Western Digital VelociRaptor WD1000DHTZ Review

[Draven35]

[citation][nom]blazorthon[/nom]Movies in their full quality can take up more than 1TB of storage space. Heck, even a DVD movie can take up much more than 1GB, so I don't know why you would think that a full-quality movie would need less capacity. These days, some movies can take up several TB and we might have broke past 10TB at some point. This is completely uncompressed and considering that movies are recorded in very high resolutions these days, but still. Think about how much storage space a movie that is recorded in a 4K resolution can take up when it's one and a half to two and a half hours long. Then include things such as 3D and deleted scenes. I'm no expert in this, but there are probably even more factors to consider.[/citation]

He wasn't referring to a movie file, he was referring to a modeled object. Movies, in their native formats , take up considerable more than 1 TB... one hour of OpenEXR, 1080x24p, is 1.3 TB

 

[blazorthon]

[citation][nom]Draven35[/nom]He wasn't referring to a movie file, he was referring to a modeled object. Movies, in their native formats , take up considerable more than 1 TB... one hour of OpenEXR, 1080x24p, is 1.3 TB[/citation]

My mistake. Still, stuff like that can take up a lot of space anyway.

 

[Draven35]

[citation][nom]blazorthon[/nom]My mistake. Still, stuff like that can take up a lot of space anyway.[/citation]


Yes, but not a terabyte... not that you can actually load and render.... gigabytes is more common...

 

[blazorthon]

[citation][nom]Draven35[/nom]Yes, but not a terabyte... not that you can actually load and render.... gigabytes is more common...[/citation]

You already said that it could have been slit into separate pieces to solve that problem.

 

[Oscarcharliezulu]

Maybe im feeling cyncical when i read some of the comments, but large slow drives are obviously more logical for people's bit torrent libraries after all you're not paying for your movies or music so why would you pay extra for this drive over a larger capacity cheaper drive? Ive found that my velociraptor is fast and reliable, delivering better system stability than even my Samsung SSD, and better speed than other larger capacity hd's. That said its a bit too expensive. Maybe in the $150-$200 range and it would be very compelling for a well balanced, high speed and most importantly stable workstation.

 

[Oscarcharliezulu]

Thanks for reviewing this drive TH

 

[rbagany]

can you spell price gouging? it is time for HDD manufacturers to fail miserably!

 

[hetneo]

[citation][nom]acyuta[/nom]The Velociraptor at this price is simply not workable for me and for most people.[/citation]
It's not intended for you and for most people.

 

[acyuta]

Yeah sure, I have an Intel SSD 520 180GB and high capacity HDD in my system. Why would I need the Raptor now. Maybe in 2010 (when SSD prices were high) but this is 2012 going into 2013.

 

[unknown9122]

Rapid storage technology version 11 is out, that may help...

 

[superflykicks03]

Aw the power of marketing. I bet WD is banking that a lot of casual users will see the name "Raptor" and remember those good ole 32GB drives that were fast heck and pull the trigger. As many have mentioned this solution just doesn't make a whole lot of sense.

I wish WD would spend more time developing SSD. I had a couple of their SSD Blue drives a few years back and liked them, and I have always liked WD. I have some WD drives that are over 8 years old still running in rigs as non critical drives.

Maybe WD will put the magnetic raptor to bed and use the powerful market recognition as an awesome line of SSDs??

 

[SmaugTD]

If I had a pile o cash I would use this as a storage drive with an SSD because this drive reeks quality

 

[zaxevil]

no matter what other people said, i like this beast...
Performance "NOT BAD"
Durability "GOOD"

 

[razor512]

For $320 you can but 2 kingston SSD's (256GB of storage each for a total of 512GB)

While it is their value series are not the fastest SSD's, a single one of them is many times faster than the VelociRaptor and if you take 2 of the SSD's and put them in raid,then you will have something that be vastly faster than the 10,000 RPM drive.

Currently with the VelociRaptor, it is about half of the price of an SSD but only offers 1/50th of the performance (when it comes to small reads and writes)

Also even in a workstation environment, you do not need a VelociRaptor. For the company I work at, I built many workstations for video editing (for the marketing people). Using top of the line hardware, you cannot work with 4K video in a way that will cause a 7200RPM drive to be a bottleneck. (though I have those systems with 3 SSD's)

 

[palladin9479]

People really missing the point of these. Their cheap consumer versions of workstation / enterprise server class HDDs. It's not 1TB of data that you should be looking at but 3~7TB for data storage. You'll be using these in RAID groups of 3 or more, and yes your boot disk will be a 256GB SSD (needs to hold your actual programs). You'll also need a real HBA, thankfully there are a bunch of really good HBA's that do SATA.

