whats the deal with Velociraptors?

syrian_gamer · Post by **syrian_gamer** » Fri Jan 30, 2009 7:45 pm

No im not trying to be like Jerry Seinfeld. I see some people on this forum have velociraptor hard drives and i wanted to know whats so special about them? Noise? Speed? price? so whats so great about them?

let me know guys

Mr. B · Post by **Mr. B** » Fri Jan 30, 2009 8:27 pm

Fast, Small, Quiet, Expensive - http://www.silentpcreview.com/WD_Velociraptor

lm · Post by lm » Sat Jan 31, 2009 1:09 am

The fastest seek times of any SATA hard drive makes for a good OS+programs drive that should last until SSDs become finally a viable option.

Lawrence Lee · Post by **Lawrence Lee** » Sat Jan 31, 2009 1:47 am

They're fricken awesome. That's the deal.

vertigo · Post by **vertigo** » Sat Jan 31, 2009 7:17 am

If you want to understand what makes them good, do some reading about hard drives. Read about platters, sectors, cylinders, seek time, random access, sequential access, etc, all the jargon. Read about laptop drives and desktop drives, what makes them different? Read about IDE, UDMA, SATA, how do they compare?

Then when you've done all that, look at some reviews of drives, look at the performance figures and try to explain it with reference to the characteristics. If the drive spins faster, how will the performance improve? If each platter has a higher capacity, how will the performance improve?

When you've done all that, you'll nearly be ready to appreciate what is good about the Velociraptors.

Although there is more. You'd then need to consider what makes drives noisy. Why is a laptop drive normally quieter than a desktop drive? Why are many new drives quieter than old drives? What is/was AAM? How much impact would you expect enabling AAM to have on noise? How much impact on performance?

Then read the SPCR review again and it will all make sense.

Or just buy one.

syrian_gamer · Post by **syrian_gamer** » Sat Jan 31, 2009 8:15 am

ok so they're basically just smaller raptor drives? How do they comepare in terms of noise to regular hard drives.

nutball · Post by **nutball** » Sat Jan 31, 2009 8:35 am

syrian_gamer wrote:ok so they're basically just smaller raptor drives?

Not really, no. Unless you regard any 2.5" drive as being just a smaller 3.5" drive. The concept of 10000rpm 2.5" drives is far from new, they've been used in applications requiring high-performance random access for many years (servers, etc.). That VRs are like those server drives explains why they're so good.

How do they comepare in terms of noise to regular hard drives.

They're quieter than (most) 3.5" drives if you take the slab of metal off the bottom. If comparing with other 2.5" laptop drives well that really depends which laptop drive you're talking about and how good the VR is you happen to have (there seem to be a fair variance here in the experiences with VRs from the absolute silence front).

cmthomson · Post by **cmthomson** » Mon Feb 02, 2009 6:43 pm

With the Intel X25M SSD drives dropping below $400, the VR has a serious competitor.

Nick Geraedts · Post by **Nick Geraedts** » Tue Feb 03, 2009 1:22 pm

cmthomson wrote:With the Intel X25M SSD drives dropping below $400, the VR has a serious competitor.

Below $400? Here in Canada they're still well above $700CAD, and that's for "only" 80GB. With the various software I have installed on my workstation, I'm using about 120GB on the system drive.

I'm hoping that somehow, somewhere $600 drops into my lap for a pair of 300GB VRaptors.

cmthomson · Post by **cmthomson** » Wed Feb 04, 2009 5:55 pm

Nick Geraedts wrote:
cmthomson wrote:With the Intel X25M SSD drives dropping below $400, the VR has a serious competitor.
Below $400? Here in Canada they're still well above $700CAD, and that's for "only" 80GB. With the various software I have installed on my workstation, I'm using about 120GB on the system drive.

I'm hoping that somehow, somewhere $600 drops into my lap for a pair of 300GB VRaptors.

Current US prices are $384 for 80GB and $800 for 160GB. You should be paying <$550CAD even after exchange and FST.