WD6400AAKS released

Silencing hard drives, optical drives and other storage devices

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line
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Post by line » Wed Mar 19, 2008 8:03 pm

Tech Report plans to publish a review soon.

http://www.techreport.com/discussions.x/14381

ikjadoon
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Post by ikjadoon » Thu Mar 20, 2008 2:30 pm

EXCELLENT! That is probably the best site to review it, as they have reviewed MANY other hard drives. :D

~Ibrahim~

lobuni
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Post by lobuni » Fri Mar 21, 2008 1:42 am

Anandtech review http://www.anandtech.com/storage/showdoc.aspx?i=3269

It seems WD deliberately made the 320GB version slower :lol:

"The one area that really disappointed us with the WD 320GB drive was its pitiful random access times at 16.4ms. After a lengthy conversation with Western Digital, we now understand why the drive performed so poorly in this test...

Western Digital explained the single platter 320GB drive is aimed at the entry-level market where thermals and acoustics are critical for mass acceptance of the drive by the OEM and retail customers...

WD sacrificed a small amount of performance on the 320GB drive to meet these goals. This was by design and is not an indication of the performance potential of their new technology...

With that in mind, WD tuned the 640GB drive for additional performance at the expense of acoustics..."

JazzJackRabbit
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Post by JazzJackRabbit » Fri Mar 21, 2008 7:41 am

Well, I guess this means there is no firmware fix coming to 320GB owners.

ikjadoon
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Post by ikjadoon » Fri Mar 21, 2008 2:25 pm

JazzJackRabbit wrote:Well, I guess this means there is no firmware fix coming to 320GB owners.
I guess not.. :(

WD doesn't has any plans for 32MB cache drives, does it? I use Windows Media Center multiple times per day; would I notice a difference? Anandtech thought not, but that is a *massive* margin.

~Ibrahim~

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Post by QuietOC » Tue Mar 25, 2008 3:37 am


spacey
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Post by spacey » Tue Mar 25, 2008 6:43 am

Thanks for posting the review.

So looks like the WD 6400AAKS is better performer all around than the Samsung F1, but just slightly. It has less HD space though.

Going to wait to see what the price is when it pops up in the stores and I'll pick between the two.

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Post by FartingBob » Tue Mar 25, 2008 6:46 am

Very good review. Im torn between one of these and a 750GB GP now. The 640 doesnt seem available yet in the UK, ill be buying one of the drives in about a month, so hopefully it'll be in stock and at a good price by then.
WD have really thrown down the guantlet to seagate, samsung and hitachi with the GP and now 640GB drives, beating or matching other top of the line drives whilst being more efficient and quiet. Hopefully the next upgrades from the competitors will focus more on these aspects as well as performance.

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Post by JazzJackRabbit » Tue Mar 25, 2008 9:42 am

Samsung 640 is nowhere in sight so I'm considering WD option. Two questions to WD6400AAKS owners.

1. Can anyone compare idle noise from WD to Samsung HD321KJ? (This is another two platter drive that I plan on replacing)
2. I'm planning to use the drive in Scythe Quiet Drive enclosure, so proper contact between drive and enclosure is very important. From the drive photos I see that there is a "half a circle" line running around the top lid with label inside. The question is, is the label part below or above that half circle thingy? If I put it inside Scythe Quiet Drive, it is going to make proper contact with the enclosure or is half circle line going to interfere?


PS sorry about that half circle thingy, no idea how to describe it in plain English :D

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Post by Goldmember » Thu Mar 27, 2008 2:02 pm

Yay, a fast and quiet drive!

Hmm, if TechReport is claiming the 2 platter WD 640GB at 12.9ms seek is nearly as quiet as the Green Power, then why slow down the 320GB so much? I understand their logic for providing a quiet OEM drive, but it seems they went a little too far.

As for 32MB of cache:

I'll bet that in a few months, we'lll see a SE32 1TB drive with 3 platters. Otherwise, their customers might suffer from cache envy.

Just speculation. :)

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Post by nicko » Fri Mar 28, 2008 12:14 am

Cache difference doesn't mean that much at all. Benefit of having 32mb cache instead of 16mb is only when you're working with big files (read and write). And that's it.

So I wouldn't bother that much about cache, it's almost all marketing strategy.

As far as concern 320gb drive, I bet you wouldn't feel the difference beetwen 640gb model and 320gb model in everyday use.

Just my 2 cents...

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Post by Goldmember » Fri Mar 28, 2008 7:22 am

You are correct nicko, but my cache is bigger than your cache. :wink: Haha J/K. I think they will have to give in to the marketing aspects of 32 megs before too long.

I respectfully disagree about the 7,200rpm 320GB's seek time though as 16.4ms is a lot slower than the 5,400rpm GreenPower's 14.8ms. Maybe they are having trouble producing/procuring the right kind of heads? Aereal density is not a problem with Perpendicular recording but making heads that are capable of working with this increased density can be a slight problem.

