http://www.engadget.com/2010/04/06/western-digital-velociraptor-vr200m-review-roundup-fast-capaci/ Engadget Comments for Western Digital VelociRaptor VR200M review roundup: fast, capacious, but no SSD http://www.engadget.com/media/feedlogo.gif http://www.engadget.com en-us Copyright 2012 Weblogs, Inc. The contents of this feed are available for non-commercial use only. Blogsmith http://www.blogsmith.com/http://www.engadget.com/2010/04/06/western-digital-velociraptor-vr200m-review-roundup-fast-capaci/http://www.engadget.com/2010/04/06/western-digital-velociraptor-vr200m-review-roundup-fast-capaci/Apr 6th 2010 9:06PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2010/04/06/western-digital-velociraptor-vr200m-review-roundup-fast-capaci/http://www.engadget.com/2010/04/06/western-digital-velociraptor-vr200m-review-roundup-fast-capaci/Apr 6th 2010 9:15PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2010/04/06/western-digital-velociraptor-vr200m-review-roundup-fast-capaci/http://www.engadget.com/2010/04/06/western-digital-velociraptor-vr200m-review-roundup-fast-capaci/I think you mean butterSSDs.]]>Apr 6th 2010 9:16PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2010/04/06/western-digital-velociraptor-vr200m-review-roundup-fast-capaci/http://www.engadget.com/2010/04/06/western-digital-velociraptor-vr200m-review-roundup-fast-capaci/No, raptors didn't evolve into butter. They evolved into birds. ]]>Apr 6th 2010 9:32PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2010/04/06/western-digital-velociraptor-vr200m-review-roundup-fast-capaci/http://www.engadget.com/2010/04/06/western-digital-velociraptor-vr200m-review-roundup-fast-capaci/
And 100 x 20GB IDE Drives would probably beat it too. But that's not the point. It's still the fastest single mechanical-based solution on the desktop market. It may not be the most economical, but those who buy it will be looking for a good balance between pure speed, and capacity. RAID isn't an option for everyone.

Besides, two of these in RAID0 would tear it up - cost aside.

If I had the money, I would happily have one of these 600GB babies sit alongside my SSD boot array.]]>Apr 6th 2010 9:35PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2010/04/06/western-digital-velociraptor-vr200m-review-roundup-fast-capaci/http://www.engadget.com/2010/04/06/western-digital-velociraptor-vr200m-review-roundup-fast-capaci/
Coming from two 640GB Caviar Blue drives in RAID 0, I totally agree with you. Based on the HDTune benchmarks on techreport.com and my own benchmarks, my $140 drive setup still gets much higher throughput, albeit slightly slower access times.]]>Apr 6th 2010 9:45PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2010/04/06/western-digital-velociraptor-vr200m-review-roundup-fast-capaci/http://www.engadget.com/2010/04/06/western-digital-velociraptor-vr200m-review-roundup-fast-capaci/Hate to be the one to naysay but I just wanted to put this out there -- using desktop class drives in a RAID is a bad idea. You're asking for nothing but trouble, especially with parity RAID. The main difference is that desktop class drives have a _very_high_ tollerance for command timeouts (ie. drive too busy to respond) where as enterprise class (or RAID class) drives -- don't. ]]>Apr 6th 2010 10:49PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2010/04/06/western-digital-velociraptor-vr200m-review-roundup-fast-capaci/http://www.engadget.com/2010/04/06/western-digital-velociraptor-vr200m-review-roundup-fast-capaci/"durr... it doesn't fit in a laptop" *scratches ass*

way to miss the point about who WD is targeting here - ENTERPRISE STORAGE. see the big yellow sticker? read the whitepaper? SSD's aren't there yet for 24x7 crunchtime in a server. you can't even RAID SSD's yet due to TRIM issues (get it) not unlike a lot of the nerds posting here.