Differences between SATA and SAS. Mechanically they are damn near identical, even electronically compatible. SAS HBA's can even use SATA disk. There isn't a speed difference between the two, only an expandability difference. SAS can scale much higher then SATA and SAS tends to perform better once you have 12+ disks in an enclosure as part of a storage fabric. In a workstation a high quality 10K SATA disk would perform the same, 15K if you can find them (storage companies don't like to make 15K SATA disks to protect their much more profitable SAS line).

So yeah, 200GB+ SSD, SATA HBA with 3~8 of these disks in RAID5/6/10 and 16~32GB of memory, nightly fast CAD / CAM / AV workstation.

 

[Draven35]

[citation][nom]Razor512[/nom]For $320 you can but 2 kingston SSD's (256GB of storage each for a total of 512GB) While it is their value series are not the fastest SSD's, a single one of them is many times faster than the VelociRaptor and if you take 2 of the SSD's and put them in raid,then you will have something that be vastly faster than the 10,000 RPM drive.Currently with the VelociRaptor, it is about half of the price of an SSD but only offers 1/50th of the performance (when it comes to small reads and writes)Also even in a workstation environment, you do not need a VelociRaptor. For the company I work at, I built many workstations for video editing (for the marketing people). Using top of the line hardware, you cannot work with 4K video in a way that will cause a 7200RPM drive to be a bottleneck. (though I have those systems with 3 SSD's)[/citation]

with 4k video? heh....

Yes you can... as stated earlier, a SINGLE stream of uncompressed HD is more than even one of these Velociraptors can handle. a few streams of moderately compressed video (say, the DVCProHD as used for the Tom's Hardware Premiere tests) is more than enough to overtax a 7200 rpm hard drive. The thing is, for editing purposes not only does a hard drive need to be able to play back a stream at full speed, it needs to be able to play it back at faster than full speed, and often it needs to be able to play multiple streams at faster than full speed, otherwise, it will take longer than the running time of your video to render an edit, especially with color correction or transitions, because the CPU or GPU won't be able to get the frames any faster than real time.

'4k video' would need to be highly compressed in order to play back from a 7200 RPM hard drive. The RED cameras shoot 4k video at 12:1, 9:1, or 8:1 compression-that is 28, 36, or 42 MB/s- so a good 7200 RPM hard drive can play them at 5x, 4x, or 3x speed... or when reading two streams, half that and then add the random access time for the drive head to shuffle back and forth between clips. I can tell you from experience that a single 7200RPM hard drive can act as a bottleneck on editing with 100 Mbit/s DVCProHD, so it definitely will with RED camera footage. Of course with the RED, you also have to worry about decoding and encoding the frames (hence why RED sells a $5k card to decode and debayer their footage in hardware instead of software) so you may not see the drive as a bottleneck.

 

[mapesdhs]

Manuel/Achim wrote:
"... a 1 TB update to what was already the fastest 3.5" disk drive available."

I hate to be piccy but this isn't quite correct; since the article specifically refers to
workstation users, one must also consider SAS, especially since the majority of pro workstations
will be running off a SAS drive rather than SATA (eg. it was the default device in the Dell T7500).
Also, if using SATA, pro users would be more likely to have Enterprise SATA, of which there are
numerous examples already, aimed more at reliability of course, though many do offer good general
gerformance aswell, eg. the Constellation ES.2.

For a SAS example though, consider the old 3.5" Seagate ST3600057SS (6Gbit 600GB 15K SAS). Even
with only a 3Gbit connection, this gives 200MB/sec max, with an average of 167MB/sec (faster than
the WD) and random access times of 6.78ms for read (quicker), 3.81ms for write (a lot quicker!).
For reference, HDTach gives 126.7 min, 174.5 avg, 199.4 max, 5.5ms access, 213.1 burst.

Or there's the Hitachi 600GB 15K SAS (HUS156060VLS600); not quite as fast as the Seagate 15K.7,
but close.

Chuck a few of these on a simple SAS card like the 3041E-R and it's seriously nice for video work
(more than 700MB/sec RAID0, and that's just with a cheap P55 board).


Oh, palladin9479, you're wrong about the speed differences between SAS and SATA. Show me
where you can buy a 15K SATA atm.

Btw, 8K film is now becoming common in studios, and tests have already begun with 16K.

Ian.

 

[LORD_ORION]

High reliability

I still have a 74GB Raptor in a dev machine.

7 years of constant use, constant re-imaging.