The 640GB would be a better choice anyways because it's going to have the 320GB platters. And it gives the Sammy F1 a little competition. :)

Take care.

EDIT: I was curious to see what the results would be if rotational latency was accounted for.

WD GreenPower 5,400RPM: 14.8ms seek - 5.5ms rotational latency = 9.3 milliseconds.
WD SE16 320GB 7,200RPM: 16.4ms seek - 4.2ms rotational latency = 12.2 milliseconds.

The GreenPower clearly has a faster seek time, but the new SE16 320GB has a much faster transfer rate.
Last edited by Goldmember on Fri Mar 28, 2008 7:35 am, edited 1 time in total.

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Post by nicko » Fri Mar 28, 2008 7:33 am

I don't think that they have problem with 320gb model, especially after they proved that they can produce 640gb model with low access time.

If you're asking me, the thing with 320gb model is in drive's firmware. It's slowing drive's heads on purpose so heads are moving smoothly. The same impact has AAM ;)

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Post by Goldmember » Fri Mar 28, 2008 7:38 am

LOL you sure are a quick poster. :) I just edited my post so tell me what you think.

I was just thinking that maybe they used the "better" heads for the 640 and the less capable heads for the 320.

But you're probably right. They just went a little crazy with the firmware.

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Post by nicko » Fri Mar 28, 2008 11:36 am

Goldmember wrote:LOL you sure are a quick poster. :) I just edited my post so tell me what you think.
Yeah, I was nearby :D
Goldmember wrote:I was just thinking that maybe they used the "better" heads for the 640 and the less capable heads for the 320.
But you're probably right. They just went a little crazy with the firmware.
There's no better heads. They're working or not :D Heads are powered by step electro motor. This motor is responsible for acces time.

There's 3 steps when head is positioning over the right sector on the plate:

1) Head is acelerating
2) Head is moving with constant speed
3) Head is decelerating until it comes over the right sector.

So, what AAM (or firmware) is doing? In stage 1) and 3) gives instruction to step electro motor for slower (smoother) moving. Beacause, that's what we hear when the disk is in seek. But that also resuluts in some losing some (access) time.

So, if you still think that's a big difference beetween 13ms and 16ms for average user, try to turn AAM on, and do what are you doing on computer for a few days. And tell me (objectively as you can) if you can feel the difference :)

So, let's recapitulate with these two disk you are choosed :)

1) WD GP 5400rpm.

Lower spin rate results in somewhat higher access time and lower read/write rate. But also results in much less noise and much less heat disipation (especially with 4-5 platter disk). AAM is disabled in firmware.

2) WD SE16 320gb 7200rpm.

Higher spin rate results in somewhat slower access time and higher read/write rate. Results also in somewhat much noise and more heat disipation (but that's not really is issue, beacause we have one platter only).

So, obviously, these two drives are assigned for two differents place on the market.

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Post by JazzJackRabbit » Wed Apr 02, 2008 8:39 am

Can anybody answer my question about the top lid couple of posts earlier? :?:

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Shuttle SN95G5 V1 and WD 6400AAKS

Post by tinytim » Wed Apr 02, 2008 4:42 pm

spacey wrote:Thanks for posting the review.

So looks like the WD 6400AAKS is better performer all around than the Samsung F1, but just slightly. It has less HD space though.

Going to wait to see what the price is when it pops up in the stores and I'll pick between the two.
I just bought one of these for my Shuttle SN95G5 V1 and it does not boot. Tested it in another system and it works fine. Looks like some kind of incompatibility problem with the Shuttle SN95G5

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Post by QuietOC » Thu Apr 03, 2008 4:00 pm

JazzJackRabbit wrote:The question is, is the label part below or above that half circle thingy? If I put it inside Scythe Quiet Drive, it is going to make proper contact with the enclosure or is half circle line going to interfere?

PS sorry about that half circle thingy, no idea how to describe it in plain English :D
The label is the tallest/thickest part of the drive.

I just connected it up, so far I have only looked at it, but I have a WD1500ADFD Raptor and very quiet 500GB P7K500 to compare it too.

JLee
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Post by JLee » Fri Apr 04, 2008 5:31 pm

this needs to be availiable in canada =\

bsoft
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Post by bsoft » Mon Apr 07, 2008 1:42 am

Subjectively, my WD6400AAKS sounds very similar to my WD5000AAKS, which isn't really a bad thing. You can definitely hear the seeks, but it's more like my old 5k100 Hitachi notebook drive than the WD1600 it replaced.

This is a 7200rpm 3.5" drive, which means that you're going to get vibration unless you use an enclosure or suspension.

If you're really nuts about noise, the Hitachi 200GB 7k200 drives are pretty fast and there's precisely zero chance of you being able to hear the seeks from more than about 20-30cm.

