

at the same time, i could argue for getting a quad channel motherboard fill it with 8gb ram sticks, get 8-16 gb set aside for system memory, the other 48-56gb as a ram disc and a pci ssd for a secondary scratch disc and run off storage.

we are talking a professional level though, not a popular youtube or podcast level.

[citation][nom]dalauder[/nom]I'm just confused...what is this drive for? It would get absolutely destroyed by an OCZ Agility 3 240GB, which I've seen for $130, I think--$140 for sure.If you're doing something where you specifically need 1TB of data accessible quickly all the time, this may have a niche, but it's a VERY SMALL niche. Almost everyone would find better performance paring a 240GB SSD with a 1TB HDD, using up 60GB on Intel's SRT, and 180GB for the SSD to be used as usual (Windows, programs, +60GB for projects/scratch).Considering the 256GB Vertex 4 is at $165 and the 256GB M4 hits $150, I'm just completely puzzled by Western Digital throwing money into developing such a device.[/citation]

same here, i just cant see the use in this... well i can see the use, but its not THAT much faster than other hdds anymore, they use to be blazeingly fast, i remember quake 3 arena took a long time to load on a standard hdd back in the day, than the screensavers showed us a 10krpm drive load it, and it was night and day difference, i mean right now, looking at the load times of hdd compared to an ssd, that impressive, but back in the day, a 5krpm or a 7krpm compared to the 10krpm... my god... the load difference was even greater than what we see with ssds today, and let me prefface that with what we SEE, yea i know they are many MANY times faster, but loading a level in a game is where most people can see the difference.

but today, there isnt even much of a difference between a 7200 rpm over a 10krpm.

[citation][nom]mayankleoboy1[/nom]i think the power consumption tests should include the total consumption of the system. If the drive itself takes lesser power, but because the whole system is in an active state while data is read/written, the overall total system energy consumption increases.[/citation]

good point, and if the thing finds and gets crap done faster, it may come out as using less overall energy.

[citation][nom]ojas[/nom]I see a lot of people missing the point here.I completely agree that for people like us, an SSD+cheap storage drive is the way to go, but i don't think we're the target market.If you're a pro into a lot of content creation, be it video or 3D animation/rendering stuff, this IS the drive for you, IMO. I mean, you could pair up a 256GB SSD as your OS+productivity suit drive, with a few of these drives for the actual work. Would save a lot of time and money, plus be low on power consumption. Power consumption is a bonus for RAID configs.Seriously, find me an affordable 1TB SSD that you can RAID?[/citation]

if you look for deals, you could get a 1tb raid of 250gb drives, or at least in that range, and you would get about 2000 read and write from that, not sure of the io bonuses, but i assume that it would be there. and having that in a raid 5 i believe for redundancy, would out preform most of what you want.

if i remember correctly, star wars star destroyer, in the new movies, was either 1tb or 1pb (i believe it was tb) for the fully modeled version, i forget which. so unless you are working with bigger more detailed models, or working with completely raw footage, my 700$ solution would be so significantly better than the that there would be little reason to even consider the VelociRaptor as an option.

 

[Draven35]

I seriously doubt it was either 1 TB or 1 PB... probably more like 1 GB...

 

[jdamon113]

Lot of comments for such an artical of this nature. I agree with most but note I did not read everyones comments. Just a few. While yes the ssd comparison is moot but look at it from a enterprise level, I work with an emc daily, Going to ssd's is not even looked at yet, we are just now leaving fiber channel for sas drives, so for a enterprise replaceing a system that is nas or san... >> I think WD should put these drive in the arenna, right now Hitechi and Seagate are the only drives in this and I think seagate is crap and a grabage company.
so WD, you should put the VelociRaptor in the enterprise market, just not we would want a SAS version

 

[Draven35]

[citation][nom]jdamon113[/nom]right now Hitechi and Seagate are the only drives in this and I think seagate is crap and a grabage company. [/citation]

Funny, ten years ago Seagate drives were the choice for editing systems... then they bought Maxtor.

 

[CaedenV]

[citation][nom]chromonoid[/nom]I dont think this drives are relevant anymore, not with cheap SSD's in the market.[/citation]
There are no 'cheap' 1TB SSDs on the market yet. Even raiding 4 256GB SSDs would cost much more than this.

