Western Digital's New VelociRaptor VR200M: 10K RPM at 450GB and 600GB
by Anand Lal Shimpi on April 6, 2010 8:00 AM EST- Posted in
- Storage
The Contenders & The Test
To make these graphs legible I've left out the SSDs, but note that these are the same benchmarks we use for our SSD reviews. If you want to compare, head on over to our SSD Bench database.
I've included the latest 6Gbps drives from Western Digital and Seagate, the Caviar Black and the Barracuda XT. Both are TB-class drives that are the fastest 7200 RPM offerings you can buy for a desktop today.
I've also included the previous generation 300GB VelociRaptor and the old 150GB Raptor to give you an idea of how far things have come if you're still holding on to one of those old drives.
For you notebook users I ran tests on a Seagate Momentus 5400.6 drive. It's not fast compared to a desktop drive but it gives you an idea of the performance difference that exists between 2.5" and 3.5" drives.
Finally I included an older Seagate Barracuda ES to give you a reference point if you have a 7200 RPM drive that's a few years old.
| CPU | Intel Core i7 965 running at 3.2GHz (Turbo & EIST Disabled) |
| Motherboard: | Intel DX58SO (Intel X58) |
| Chipset: | Intel X58 + Marvell SATA 6Gbps PCIe |
| Chipset Drivers: | Intel 9.1.1.1015 + Intel IMSM 8.9 |
| Memory: | Qimonda DDR3-1333 4 x 1GB (7-7-7-20) |
| Video Card: | eVGA GeForce GTX 285 |
| Video Drivers: | NVIDIA ForceWare 190.38 64-bit |
| Desktop Resolution: | 1920 x 1200 |
| OS: | Windows 7 x64 |
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pjconoso - Tuesday, April 6, 2010 - link
The heatsink is quite massive for such a small hard drive. How hot do these things run? The price is very tempting considering that SSDs are VEEERRYY expensive here in our country (Philippines) but if I'm coming from the regulard Caviar Black and considered something like this, would it be worth it?Goty - Tuesday, April 6, 2010 - link
It's not that the drive runs hot, it's that it's a 2.5" unit and therefore doesn't fit well in most desktop cases. I can't remember where, but I remember some tests that were done not too long ago comparing temps with and without the heatsink and there was little difference.nurd - Tuesday, April 6, 2010 - link
Just so. If you actually hold them (well, the 300's at least, and I'm assuming these aren't much different), you'll note that there really isn't a lot of tight contact area for heat to be sunk into it. It's just a carrier; the "heatsink" look is cosmetic.pjconoso - Tuesday, April 6, 2010 - link
In my opinion, they should've opted for the cheap bracket support for mounting this thing as a 3.5-inch hard drive rather than upping the cost because of the heatsink - that would've brought the prices down a bit, don't you think?HillBeast - Wednesday, April 7, 2010 - link
The thing is though, this drive is designed to be in servers and the like and is designed to handle 24/7 operation so if they just opted for a cheap bracket then it will most likely get VERY hot and would probably seize. I have seen this happen to a Seagate once. Any cooling is better than none and I'd rather pay for quality goods.sxr7171 - Wednesday, April 7, 2010 - link
What part of "there wasn't any difference in drive temperature" or "theheatsink" is purely cosmetic did you not understand?
HillBeast - Wednesday, April 7, 2010 - link
What part of any cooling is better than none did you not understand? What part of running these puppies 24/7 in a server with several stacked upon each other whre they will get almost no ventilation and ANY cooling would be better than a crappy metal brack do you not understand?Calin - Thursday, April 8, 2010 - link
In a server they'll probably stay in 2.5 inch enclosures (and for OEM, they'll probably bought without the plate extender). As for heat, they're the the coolest of the test (including 3.5" magnetic hard drives)beachlife - Tuesday, August 3, 2010 - link
Do you have that test result?http://www.wdc.com/en/products/products.asp?DriveI...
I find it interesting that the VelociRaptor drive with the Ice Pack Heat sink and one without (WD4500HLHX vs. WD4500BLHX) BOTH have the same Operating temp, 0-55, not sure how this is possible, our testing does not confirm this
Imperceptible - Tuesday, April 6, 2010 - link
I would have liked to see the 2TB variant of the WD Black series used for the sake of comparison, considering that's currently the fastest mechanical drive (apart from these new raptors).