News - Western Digital preps fifth-generation VelociRaptor VR200M HDD

[Fraz]

I'm sure the many, many people/businesses/anything planning on writing many GBs a day continuously for >10 years without upgrading will be delighted to hear that; unfortunately the chances of these HDDs having failed by then are fairly high.

Who said anything about 10+ years?

Intel's X25 SSDs are quoted as having a "20GB per day for 5 years lifespan". 20 GB of writes per day is a total joke for some applications. Say you've got 100 GBs per day of writes, suddenly your SSD is lasting only for a year.

[aidanjt]

I'm surprised no-one is wondering how freakin' noisy they're going to be...

Probably because they're not.

[aidanjt]

Who said anything about 10+ years?

Intel's X25 SSDs are quoted as having a "20GB per day for 5 years lifespan". 20 GB of writes per day is a total joke for some applications. Say you've got 100 GBs per day of writes, suddenly your SSD is lasting only for a year.

Precisely, and 'HDD failure' in a stationary machine is not really going to be all that high, particularly for an enterprise-class disk.

[this_is_gav]

I'm surprised no-one is wondering how freakin' noisy they're going to be...

Well the 150GB Raptors are very quiet. In my very quiet case I can only hear them seek in the dead of night when there is zero other noise. Not silent but very close to it.

The original Velociraptors are meant to be even quieter still, and I can't see them turning the trend on its head and going the other way.

The 74gb and in particular the original 36gb drives were loud, but they shut them up with later releases.

[Funkstar]

The main reason for them being quiet is they are 2.5" drives.

Just had a look at pricing, and 150GB Veliciraptor for just under £100 seems a pretty good deal to me. Tempted with one as a boot for when i slightly upgrade my desktop. one in the server would be good too.

[ehhhhhhh]

http://anandtech.com/show/3636/weste...b-and-600gb/10

I would not even mention the SSDs and these drives on the same page....

I would not spend a penny on these drives....you won't get anything special for your money. and I don't see a significant market (besides some crazy fellas) for the whole product line either.

I believe the viable route is what anand mentions: SSD + 1-2TB drives in Raid1

I cannot wait to put 1 or 2 ssds to get the role of boot drives in my rig....sooon....very sooon (evil grin)

[TooNice]

Well, I've previously said that the last (current) VelociRaptor won't be the last one. Looks like I was on the money. But I am less certain about a 3rd Gen VelociRaptor. Mechanical drives aren't going anywhere soon, I am absolutely certain of that, but by the time they make another VelociRaptor, I would expect SSD to be past what I would call (or perhaps Anandtech did, and I am subconsciously plagiarising it) the 'beta stage', and also less unaffordable. If we are talking 2-3 years, I can believe that SSD will become cheap enough for most enthusiasts to justify. On the enterprise side of things, wouldn't SAS drive make more sense? Are there any figures on the Raptor series penetration of the enterprise market? [I've mostly associated them with 'enthusiast' drives even though it's marketed on both ends]

[Ice Tea]

They say not to use them in a laptop but it's soooooooo tempting

[Funkstar]

They say not to use them in a laptop but it's soooooooo tempting

The are 15mm high (as opposed to the standard 9.5mm), so good luck shoe horning one in a laptop

[Ice Tea]

The are 15mm high (as opposed to the standard 9.5mm), so good luck shoe horning one in a laptop

hehe that explains it

I stupidly thought it was heat and power problem.

[Funkstar]

hehe that explains it

I stupidly thought it was heat and power problem.

I think that would be an issue as well, but really the least of the problems

[Kumagoro]

Personally I would rather have an SSD and normal HDD combo