However, there are plenty of other reasons that make this drive completely useless.
1) Noise; seriously, I use 7200rpm drives in my editing rig and they are way too loud (the loudest thing in my system) and I am considering moving up to either higher quality/quieter 7200rpm drives, or moving to some near-silent 5900rpm drives for my bulk storage needs. Offloading these drives to a file server in another room will bottleneck the drive, so you would be better off with much larger (and cheaper) drives anyways. Anywho, noise alone makes this drive unacceptable for most workstations, especially when working with media where audio is involved.
2) Capacity; For a single video project (even a fairly long lightly compressed one) this is plenty big, but so would a 512GB drive which would trounce this drive on about every point possible. For bulk storage it is extremely fast, but 1TB is very small for a storage drive these days (I have over 1TB of files myself and I do not do 'big' projects, and have not yet moved my DVD/BluRay collection to the server yet), and again the network speed for a file server is going to make the extra performance of these drives trivial at best compared to the space gained by using larger slower drives.
3) Heat; Yes, the temps on the drive were good... but it is bolted to a giant slab of metal! How hot would a normal HDD be if they had a giant metal tumor on them? All of that heat produced goes somewhere, and it has to be expelled from your case properly, especially if using multiples of these drives which would get quite toasty. Personally I am waiting for some broken Velociraptors to come into my work just so I can use the housing as an SSD adapter now that would be sweet! Completely overkill... but sweet!
4) Price; at 3x the cost of a normal drive of the same capacity you could easily RAID 4-6 drives for much larger capacity, or much more redundancy (likely both) and have similar throughput to a pair of these drives (granted velocaraptor drives would still hold a seek time advantage). If the price comes down a bit when it is not 'shiny and new', or for some odd reason you only have space for a single drive then it could make sense, but for most people, and even most professionals, this would not make sense.
5) Physical size; While the size is competitive in the consumer market, most of the professional market has long moved on to 10-15K 2.5" SAS drives that dont need a heat tumor to cool them. Yes, these drives are a bit more expensive, but they are enterprise class drives with long warranties, and SCSI functionality. In a consumer market this drive would fit fine, but be out-priced by the competition; In the prosumer market it would fit fine, but make more sense to use a larger RAID with more redundancy; In a professional/server market the drive would simply not fit. With really makes it a head-scratcher as to who this beautiful and powerful drive is supposed to be marketed to...

In the end it does have a nitche market today for those who simply do not care about system noise and need bulk fast local storage in a 1-2 drive configuration. But within a year we will start to see 1TB 'civilian' (read OCZ) or 'prosumer' (read Crucial) SSDs on the market, and SSD prices next year should be nearing the $0.5/GB price range (possibly less than that after rebate or for cheap drives), and we will see much larger 2TB SSDs available on the extreme high end (though for astronomical prices). The drives out next year may still be a little more expensive than this, but with so many advantages professionals would be stupid to not pay the little extra for the massive benefits, and a year after that then they will be right in line or cheaper on a $/GB basis.

 

[cknobman]

Good lord everyone here in the comments is getting into pissing matches over SSD vs HDD.

For me it boils down to this: I was reading article and thinking damn this thing is fast and has 1TB capacity, I think I might get one. Then I saw the price and thought "Guess not, this thing is just too expensive for what it is."

Honestly if this thing was ~$150-170 then I might think about getting one but until then its off my list (and likely a great many other potential buyers).

 

[beethree]

I am actually really interested in this drive. I play games, and do a lot of After Effects/Premiere/minor 3d work, and the thought of adding this would mean I can throw steam on it, some of my other games on my 7,200 drive, and feel comfortable with the speed. Then again for me $300 isn't busting my balls, not for 1TB for something faster than the 7,200 drive I have and from what it seems, significantly faster than that, $400 is a little past my range, higher than that, pfft.

I like my SSD, but for what I do and what I have, more speed more space has me interested.

I also find it weird that people write this drive off by saying just "raid" budget SSD's. From what I can see you are raiding on average 4 $200 (more conservative of a number) SSD's together. That is about $800 dollars (for the better quality drives think more) and then say that this is already not important, when it is $300. I don't get that comparison at all.