A Tale Of Two VelociRaptors

Discussion in 'Reviews & Articles' started by Dashken, Nov 12, 2008.

  1. Dashken

    Dashken Administrator!

    The Western Digital VelociRaptor is an amazingly fast hard disk drive. Targeted at the blade server and enthusiast markets, this Serial ATA hard disk drive not only delivers incredibly fast seek times and throughput, it also does it in a compact 2.5" form factor. Western Digital offers three versions of the VelociRaptor - BLFS, HLFS and GLFS.

    The choice of models available made us wonder if there is any performance difference between the different models, so we decided to test it out. We had earlier reviewed the BLFS model but Chai bought a HLFS model so we thought it was a great opportunity to compare the performance of the two models.

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    Link : A Tale Of Two VelociRaptors
     
  2. mikegas

    mikegas Newbie

    :lol: minor difference only. I don't think WD is making anymore of GLFS, they just realize their stupidity creating a enterprise sata drive that doesn't fit into backplane ... The stupidity is just not as worse as Seagate using Samsung drive in thier freeagent ..
     
  3. Adrian Wong

    Adrian Wong Da Boss Staff Member

    Hehe.. I guess they were hoping that many desktop users would buy the VelociRaptor. Still, why not just make the HLFS? You can mount the HLFS in a standard PC case anyway.
     
  4. mikegas

    mikegas Newbie

    Well .. at first they make GLFS .. then only .. oops realize their mistake and make HLFS ... that's the story..
     
  5. Chai

    Chai Administrator Staff Member

    Velociraptor was designed for consumer at first, I guess. AFAIK, they may also fix the noisy GLFS model caused of the vibration proned heatsink.
     
    Last edited: Nov 14, 2008
  6. Adrian Wong

    Adrian Wong Da Boss Staff Member

    Hmm.. I think the heatsink is pretty much the same as that of the HLFS and mounted the same way. Looks like it was "bonded" to four metal "shoes" on the heatsink very securely, so I don't think the heatsink will cause a significant amount of vibration unless the GLFS heatsink is quite flexible.
     
  7. Chai

    Chai Administrator Staff Member

    The heatsink doesn't have to be flexible to cause any vibration. The best example would be mounting the HDD to your case. It will definitely be much noisier than not mounting on to the case. The heatsink design between GLFS and HLFS is very different.
     
  8. mikegas

    mikegas Newbie

    Hmm .. no more GLFS for me to test .. lol .. yes design is very different. HLFS has to accommodate an extra PCB.
     
  9. Chai

    Chai Administrator Staff Member

    Silent PC Review actually highlighted the noise issue to WD, and they were surprised about their findings. I think WD may have done some improvement in terms on the heatsink vibration along with the SATA backplane support.

    In terms of idle noise level, Velociraptor beats all 3.5" drives, including GP series. That's what SPCR mentioned. This was one of the main reason why I considered this drive.

    If the drive sounded like the pre-FDB days, I wouldn't even consider... :lol:

    Since this drive is made here, maybe Mike knows something about the improvement made on this drive. :p
     
  10. mikegas

    mikegas Newbie

    Nope. I don't know. I am not the Product team. Every drive is a black box to me; I won't know until go poke around in the system.
     
  11. g0tanks

    g0tanks Newbie

    I didn't expect it to be that quiet :o
     
  12. Chai

    Chai Administrator Staff Member

    In fact, seek noise is almost inaudible, unlike my previous Raptor WD740GD.
     
  13. mikegas

    mikegas Newbie

    is a little bit base of 2.5" ... which did not have any sound at all .. WD is the best so far when it comes to noise level. At least the latest product....
     
  14. Adrian Wong

    Adrian Wong Da Boss Staff Member

    Yeah, it's really quiet. I can vouch for it. :thumb:
     
  15. Max_87

    Max_87 huehuehue

    Same here, the seek noise is amazingly quiet! :thumb:
     
  16. Chai

    Chai Administrator Staff Member

    I'm find with seek noise, but not the whining noise.
     
  17. Max_87

    Max_87 huehuehue

    I didn't really hear any whining noise, but maybe the surroundings were not quiet enough.

    Is it better/worse than your WD5000AAKS?
     
  18. Chai

    Chai Administrator Staff Member

    Oh...I mean generally, not this HDD. I'm quite happy with it. I can't hear much whining noise, if there's any. :haha:
     
  19. Lacus

    Lacus Newbie

    damn...shall i get 1 >_>...or get 2x640 or 2x1tb Black :(...tempting...T_T
     
  20. Chai

    Chai Administrator Staff Member

    Get a single WD 640GB, should be plenty fast enough.
     

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