Introduction:

Most of us take advantage of a fast CPU or a ton of RAM, but we seldom remember who sits at the base of our system, remembering all of our operating system data – the hard drive. While some may consider RAID arrays or a few high speed drives, RAID has its pros and cons, and most high speed drives get very expensive once they reach 74GB in capacity. Today, TechwareLabs gets a look at the new Western Digital VelociRaptor HDD. We received the new 10,000RPM 300GB hard drive and immediately began testing on it.

From Western Digital:

The Raptor has EVOLVED!

• WD VelociRaptor™–the fastest SATA drive in the universe!
• Genetically engineered from the high-performance DNA of WD Raptor®

The ultimate drive for performance enthusiasts and high-speed workstations

• 300 GB of high-performance storage
• Unparalleled speed for faster data access
• Reliability designed for the enterprise, built for enthusiasts

Program/Product Lines

• WD VelociRaptor
• Product family –VR150
• Model –WD3000GLFS

Form Factor

• 3.5-inch, 10,000 RPM (2.5-inch HDA, 15mm z-height)
• 2 platters, 4 heads
• Ships mounted in the WD-IcePAK™for placement into 3.5-inch slot

Capacity

• 300 GB

Product Comparison:

	WD Raptor EL150	WD VelociRaptor VR150
Features:
Models & Capacity	150 GB , 74 GB, 36 GB	300 GB
Buffer Size	16 MB	16 MB
Interface	SATA 1.5 GB/s	SATA 3 GB/s
Reliability:
MTBF	1.2M hrs	1.4M hrs
Warranty	5 years	5 years
Performance:
Seek Time (Read)	4.7 ms	4.2 ms
Seek Time (Write)	5.9 ms	4.7 ms
Read IOPS (QD=1)	124	134
Sustained Data Rate	88 MB/s	120 MB/s
Environmental:
Operating Temp Ambient	5-55 ambient, 60 max case	5-55 ambient, 60 max case
Temperature Change Rate (Op/Non-Op)	20C / 30C per hour	20C / 30C per hour
Non-operating Temperature	-40 to 70 ambient	-40 to 70 ambient
Acoustic:
Idle:	29 dBA	29 dBA
Seek (avg):	36 dBA	36 dBA
Ramp Load/unload	N/A	2 (sones)

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A Closer Look:

Thermal Image:

Because the Western Digital VelociRaptor is a 2.5″ drive encompassed in a 3.5″ IcePAK heatsink, it does not overheat very easily. Below is the thermal image provided by Western Digital:

You’ll notice that the drive stays around 50-57 degrees Celsius. This is good for a drive, and should not get too hot, or it could destroy the fragile drive.

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Benchmarking:

Test Rig:

• Thermaltake Kandalf LCS case
• ASUS Striker II NSE motherboard
• Intel Core 2 Quad Q9650
• Western Digital VelociRaptor
• ATI Radeon HD 4870
• Tagan BZ900 900W PSU
• Windows Vista 32-bit

Testing:

Testing started off quite jagged for us. The first VelociRaptor we received was sent with a very nice care package from Western Digital, and we appreciated it a lot. It was a pre-release and had an “engineering sample” sticker on it. Immediately after installing Windows Vista 32-bit, the drive started clicking during an Adobe Photoshop install. The drive was dead. Western Digital graciously sent us a 2nd drive for testing.

After testing our Kingston DDR3-1375 kit, we decided to overclock the RAM. Eventually hitting a frequency of 1500MHz, the hard drive got a corrupted sector and died…again. Western Digital sent us a third drive (3rd times charm!), which we’ve benchmarked below.

HD Tune:

We used HD Tune to test many facets of the drive. By running the AAM test, we can tell the seek time of the drive. Below we see that it comes out to 7.2ms. By using the info tab, we see that the drive is 300GB, formatted as NTFS, and has many supported features.

HD Tune AAM test	HD Tune Info

We continue the testing with the hard drive benchmark and the file benchmark.

HD Tune AAM test	HD Tune Info

We see that the HDD benchmark is running a minimum read speed of 73.9MB/sec, with a maximum of 122.6MB/sec, and an average read speed of 100.9MB/sec. These speeds are very common for drives running in RAID, but not as a single drive. The file benchmark was run using 128MB file lengths. Over time, we see that the read speed evens out to around ~90MB/sec, and the write speeds even out to ~93MB/sec around 2048 seconds.  HD Tune can be downloaded from our downloads page.

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CrystalDiskMark 2.1:

CrystalDiskMark was used to test the average read and write times of different sized files on the VelociRaptor.

CrystalDiskMark 50MB test	CrystalDiskMark 100MB test

CrystalDiskMark 500MB test	CrystalDiskMark 1000MB test

As you can see, the read times only fluctuated by a max of 4.19sec. The write times are a bit more drastic, with a change of 7.00sec. These values don’t necessarily compare to the results seen by the HD Tune test on the last page, but they are a good representation of the speed depending on file size.  CrystalDiskMark can be downloaded from our downloads page.

Datamarck:

Datamarck tests the same as the benchmarks before hand, primarily the read and write speeds. Our settings are shown in the first picture, and the result graph is shown on the right. As you can see, the blue line shows the average read rate being 98.8B/sec, with the minimum being 75.0MB/sec and the maximum being 120.8MB/sec. The yellow line displays seek time. The average is 7.6ms, with the minimum being 2.6ms and the maximum being 14.8ms.

Performance Test 6.1:

As you can imagine by now, our benchmarks test the average read and write times. Performance Test 6.1 also performs tests to rank its Disk Mark and PassMark scores.

We can see here that the average sequential read is 99.3MB/sec, and the sequential write is 101.0MB/sec. The Disk Mark score is 754.4, and the PassMark score is 150.9.

SiSoft Sandra:

SiSoft Sandra is one of our favorite benchmarks to run. It contains tests for all types of hardware, and simulates different types of hardware so you may see how your drive compares to others. The Western Digital VelociRaptor is built in for a simulated test, so we used it as test #3. From the graph, we can see the generic path of the benchmark is recorded by SiSoft. Our particular HDD seems to spike and dip around the same line, though it still beats their score. The Velociraptor trumps the scores of the 2x Maxtor DiamondMax 80GB drives in RAID 0, as well as the 2x WD 500GB drives in RAID0. The second image shows their placing.

Conclusion:

The Western Digital VelociRaptor offers a single drive with the speed of two RAID0 drives. There are many pros and cons of RAID, including the fact that standard RAID0 is less stable than a single drive. With 300GB of storage, it’s much larger than your standard 10K drive. Our tests have shown an approximate 100MB/sec for read and write, and we’re very impressed.

On the downside, we had a lot of trouble with the first two drives sent to us. Our deductions tell us that the first drive was a prototype and didn’t have the kinks worked out yet. The second drive was a victim of overclocking. Because of these issues, I cannot give it the Approved hardware award. The speeds and performance of this drive are amazing, but I’m just not confident in the stability of the drive quite yet. The Western Digital Velociraptor drive can be purchased for $229.99 from Newegg.com.