Western Digital VelociRaptor 1TB

Way before solid-state drives came into the enthusiast spotlight performance-seekers, gamers and professionals looked at only one name in the storage arena to address their needs: Western Digital’s VelociRaptor. The VelociRaptor (or just Raptor) is the only mainstream desktop solution that carries a 10,000RPM spindle speed making it one of the fastest hard drives around. The last line of VelociRaptors were released back in 2010 and was welcomed by a quickly-evolving SSD world. Fast-forward to present day with SSD costs at an all-time low, they’ve become a staple in performance builds. Western Digital is out to prove itself once more by hitting SSDs where it hurts most and that’s capacity. We have the top-of-the-line 1TB WD VelociRaptor in the house so let’s see what this Raptor can do.

Western Digital is one of the top storage media manufacturers in the world contributing a whole range of products to home users, media professionals and businesses. With the acquisition of Hitachi Global Storage Technologies, they’ve broadened their port-folio and increased their R&D muscle to improve their products.

[toggle title=”Specifications”]

Product Specifications
	Interface	SATA 6 Gb/s
Performance Specifications
	Rotational Speed	10,000 RPM (nominal)
	Buffer Size	64 MB
	Load/unload Cycles	600,000 minimum
Transfer Rates
	Buffer To Host (Serial ATA)	6 Gb/s (Max)
Physical Specifications
	Capacity	1 TB
	User Sectors Per Drive	1,953,525,169
Physical Dimensions
English
	Height	1.028 Inches
	Depth	5.787 Inches
	Width	4.00 Inches
	Weight	1.10 Pounds
Metric
	Height	26.1 mm
	Depth	147 mm
	Width	101.6 mm
	Weight	0.50 kg
Environmental Specifications
Shock
	Operating Shock (Read)	65G, 2 ms
	Non-operating Shock	300G, 2 ms
Acoustics
	Idle Mode	30 dBA (average)
	Seek Mode 0	37 dBA (average)
Temperature (English)
	Operating	41° F to 131° F
	Non-operating	-40° F to 158° F
Temperature (Metric)
	Operating	5° C to 55° C
	Non-operating	-40° C to 70° C
Electrical Specifications
Current Requirements
	Power Dissipation
	Read/Write	5.10 Watts
	Idle	4.20 Watts
	Standby	1.10 Watts
	Sleep	1.10 Watts

As used for storage capacity, one megabyte (MB) = one million bytes, one gigabyte (GB) = one billion bytes, and one terabyte (TB) = one trillion bytes. Total accessible capacity varies depending on operating environment. As used for buffer or cache, one megabyte (MB) = 1,048,576 bytes. As used for transfer rate or interface, megabyte per second (MB/s) = one million bytes per second, megabit per second (Mb/s) = one million bits per second, and gigabit per second (Gb/s) = one billion bits per second.

[/toggle] [toggle title=”Features”]

Ultra fast.

Designed around a 10,000 RPM spin speed, these SATA 6 Gb/s drives include a 64 MB cache and deliver the ultimate performance for photo and video editing.

Rock-solid reliability.

With 1.4 million hours MTBF, these drives have the highest available reliability rating on a high capacity SATA drive. In addition, these drives feature a 5-year limited warranty.

High capacity.

State-of-the-art technology delivers a balance of high performance and high capacity perfect for data-intensive workloads that require large amounts of storage such as video editing, 3D rendering and scientific modeling.

Ultra-cool operation.

Consumes less idle power and uses similar active power as the previous generation WD VelociRaptor, while offering higher capacity and performance.

Advanced Format (AF) .

Technology adopted by WD and other drive manufacturers as one of multiple ways to continue growing hard drive capacities. AF is a more efficient media format that enables increased areal densities.

Rotary Acceleration Feed Forward (RAFF).

Optimizes operation and performance when the drives are used in vibration-prone, multi-drive chassis.

IcePack mounting frame.

The 2.5-inch hard drive is enclosed in a backplane-ready 3.5-inch mounting frame with a built-in heat sink that keeps this powerful little drive extra cool when installed in high-performance desktop chassis.

NoTouch ramp load technology.

The recording head never touches the disk media ensuring significantly less wear to the recording head and media as well as better drive protection in transit.

Pre-emptive Wear Leveling (PWL).

Ensures reliability for applications that perform a high incidence of read/write operations at the same physical location on the disk.

Environmentally conscious.

In addition to being RoHS compliant, this generation of WD VelociRaptor also provides a halogen-free design.

Ideal for:

High-performance computing, 3D rendering, digital content creation and editing, scientific computing and image management.[/toggle]

CLOSER LOOK

[one_half last=”no”][singlepic id=6464 w=280 h=280 float=center][/one_half][one_half last=”yes”][singlepic id=6472 w=280 h=280 float=center][/one_half]

To those not familiar with the VelociRaptor line, the most striking visual characteristic of the disk is the jagged sides. This is in actuality a cooling solution for the VelociRaptor titled the IcePack intended to pull heat away from the main drive. I have no idea if this was intended but the IcePack does add a certain appeal to the VelociRaptor.

[one_half last=”no”][singlepic id=6466 w=280 h=280 float=center][/one_half][one_half last=”yes”][singlepic id=6467 w=280 h=280 float=center][/one_half]

The VelociRaptor is actually a 2.5″ drive mounted on the IcePack which follows the 3.5″ HDD form factor. The HDD is mounted to the IcePack and connects to an interface that extends its connectors.

[one_half last=”no”][singlepic id=6468 w=280 h=280 float=center][/one_half][one_half last=”yes”][singlepic id=6471 w=280 h=280 float=center][/one_half]

The top of the drive shows us a wealth of info including the model code and capacity. As mentioned earlier we have the 1TB model which is the top variant of this new VelociRaptor line.