See you at the iPad roundup roundup in 3...2...]]>Apr 6th 2010 11:01PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2010/04/06/western-digital-velociraptor-vr200m-review-roundup-fast-capaci/http://www.engadget.com/2010/04/06/western-digital-velociraptor-vr200m-review-roundup-fast-capaci/duhh, like starship enterprise? *picks nose*]]>Apr 6th 2010 11:07PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2010/04/06/western-digital-velociraptor-vr200m-review-roundup-fast-capaci/http://www.engadget.com/2010/04/06/western-digital-velociraptor-vr200m-review-roundup-fast-capaci/Apr 7th 2010 6:27AMhttp://www.engadget.com/2010/04/06/western-digital-velociraptor-vr200m-review-roundup-fast-capaci/http://www.engadget.com/2010/04/06/western-digital-velociraptor-vr200m-review-roundup-fast-capaci/
the dark side i sense]]>Apr 6th 2010 9:13PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2010/04/06/western-digital-velociraptor-vr200m-review-roundup-fast-capaci/http://www.engadget.com/2010/04/06/western-digital-velociraptor-vr200m-review-roundup-fast-capaci/Apr 6th 2010 9:16PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2010/04/06/western-digital-velociraptor-vr200m-review-roundup-fast-capaci/http://www.engadget.com/2010/04/06/western-digital-velociraptor-vr200m-review-roundup-fast-capaci/
]]>Apr 6th 2010 9:24PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2010/04/06/western-digital-velociraptor-vr200m-review-roundup-fast-capaci/http://www.engadget.com/2010/04/06/western-digital-velociraptor-vr200m-review-roundup-fast-capaci/Apr 6th 2010 9:43PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2010/04/06/western-digital-velociraptor-vr200m-review-roundup-fast-capaci/http://www.engadget.com/2010/04/06/western-digital-velociraptor-vr200m-review-roundup-fast-capaci/Apr 6th 2010 9:16PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2010/04/06/western-digital-velociraptor-vr200m-review-roundup-fast-capaci/http://www.engadget.com/2010/04/06/western-digital-velociraptor-vr200m-review-roundup-fast-capaci/
This has already happened when it comes to performance boot drives. Quality SSDs are simply better. Disk drives are good for storage, and hyper performance isn't necessary for that.]]>Apr 6th 2010 9:28PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2010/04/06/western-digital-velociraptor-vr200m-review-roundup-fast-capaci/http://www.engadget.com/2010/04/06/western-digital-velociraptor-vr200m-review-roundup-fast-capaci/
SSDs are a no-brainer for boot drives, and that's because, for most people, there's a certain size that is "enough" for a boot drive to hold their OS and apps, and any capacity beyond that is wasted. Yes it creeps up over time, but relatively slowly.

However, when you're talking about a bulk storage drive, where you would be storing your home directories, video files, etc., there is never enough, and so far magnetic platter technology doesn't seem to be having any trouble staying orders of magnitude ahead of SSDs. At some point mechanical drives may hit a wall, but it's not like silicon has limitless potential these days either. It will be interesting to see what things look like 5 years from now.

]]>Apr 10th 2010 10:05AMhttp://www.engadget.com/2010/04/06/western-digital-velociraptor-vr200m-review-roundup-fast-capaci/http://www.engadget.com/2010/04/06/western-digital-velociraptor-vr200m-review-roundup-fast-capaci/
For that price you could buy an 80GB SSD and a 1.5TB hard drive.

Do they seriously think these will sell (is anyone stupid enough to buy)?]]>Apr 6th 2010 9:38PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2010/04/06/western-digital-velociraptor-vr200m-review-roundup-fast-capaci/http://www.engadget.com/2010/04/06/western-digital-velociraptor-vr200m-review-roundup-fast-capaci/well... almost half a million americans just spent hundreds on iFails... i think theres plenty of market out there for overpriced products..]]>Apr 6th 2010 9:57PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2010/04/06/western-digital-velociraptor-vr200m-review-roundup-fast-capaci/http://www.engadget.com/2010/04/06/western-digital-velociraptor-vr200m-review-roundup-fast-capaci/
This highest performing magnetic disk drive ever made. If you don't know why someone would want that, you obviously don't know a lot about throughput optimization and server storage.]]>Apr 6th 2010 11:52PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2010/04/06/western-digital-velociraptor-vr200m-review-roundup-fast-capaci/http://www.engadget.com/2010/04/06/western-digital-velociraptor-vr200m-review-roundup-fast-capaci/Apr 7th 2010 4:19AMhttp://www.engadget.com/2010/04/06/western-digital-velociraptor-vr200m-review-roundup-fast-capaci/http://www.engadget.com/2010/04/06/western-digital-velociraptor-vr200m-review-roundup-fast-capaci/Apr 6th 2010 10:22PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2010/04/06/western-digital-velociraptor-vr200m-review-roundup-fast-capaci/http://www.engadget.com/2010/04/06/western-digital-velociraptor-vr200m-review-roundup-fast-capaci/
If you're a consumer and you have a Desktop system with two drive bays the best choice for you is going to be an SSD boot drive and a large rotating media drive, say one of the many cheap 2TB drives out there.