Recently did a surface scan = still 100% AOK

 

[hannibal]

150 GB raptor, 7 years old allso and still running perfectly! In the same time I have lost many other drives... So quality, is quality...

 

[mapesdhs]

True, the 150GB VR is nice, I put one in my gf's PC.

Ian.

 

[blazorthon]

[citation][nom]mapesdhs[/nom]Manuel/Achim wrote:"... a 1 TB update to what was already the fastest 3.5" disk drive available."I hate to be piccy but this isn't quite correct; since the article specifically refers toworkstation users, one must also consider SAS, especially since the majority of pro workstationswill be running off a SAS drive rather than SATA (eg. it was the default device in the Dell T7500).Also, if using SATA, pro users would be more likely to have Enterprise SATA, of which there arenumerous examples already, aimed more at reliability of course, though many do offer good generalgerformance aswell, eg. the Constellation ES.2.For a SAS example though, consider the old 3.5" Seagate ST3600057SS (6Gbit 600GB 15K SAS). Evenwith only a 3Gbit connection, this gives 200MB/sec max, with an average of 167MB/sec (faster than the WD) and random access times of 6.78ms for read (quicker), 3.81ms for write (a lot quicker!).For reference, HDTach gives 126.7 min, 174.5 avg, 199.4 max, 5.5ms access, 213.1 burst.Or there's the Hitachi 600GB 15K SAS (HUS156060VLS600); not quite as fast as the Seagate 15K.7,but close.Chuck a few of these on a simple SAS card like the 3041E-R and it's seriously nice for video work(more than 700MB/sec RAID0, and that's just with a cheap P55 board).Oh, palladin9479, you're wrong about the speed differences between SAS and SATA. Show mewhere you can buy a 15K SATA atm. Btw, 8K film is now becoming common in studios, and tests have already begun with 16K.Ian.[/citation]

palladin9479 didn't say that there are any 15K SATA drives. palladin9479's post clearly says if you find them, not that there are any and even gives a reason for why you probably won't find any. palladin also said that SAS and SATA are nearly identical performance-wise with a single drive, also correct, and that SATA can't handle multiple drives per port as well as SAS can, which, yet again, is correct.

 

[nebun]

[citation][nom]acyuta[/nom]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.[/citation]
i love mine...i have two for internal storage and a RevoDrive x2 256gb as the main....i was going to raid my v-raptors but decided against it....now they are configured as back up for movies and other stuff...one for me and one for the wife ....talk about quick access and speed...love them

 

[mapesdhs]

blazorthon writes:
> ... palladin9479's post clearly says if you find them, ...

Since they don't exist, it's a pointless thing to say.


> ... not that there are any and even gives a reason for why you probably won't find any. ...

Merely his opinion, which is no reason at all.


> ... palladin also said that SAS and SATA are
> nearly identical performance-wise with a single drive, also correct, ...

Sorry but that's just garbage. The 15K7 Seagate has been available for years (since
2009; what was the best SATA speed back then?), offering performance far in excess of
any SATA disk prior to this new WD 1TB (when launched in 2009, the 15K7 was 50%
faster than even the WD VR 300GB 10K), with significantly better reliability vs. standard
SATA; and if one wanted equivalent SATA reliability (Enterprise SATA) then the performance
lead of the 15K7 is even larger (the 7200rpm 750GB NS is reliable but nowhere near as
quick). Do you even have any of these drives? I've tested them extensively.

To quote benchmarkreviews back in 2009, "Seagate has had eight years to refine and
erfect the Cheetah 15K product line, and as a result the 15K.7 series is probably the
best-constructed hard drive in the world. The incredibly-low 0.55% Annualized Failure
Rate (AFR) and industry's highest 3.5" drive reliability (1.6-million-hours MTBF) are
proof evident that the construction is a direct reflection of Seagate's research."


> ... and that SATA can't
> handle multiple drives per port as well as SAS can, which, yet again, is
> correct.

I wasn't referring to or commenting on that at all since of course it's the case.

Ian.