[one_half last=”no”][singlepic id=6473 w=280 h=280 float=center][/one_half][one_half last=”yes”][singlepic id=6474 w=280 h=280 float=center][/one_half]

Here we have the VelociRaptor side-by-side with a 1TB Seagate drive and an HP 15K RPM SAS drive both of which represent the technologies that the VelociRaptor features: large capacities, low areal density and very fast spindle speed.

PERFORMANCE

CPU	Intel Core i7 3960X Extreme Edition
MOTHERBOARD	ECS X79R-AX
VIDEO CARD	Gainward GTX560 Ti 448
STORAGE	Kingston HyperX SSD 120GB, Seagate XT 3TB, Seagate Barracuda 3TB, Kingston HyperX 3K SSD 90GB,  Western Digital VelociRaptor 1TB
PSU	CoolerMaster GX750 Bronze
COOLING	Corsair H80
OS	Windows 7 Ultimate 64-bit SP1

We would like to thank Kingston, Intel, ECS, Western Digital and Seagate for providing the hardware and equipment for this review.

[tabs tab1=”Read Test” tab2=”Write Test” tab3=”Crystal DiskMark” tab4=”AS SSD” tab5=”ATTO” tab6=”Boot-up Time”] [tab]

We used HD Tach to measure the potential read speed of our SSD. The average read speed is what matters in this test as this is more indicative of the drive’s performance on a day to day basis.

[singlepic id=6458 w=540 h=480 float=center]

We see from the results above that the VelociRaptor is neck to neck with the 3TB Barracuda, this alone might make some jump to the larger competitor but lets look further into more tests to get a broader idea of what the VelociRaptor can do.

[/tab] [tab]

For write testing, HD Tune was used to measure the drive’s write performance. Again, we focus on the average results.

[singlepic id=6453 w=540 h=480 float=center]

Now we see more close numbers from the Raptor and comparing it to the HyperX SSD, the average performance is simply impressive considering that this drive is spindle-based and packs nearly 10x more storage space. Still, its a close battle between the two HDDs in this test. Let’s see some more figures.

[/tab] [tab]

Crystal Disk Mark is storage benchmarking software was developed by “hiyohiyo” of Japan, and is available for free. Crystal Disk Mark  measures sequential, and random read/write speeds of storage devices.

[singlepic id=6454 w=540 h=480 float=center][singlepic id=6455 w=540 h=480 float=center][singlepic id=6456 w=540 h=480 float=center][singlepic id=6457 w=540 h=480 float=center]

In this test, we pit the VelociRaptor against the Barracuda and see who’s got more bite. The sequential test alone shows us the Raptor schooling the Barracuda with 200MB/s read and write speeds. To give you an idea of how fast that is, the Barracuda doing 165MB/s is already monstrous for a mechanical hard drive, so 200MB/s is just amazing. Looking further into the small file tests, the Raptor is just superior to the Barracuda in all tests.

[/tab] [tab]

AS SSD is a benchmark tool that determines the performance of Solid State Drives but can also be used to measure hard drives, it just takes longer. The tool contains six synthetic and three copy tests .

[singlepic id=6459 w=540 h=480 float=center][singlepic id=6460 w=540 h=480 float=center]

Again, pretty similar picture being painted here. The Raptor performs better on small file operations than the Barracuda and totally leaves it behind in sequential operations by quite a respectable margin.

[/tab] [tab]

ATTO Disk Benchmark benchmarks a drive’s read and write speeds with increasing file sizes and graphs them.

[singlepic id=6461 w=540 h=480 float=center][singlepic id=6462 w=540 h=480 float=center]

Here we see how the Raptor performance scales with increasing file size. Unlike previous tests, the Raptor lags behind the Barracuda in small file read operations but as soon as it hits 16KB mark, it just doesn’t back down reaching 206MB/s read and 200MB/s write speeds.

[/tab] [tab]

To measure boot-up time we used BootRacer. BootRacer is a free program that measures Windows boot-up times.

[singlepic id=6463 w=540 h=480 float=center]

With SSDs around, boot-up times have become snappier. We see the Raptor trail behind the HyperX SSD but only a few seconds.

[/tab] [/tabs]

CONCLUSION

Western Digital is probably well-aware of the situation the current HDD market is facing, with HDD prices still high due to last year’s Thailand flooding and with SSD costs rapidly dropping, the place for a high-performance hard disk is not in the gamer but in the professional. The Western Digital VelociRaptor, even with its promising performance is just not something for everyone. Sure I can say that if you need large capacity and top performance, the VelociRaptor is the choice but that still depends on your usage. Its hard coming up with a proper verdict for this drive really.

The VelociRaptor is a vast improvement over the former versions and clearly sets itself apart as the fastest hard drive in the desktop space. Coming in at Php 13, 795.00 for the 1TB model, the 500 GB version is Php 9, 295.00 and the 250 GB version is Php 7, 195.00, this is a very tough proposition for the gamer and user and to be honest, I don’t really see any real world benefits in games that Caviar Blacks wouldn’t be able to deliver. Anyone looking for this configuration would look for a combined solution with an SSD and a larger capacity drive like the Caviar Black models.

[singlepic id=6472 w=600 h=300 float=center]

We cannot recommend the Raptor for just anyone, if you’re a professional looking for a large capacity and high performance drive and you need to work with large amount of files daily then this might just be for you. The Raptor also comes backed by a 5-year warranty so you’ll have peace of mind knowing that WD is confident about the quality of this product.

Western Digital has created the most impressive mechanical desktop hard drive in existence in the form of the VelociRaptor but as current trends pushes it more and more into the corner, its exciting to see how the hard drive market will react.