I think this is cool and all, but for exactly who is this designed?]]>Apr 6th 2010 11:22PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2010/04/06/western-digital-velociraptor-vr200m-review-roundup-fast-capaci/http://www.engadget.com/2010/04/06/western-digital-velociraptor-vr200m-review-roundup-fast-capaci/
Enterprise hasn't embraced SSD's and won't for quite some time I think. They need the large capacity, first of all (especially for the kind of database server you suggest). Secondly, while it's not a very big problem on the consumer front, Enterprise quickly starts banging up against the limited number of writes that SSD's are capable of. That dramatically decreases disk life over magnetic medium and makes the hilariously higher cost per gig even harder to stomach.

There's a reason for that yellow stick on the top of this baby. VR's aren't really for enthusiast gamers anymore. That sector is solidly in the hands of SSDs.]]>Apr 6th 2010 11:56PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2010/04/06/western-digital-velociraptor-vr200m-review-roundup-fast-capaci/http://www.engadget.com/2010/04/06/western-digital-velociraptor-vr200m-review-roundup-fast-capaci/
What Delta said. SSD is nowhere near ready for enterprise needs.]]>Apr 7th 2010 12:36AMhttp://www.engadget.com/2010/04/06/western-digital-velociraptor-vr200m-review-roundup-fast-capaci/http://www.engadget.com/2010/04/06/western-digital-velociraptor-vr200m-review-roundup-fast-capaci/
Also, another reason that raptors aren't that good for consumers - the whine that results from running such a high-speed drive.]]>Apr 7th 2010 4:03AMhttp://www.engadget.com/2010/04/06/western-digital-velociraptor-vr200m-review-roundup-fast-capaci/http://www.engadget.com/2010/04/06/western-digital-velociraptor-vr200m-review-roundup-fast-capaci/Apr 6th 2010 11:23PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2010/04/06/western-digital-velociraptor-vr200m-review-roundup-fast-capaci/http://www.engadget.com/2010/04/06/western-digital-velociraptor-vr200m-review-roundup-fast-capaci/Apr 7th 2010 3:54AMhttp://www.engadget.com/2010/04/06/western-digital-velociraptor-vr200m-review-roundup-fast-capaci/http://www.engadget.com/2010/04/06/western-digital-velociraptor-vr200m-review-roundup-fast-capaci/Yes, hard drives are magnetic storage. They consist of spinning platters covered with a ferromagnetic substance (usually iron oxide). The polarity of the individual its is modified/read by one of the heads and is processed by the on-board disk controller who then interfaces with the storage bus (in this case SATA).]]>Apr 7th 2010 4:39AMhttp://www.engadget.com/2010/04/06/western-digital-velociraptor-vr200m-review-roundup-fast-capaci/http://www.engadget.com/2010/04/06/western-digital-velociraptor-vr200m-review-roundup-fast-capaci/*individual bits, my bad]]>Apr 7th 2010 4:40AMhttp://www.engadget.com/2010/04/06/western-digital-velociraptor-vr200m-review-roundup-fast-capaci/http://www.engadget.com/2010/04/06/western-digital-velociraptor-vr200m-review-roundup-fast-capaci/Apr 7th 2010 4:43AMhttp://www.engadget.com/2010/04/06/western-digital-velociraptor-vr200m-review-roundup-fast-capaci/http://www.engadget.com/2010/04/06/western-digital-velociraptor-vr200m-review-roundup-fast-capaci/Apr 7th 2010 2:00PM