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Post by QuietOC » Mon Apr 07, 2008 3:34 am

bsoft wrote:If you're really nuts about noise, the Hitachi 200GB 7k200 drives are pretty fast and there's precisely zero chance of you being able to hear the seeks from more than about 20-30cm.
I have to wonder if the 7K200s are louder than the P7K500s. So, far the WD6400AAKS seems very nice. I've only run Xbench 1.3 on it under OSX 10.4.11, which says it is a little faster than the Raptor. Idle sound is slightly noticeable, unlike the P7K500, but I haven't really used it enough to make a thorough comparison. As far as all 3.5" having vibration issues, I have the P7K500 hard mounted, and that thing doesn't vibrate at all. I won't mention how crappy the Raptor is hard mounted. :P

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Post by bsoft » Mon Apr 07, 2008 11:56 am

QuietOC wrote:
bsoft wrote:If you're really nuts about noise, the Hitachi 200GB 7k200 drives are pretty fast and there's precisely zero chance of you being able to hear the seeks from more than about 20-30cm.
I have to wonder if the 7K200s are louder than the P7K500s. So, far the WD6400AAKS seems very nice. I've only run Xbench 1.3 on it under OSX 10.4.11, which says it is a little faster than the Raptor. Idle sound is slightly noticeable, unlike the P7K500, but I haven't really used it enough to make a thorough comparison. As far as all 3.5" having vibration issues, I have the P7K500 hard mounted, and that thing doesn't vibrate at all. I won't mention how crappy the Raptor is hard mounted. :P
Well I guess it's a matter of your case dynamics - I don't have a P7K500, but my Samsung P80 (JVC motor) definitely created vibration issues when it was hard mounted.

I find it interesting that XBench shows the 7k200 beating the Raptor - that's just not going to happen, unless you're talking about the old 36GB Raptor. The 7k200 is about as fast as my old WD1600, which was pretty slow for a 7200rpm desktop drive.

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Post by QuietOC » Tue Apr 08, 2008 6:06 am


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Post by QuietOC » Thu Apr 10, 2008 8:25 am

bsoft wrote:I find it interesting that XBench shows the 7k200 beating the Raptor
Xbench has a very primitive hard drive test--almost worthless, but it is all I had available.

On other notes: the new WD6400AAKS has the same casing as the old WD3200AAKS. I don't have my old WD3200AAKS, but I don't doubt that more than just the casing is shared with the newer drive.

The new WD3200AAKS looks like a stripped down WD1600AAJS--as in they reduced/removed several visible sound reducing features of their older single-platter drive. If they did this on the outside I wonder how much they stripped away on the inside (high access times)?

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Post by JazzJackRabbit » Thu Apr 24, 2008 5:03 pm

I just received my WD6400AAKS and I have a huge question to other owners.

As most of you by now know, new 3200AAKS comes in two different casing versions. The one with more support bars on the underside is significantly quieter (by SPCR standards) than the other. Now I know WD3200AAKS and WD6400AAKS are two different drives, but the WD6400AAKS version I received looks exactly like the one reviewed by techreport. That is it only has 7 support bars instead of multiple ones like on second WD3200AAKS sample SPCR reviewed.

So does anyone know if WD6400AAKS also comes in two different casing versions just like WD3200AAKS does? Has anyone received WD6400AAKS that looks different than the one in techreport review?

The reason I'm asking is that I obviously want the quietest drive possible and if there is another, quieter version of 6400AAKS than the one I received I will obviously be bummed about it.

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Post by Iron_Dreamer » Thu Apr 24, 2008 5:19 pm

Anyone who has used both this drive and the Samsung HD501LJ care to chime in about how the noise levels compare? I'd like to drop my system noise even further (basically limited by HDD's at this point), but dropping $120 on a pair of quiet drive enclosures just doesn't seem very cost-effective to me.

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Post by QuietOC » Fri Apr 25, 2008 9:02 am

JazzJackRabbit wrote:So does anyone know if WD6400AAKS also comes in two different casing versions just like WD3200AAKS does? Has anyone received WD6400AAKS that looks different than the one in techreport review?
My WD6400AAKS looks exactly like the the TechReport drive. It also looks exactly like my old 2-platter WD3200AAKS. The better version of the new WD3200AAKS uses the same casing as the old WD1600AAJS. The casing on the worse version seems to be new. Check my post on the first page of the WD3200AAKS review thread for pictures of all of these.

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Post by oberbimbo » Wed Apr 30, 2008 12:44 am

Does anyone know if WD plans to ship a 3 platter HD with these platters?

I like the 1TB green power but maybe this would work better, even.

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Post by dhanson865 » Wed Apr 30, 2008 7:29 am

oberbimbo wrote:Does anyone know if WD plans to ship a 3 platter HD with these platters?

I like the 1TB green power but maybe this would work better, even.
The original press release says ALL drives will move to the new platter size. So it is only a matter of time until we see a 960GB and 1280GB drive. The only question is how they will market them.

Will the 960 be called a 960, 950, or 900?

Will the 1280 be called a 1.25 TB?

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Post by nicko » Wed Apr 30, 2008 7:55 am

I belive it will be 1TB drive, beacause when you have 3 platters it's not that hard to expand a space a little bit...

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