TREADLAYERS.COM: WESTERN DIGITAL VELOCIRAPTOR 300GB

WESTERN DIGITAL VELOCIRAPTOR 300GB

Western Digital has been kind to us power users and enthusiasts. They were the first to come out with non-Enterprise super-fast 10K RPM drives known as the Raptors. Those started out at 36GB, the 74GB, then 150GB. They even came out with a model with a very cool clear cover! Now, WD has released yet another wild animal, this time its the Velociraptor. The most obvious difference from previous generations is its 2.5" size, sitting in what looks like a heatsink/3.5" HDD adapter. Furthermore, we see the capacity double again to 300GB.

Here are its specs:

Performance Specifications
	Rotational Speed	10,000 RPM (nominal)
	Buffer Size	16 MB
	Average Latency	3.00 ms (nominal)
	Load/unload Cycles	50,000 minimum

Seek Times
	Read Seek Time	4.2 ms
	Write Seek Time	4.7 ms (average)
	Track-To-Track Seek Time	0.7 ms (average)

Transfer Rates
	Buffer To Host (Serial ATA)	3 Gb/s (Max)

Physical Specifications
	Formatted Capacity	300,069 MB
	Capacity	300 GB
	Interface	SATA 3 Gb/s
	User Sectors Per Drive	586,072,368

Physical Dimensions
English
	Height	0.590 Inches
	Length	3.94 Inches
	Width	2.75 inches
	Weight	0.48 Pounds

Metric
	Height	15 mm
	Length	100 mm
	Width	69.85 mm
	Weight	219 gm

Environmental Specifications
Shock
	Operating Shock (Read)	65G, 2 ms
	Non-operating Shock	300G, 2 ms

Acoustics
	Idle Mode	29 dBA (average)
	Seek Mode 0	34 dBA (average)

Temperature (English)
	Operating	41° F to 131° F
	Non-operating	-40° F to 158° F

Temperature (Metric)
	Operating	5° C to 55° C
	Non-operating	-40° C to 70° C

Humidity
	Operating	5-95% RH non-condensing
	Non-operating	5-95% RH non-condensing

Altitude (English)
	Operating	-1,000 feet to 10,000 feet
	Non-operating	-1,000 feet to 40,000 feet

Altitude (Metric)
	Operating	-305M to 3,050M
	Non-operating	-305M to 12,200M

Vibration
	Operating
	Linear	20-300 Hz, 0.75G (0 to peak)
	Random	10-300 Hz, 0.008 g² / Hz

	Non-operating
	Low Frequency	0.05 g²/Hz (10 to 300 Hz)
	High Frequency	20-500 Hz, 4.0G (0 to peak)

Electrical Specifications
Current Requirements
	12 VDC
	Read/Write	225 mA
	Idle	200 mA
	Standby	6 mA
	Sleep	6 mA

	5 VDC
	Read/Write	675 mA
	Idle	425 mA
	Standby	70 mA
	Sleep	70 mA

	Power Dissipation
	Read/Write	6.08 Watts
	Idle	4.53 Watts
	Standby	0.42 Watts
	Sleep	0.42 Watts

As used for storage capacity, one megabyte (MB) = one million bytes, one gigabyte (GB) = one billion bytes, and one terabyte (TB) = one trillion bytes. Total accessible capacity varies depending on operating environment. As used for buffer or cache, one megabyte (MB) = 1,048,576 bytes. As used for transfer rate or interface, megabyte per second (MB/s) = one million bytes per second, megabit per second (Mb/s) = one million bits per second, and gigabit per second (Gb/s) = one billion bits per second.

16MB cache only?

Our test platform is as follows:

Motherboard
Asus M4A79T Deluxe

CPUs AMD Phenom II X4 955 3.2GHz

Memory Crucial 4GB DDR3-1600

Power Supply Silverstone ST50EF-Plus

Boot HDD Seagate Barracuda 40GB

OS Windows XP SP3

Now we go to the individual drive test results:

HDTach 3.0.4.0, 32MB Zones

HDTach 3.0.4.0, VAR Zones

Atto Disk Benchmark

We see nothing but great things from WD, and here is yet another example. The Velociraptor tore through the benchmarks, putting up numbers exceeded only by 15K RPM drives. This, by all accounts, is the fastest non-Enterprise drive anybody can buy. Impressive, but not surprising honestly!