US Auctions Australian Auctions Austrian Auctions Belgian Auctions Canadian Auctions French Auctions German Auctions Hong Kong Auctions Indian Auctions Irish Auctions Italian Auctions Dutch Auctions Polish Auctions Singapore Auctions Spanish Auctions Swiss Auctions UK Auctions Best Match Time: ending soonest Time: newly listed Price: lowest first Price: highest first Price + Shipping: lowest first Price [...]
The Data Center, HotHardware's new community for IT professionals, is sponsored by Dell's Future of Storage. This article is part of our ongoing series of topics and discussions related to IT, Enterprise Storage and related storage technologies.
If you were the type to think of 2.5" drive technology only in terms of notebook products, then recently, Western Digital probably helped expand your horizons a bit. With the release of their VelociRaptor 300GB SATA hard drive, mainstream users were exposed to the advantages of the high transfer rates associated with 2.5" platters rotating at 10K RPM, with four access heads pulling data. Though packed in a 3.5" form-factor for desktop system compatibility, the 2.5", dual 150GB platter platform that the VelociRaptor was built on allows it to outperform virtually all standard 3.5" SATA drives on the market today, even WD's 10K RPM Raptor WD1500 series.
However, the VelociRaptor is definitely targeted to the performance enthusiast, with a price tag currently at $1/GB (MSRP $299). Regardless, when you consider the upside potential performance gains and the fact that a hard drive is easily the slowest component and limiting factor in many areas of overall system responsiveness, it's obvious this new Raptor will do well from a retail perspective. But what about the Data Center? Actually, when you consider the average 146GB 10K RPM SAS drive retails for about the same price as the new VelociRaptor but with half the capacity, just maybe a few folks in IT will poke their heads up out of their cubicles long enough to give the VelociRaptor a look as well. Of course, that all depends on the usage model, as clearly there are other advantages to SAS in terms of error reporting and recovery, but if the metrics are all about reliable, cost-efficient performance, there may be a solid case for the VelociRaptor in that storage server as well.
It was with a few of these questions in mind that we decided to RAID up not two but three WD VelociRaptor drives in a RAID 5 configuration with an Areca PCIe X8 hardware RAID card, to see what the numbers looked like. This is only a quick-take on read performance but it certainly gives you a sense of scale and what these drives are capable of in the right environment.
WD VelociRaptor 300GB X 3 – RAID5 Areca PCIe Hardware SATA RAID
Windows Vista SP1 – NTFS
WD VelociRaptor 300GB X 3 – RAID5 Areca PCIe Hardware SATA RAID
Windows Vista SP1 – NTFS
A quick gander at the graph above shows relatively linear performance across the entire 600GB volume with some small vallies along the way. The burst speed recorded was robust 598MB/sec which is about on par with what we've seen from WD's Raptor WD1500 line in this configuration. However, average read performance is through the roof, with a 209.4MB/sec land speed record set for what we've seen in our labs and about a 33% performance gain over what we've seen with Raptor WD1500 drives in RAID 5 on the Areca controller. Finally, random access clocks in at a snappy 7.2ms.
So in short, whether you an end user with just a need for speed, or an enterprise user looking for mission critical performance, the VelociRaptor definitely has strong merits. Straddling the cost line between standard, bulk SATA drives and high-end 10K RPM SAS, WD's new beast offers an interesting and compelling paradigm.
Filed under: Cellphones
Seriously, RIM, at this point you might as well just announce the Kickstart flip phone and let us officially request something more than EDGE data, because this thing isn’t exactly under wraps any more. The latest set of photos by our pal Mr. Blurrycam don’t really reveal anything we didn’t know apart from confirming that the Kickstart is still something of an ungainly beast — especially when set down next to the Bold. Oh, and there’s the first picture we’ve seen of the front 160 x 128 LCD display and 2 megapixel camera. Yeah, it looks like just every other flip phone with an external display and a camera — but if you’re a Berryman (or Berrylady), there’s a couple more shots at the read link to keep you warm until this thing finally hits.
Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments
Hello,
I recently changed my case and reinserted all 5 of my SATA drives. None of the are Raid just 5 separate volumes but I'm having trouble seeing them all. There are 6 SATA connnectors on the board altogether and I was foolish not to keep note of how I had them plugged in before but now only three will run on startup. I've swapped them around and am certain that they are all working I just can't plug the other two in. In fact when plugged into one of the orange SATA plugs the system displays "4th master boot error"
Has anyone any tips?
Thanks.
The latest Intel processor, a bigger hard drive, plenty of memory, and even more new features all fit inside just one liberating inch. The new MacBook Pro has the performance, power, and connectivity of a desktop computer. Without the desk part. MacBook Pro is meticulously designed for maximum performance in a minimum size. Bare minimum, [...]
