The (new) Fastest Hard Drive Ever
Posted 04/21/08 at 06:59:40 AM by David Murphy
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For this most epic of challenges, we're pitting Mtron's Pro-series 64-gigabyte SSD against a Velociraptor in both single and RAID 0 test environments. Just as a matter of principle, we should note that the former's $1,950 MSRP represents a cost-to-gigabyte ratio of around 30-to-1, whereas a $300 Velociraptor drive comes in at a crisp 1-to-1 ratio of dollars-spent per gigabytes-purchased. Yes, solid-state drives are just that expensive. But for the cost, you're getting a drive that runs at a dedicated read/write speed, given that there are no physical platters to manipulate. An SSD is also silent, uses little power, and is far more durable (again, due to the lack of mechanical movement) than a standard hard disk drive.
Velociraptor vs. SSD
| BENCHMARKS | ||||
| WD Velociraptor | Mtron Pro SSD | Velociraptor (RAID 0) | Mitron Pro SSD (RAID 0) | |
| HDTach Burst (MB/s) | 255.1 | 109.6 | 346.6 | 183.5 |
| HDTach Random Access (ms) | 7.1 | 0.1 | 7.2 | 0.1 |
| HDTach Average Read (MB/s) | 104.6 | 102.8 | 168.2 | 100 |
| HDTach Average Write (MB/s) | 96.7 | 51.7 | 162.9 | 61.9 |
| PCMark05 Overall | 9457 | 17062 | 11609 | 21035 |
Best scores are bolded in each connection catagory (ie: single drive & RAID).
It puts up a valiant fight, but the Velociraptor is simply no match for a solid-state device. In the real-world PCMark05 suite of tests, a single solid-state drive is 80 percent faster than a single Velociraptor and 47 percent faster than a pair of Velociraptors in a RAID 0 configuration. If you can survive the burning hole in your bank account, a solid-state drive is still the Holy Grail of speedy storage. But when it comes to consumer-level drives that are both affordable and practical, you cannot beat a Velociraptor.
Western Digital hasn't announced any other iterations in the Velociraptor drive line, although they did give the tiniest of hints that they might consider exploring see-through treatment for the drives. While we think that they could also find a way to bundle the drives in their naked, 2.5-inch form with the help of an OEM vendor, we're not going to hold our breath on that one happening anytime soon.
15000 RPM internal Hard drive not SATA, only SCSI
Submitted by Andrew76 on Mon, 12/01/2008 - 6:36am
Just a quick note, I must have been mistaken in my previous post. After looking again using the same search query, I failed to locate the previously mentioned HDD. It may exist, then again, it may not. I'm going to purchase a couple myself if I find it again and it is what I mentioned before. 500Gb, internal 3.5" SATA 15000Rpm HDD. But it looks like the only drives that speed are all SCSI (also came up with SAS, which as I understand is Serial Attached SCSI).
Good Luck to anybody else who wants one, I hope you find it also.
Submitted by Andrew76 on Mon, 12/01/2008 - 6:04am
I also found an article on these speed drives. IBM actually has one available, 500Gb. Do a search for IBM 39M4514 500Gb 15000Rpm, or just go to http://www.myshopping.com.au they are SATA drives by the look of the description and will set you back around $700-$800. Unfortunately, for those who want a SATA drive, that's the only one I found, the rest seem to be of SCSI breed. Hope this helps.
Submitted by Mayhemm on Wed, 04/23/2008 - 12:02am
Is WD planning to make them in a smaller capacity?
300GB is really too big for a boot drive and too small for media storage (for me, anyway)
It would be nice to update my 5-year-old Raptor with a modernized, speedier version around the same capacity.
Submitted by BloOdymAN666 on Mon, 04/21/2008 - 8:40pm
Wow, this is really exciting I can't wait to see these things in person.
Also, the fact they're named velocaraptors is brilliant.
HDTach is a synthetic
Submitted by TheMurph on Mon, 04/21/2008 - 4:14pm
HDTach is a synthetic benchmark that doesn't reflect real-world performance with a drive. Granted, neither is PCMark05, technically. However, its scripts are based on real-world application traces, making it far more useful to determine a drive's actual, as-working-in-your-system performance capabilities.
Submitted by mike2060 on Mon, 04/21/2008 - 8:43am
Can you test 4 of these with that Adaptec Raid controller?
Submitted by dc10ten on Mon, 04/21/2008 - 7:57am
i wonder why they weren't going with 32mb cache?
32mb cache
Submitted by Keith E. Whisman on Mon, 04/21/2008 - 12:36pm
Well this is a new hard drive. This is just a guess. They probably used the hard drive controller board off of an older hard drive. This is done all the time. No need to reinvent the wheel if you have one that works just fine.
Perhaps as the hard drive matures they will customize it more for better performance. More cache and instructions. Like they do for their other HDD's.
Submitted by sc123 on Mon, 04/21/2008 - 6:29am
The last graph it labeled "Specs" and some of the bolding is wrong. Just FYI
Submitted by Keith E. Whisman on Mon, 04/21/2008 - 4:25am
Awsome.
I thought I saw somewhere lastnight on the net somewhere there was an Enterprise class HDD that has a 400+gig capacity and speeds along at 15000RPMs. I think it was SATA. I did'nt read the entire article but a google search should bring it up. 15000RPM's just turns me on. Really it floats my boat.Actually I found the article and here is the URL made tiny as it's huge http://tinyurl.com/3kplgb
Here is the Headline quoted "New Hitachi High-Speed Drives Hit 450GB" And it is SCSI. Oh well.
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