 

[blazorthon]

[citation][nom]mapesdhs[/nom]blazorthon writes:> ... palladin9479's post clearly says if you find them, ...Since they don't exist, it's a pointless thing to say.> ... not that there are any and even gives a reason for why you probably won't find any. ...Merely his opinion, which is no reason at all.> ... palladin also said that SAS and SATA are> nearly identical performance-wise with a single drive, also correct, ...Sorry but that's just garbage. The 15K7 Seagate has been available for years (since2009; what was the best SATA speed back then?), offering performance far in excess ofany SATA disk prior to this new WD 1TB (when launched in 2009, the 15K7 was 50%faster than even the WD VR 300GB 10K), with significantly better reliability vs. standardSATA; and if one wanted equivalent SATA reliability (Enterprise SATA) then the performancelead of the 15K7 is even larger (the 7200rpm 750GB NS is reliable but nowhere near asquick). Do you even have any of these drives? I've tested them extensively.To quote benchmarkreviews back in 2009, "Seagate has had eight years to refine anderfect the Cheetah 15K product line, and as a result the 15K.7 series is probably thebest-constructed hard drive in the world. The incredibly-low 0.55% Annualized FailureRate (AFR) and industry's highest 3.5" drive reliability (1.6-million-hours MTBF) areproof evident that the construction is a direct reflection of Seagate's research."> ... and that SATA can't> handle multiple drives per port as well as SAS can, which, yet again, is> correct.I wasn't referring to or commenting on that at all since of course it's the case.Ian.[/citation]

His/her point seemed to be that they probably didn't exist, but he/she wasn't confirming that they don't. That doesn't mean that palladin9479 was saying that they do exist; it means almost the opposite of that. Beyond that, you're mistaking the performance of the drives with the interface. SATA and SAS are nearly identical. The drives that use them obviously aren't and we all know that.

SAS is just SCSI over SATA or something like that (that might be an over-simplified description, but it gets the point across). The interface itself is not faster than SATA, but it is better in other ways such as being able to better handle multiple drives per port better. The hardware controllers and such for SAS and enterprise SATA are often superior to those used in SATA controllers, but that doesn't change the fact that those three interfaces themselves are all very nearly identical.

Again, just because the drives using different interfaces are faster does not make the interface faster. For example, using a Radeon 6990 in a PCIe 2.0 x16 slot versus using a Radeon 6450 in the same slot doesn't change the fact that the PCIe 2.0 x16 slot still can't go faster than about 8GB/s despite the fact that the device on it can be faster or slower than other similar devices that use the same interface. A better example for this might be comparing similarly performing versions of PCI, PCI-X, and AGP.

I'd also like to point out that the reliability of enterprise drives is not related to their interface. They are more reliable because they are built better, not because of their interface. Drives such as the Velociraptors prove this quite well and even if they didn't, well, I don't think that you're going to try to tell me that the interface between the drive and the CPU/chipset has any impact on whether or not the disks and the read/write heads fail.

 

[palladin9479]

Actually ... if people REALLY want to splint hairs, SAS is technically slower then SATA.

Mechanically the drives are identical, they just have different control boards affixed to them. Some platters are designed to spin at 10K others at 15K, in either case their just rotating magnetic disks. SAS is just the SCSI protocol used over a serial interface, SATA is a new protocol that implements many of the SCSI features and replaces the out dated ATA protocol.

There are two primary differences between SAS and SATA, first being the level of error checking and correction done by each. SAS use's significantly more detailed error checking and correction methods then the SMART of SATA. It's these checking methods that actually slow down a SAS drive, the amount is minor but it is there. Manufacturers add more cache in the hopes of hiding that performance hit. Second difference is that SAS is dual ported and each disk has a unique WWN burned into it similar to FC. This allows a SAS disk to be integrated seamlessly into a storage fabric and also to have dual path redundancy. SATA on the other hand is point to point only, the most you can hope for is a port expander which acts similar to a network switch but for SATA disks.

In arrays of ~6 or less, SATA and SAS disks rated at the speed will perform identically with the SAS disks being slightly slower (SAS HBA's can do both). Once you move past the 5~6 disk level then controller I/O becomes your bottleneck not disks. This is where the biggest difference of SAS and SATA happens, SATA simply can't expand beyond that point without some sort of third party storage component (SATA to SCSI / SAS interface adapter). SAS on the other hand easily expands beyond that in both speed and scale.

-=Note=-
The speed difference between 10K and 15K is incredibly small, typically in the 10% range. It's for that reason that most storage fabrics are no longer being build with 15K disks for Tier II storage. You will occasionally see 15K disks used as the servers local arrays but the days of having two shelf's of 15K disks have come to an end. Now it's pretty much SSD for Tier I, 10K SAS for Tier II and 7200 SAS / SATA (enclosure does conversion) for tier III.

There were very few 15K SATA disks ever made. This isn't due to a limitation of the SATA interface but to costing issues. 15K disks are rather expensive and putting them on a SATA disk would bump it's price into the enterprise range, well outside what most consumers will pay. IT departments on the other hand didn't mind spending the extra money for those disks and their needs were often better suited with a SAS interface. A 15K SATA would be a product without a market.