Thoughts on WD VelociRaptor?

[andrewbedia]

I can find very little information/discussion here about them. I've used two--a 150GB WD1500HLFS and a 80GB (I think WD800HLFS) and never had trouble out of them. Are none of the STH regulars buying them, and instead buying SSDs? Just curious seeing as these are so-called "Enterprise" grade drives. Open commenting welcome.

 

[Patrick]

I have been buying S3500's 160GB-240GB's for $100-110. A 150GB Velociraptor is $35-45. More heat/ power consumption and slower velociraptors but 1/2 or 1/3 the price.

These guys are selling the S3500 160GB drives. The 4 I got were new and I offered $100/ ea:
Intel DC S3500 Series SSDSC2BB160G4 2 5" 160GB SATA3 Solid State Drive MLC SSD | eBay

Great boot drives.

 

[andrewbedia]

I'm seeing 80GB ones on ebay for $10. Might be an interesting choice for booting.

 

[HellDiverUK]

Don't bother. They're slow, especially the first generation ones like the 80GB. I have a heap of 160GB 1st Gen ones (all Dell OEM), and a similar number of 300GB 2nd Gen. The 2nd Gen ones are much, much faster than the 1st Gen ones, but they're still noisy and hot.

A recent 7200rpm drive will beat the VR - higher data density means the slower spindles can give as much performance, and the seek times aren't that much quicker than a decent 7200rpm.

They do seem very, very reliable, though. The ones I have were used for about 4 years 24/7 in workstations, and another few years as general dogsbodies around the house. One is deployed in my Mum's PC as a backup drive to her 256GB SSD. Backups are fast.

Any used SSD off eBay will give considerably better performance. I've been buying 180GB Intel SSDs for very little, and they've been excellent, the most used one had 272 hours on the clock, which is nothing really.

 

[andrewbedia]

Man, I would never touch those first gen ones. But what I've mentioned, at least according to wikipedia, is 4th gen Western Digital 80 GB Desktop SATA Hard Drive Velociraptor WD800HLFS 10K Raptor 102646134023 | eBay

 

[Patrick]

I would go with larger capacity ones personally. I tried using 40GB and 80GB drives. For pfsense/ VMware boot they are fine. As I want bigger nodes, I want bigger boot disks.

I actually am setting a soft lower limit at 160GB these days.

 

[Lost-Benji]

A recent 7200rpm drive will beat the VR - higher data density means the slower spindles can give as much performance, and the seek times aren't that much quicker than a decent 7200rpm.

Sorry, but I have not seen a SATA HDD yet that has caught my VR's. I use them in pairs in servers and WS systems in RAID-1 mirrors and haven't seen a drive catch them unless you are talking 10/15K SAS.
I even have a client with a Dell 1950III with a pair on the PERC, 240-250MB/sec, their SBS is bloody fast. I have a pair in a Dell R5400 WS, ICH9R RAID-1, again, 240's read/write, very snappy system.

P.S I certainly wouldn't go near any S/H SSD, if the drives are good, then you would let it go.


O.P - I have seen some failures with the VR and several of my suppliers have indicated higher than normal failure rates in the VR's compared to 7200 drives but where it really matters, what are you wanting to achieve?
I wouldn't call the VR's enterprise either. Enthusiast would be the better term. If you want reliability, pairs of drives are needed. If you need space then WD Blacks are the go, if you need speed then time for SSD's, especially when they are getting cheaper now.

 

[0dd]

At the place i recently started work at they have been using 500gb VR drives for storage for a roughly 20 node cluster using GlusterFS and from what i have seen it works well. One of the other guys says they have had good luck with the drives, only 4-5 failures in almost 2 years out of about 100

 

[HellDiverUK]

Perhaps I'm spoiled by SSDs, but when I use machines with Velociraptors in them, they seems just as slow as similar machines with modern single platter 7200rpm drives.

The extra noise and power consumption on the VR for little perceived performance increase makes them pretty much pointless in my eyes.