Wednesday, February 8, 2006
Tom's Hardware Reviews the WS1500AD Raptor-X
Posted by Jason Dunn in "ARTICLE" @ 11:45 AM
"Almost three years ago, Western Digital's WD360 Raptor drive first saw the light of day, and was greeted with cautious optimism. It was meant to be a cost effective alternative for expensive SCSI enterprise-class hard drives, but would it succeed? WD's gamble paid off, but the majority of Raptor drives made their way into high-performance desktop PCs rather than into server systems. The new top model offers 150 GB, a good amount of extra performance and officially targets high-end enthusiasts. It is pretty obvious that the Raptor-X is a great drive, but is it great enough to become a "must-have"?"
The Raptor line of drives from Western Digital have always been impressive when it comes to speed - I have a pair of 74GB Raptors in a RAID 0 array, and brother, they kill. In a benchmark I did last year, when placed in a Shuttle SB95P, I benchmarked the the two Raptor drives and a 7200RPM 160GB Seagate drive. Using HD_Speed set to 16 MB file size, the single 7200 rpm Barracuda drive hit 51.2 MB/s when reading. Not bad. The same test on the twin Raptors in the RAID 0 array? A scorching 136 MB/s – within spitting distance of the 150 MB/s limit of the Serial ATA standard. I fired up SiSofware's Sandra benchmarking tool, and their comprehensive File System Benchmark gave a blank partition on my RAID array an indexed score of 88 MB/s. In comparison the 7200 RPM drive came in at 48 MB/s. Raptors are fast.
The 74GB Raptors are still a great drive, and with prices as low as $152 USD, they make a good choice for a fast primary drive where you don't need gobs of storage. The 150GB versions are as low as $279 USD, and represent another jump forward for this family of drives. Check out the review for the full scoop.
The Raptor line of drives from Western Digital have always been impressive when it comes to speed - I have a pair of 74GB Raptors in a RAID 0 array, and brother, they kill. In a benchmark I did last year, when placed in a Shuttle SB95P, I benchmarked the the two Raptor drives and a 7200RPM 160GB Seagate drive. Using HD_Speed set to 16 MB file size, the single 7200 rpm Barracuda drive hit 51.2 MB/s when reading. Not bad. The same test on the twin Raptors in the RAID 0 array? A scorching 136 MB/s – within spitting distance of the 150 MB/s limit of the Serial ATA standard. I fired up SiSofware's Sandra benchmarking tool, and their comprehensive File System Benchmark gave a blank partition on my RAID array an indexed score of 88 MB/s. In comparison the 7200 RPM drive came in at 48 MB/s. Raptors are fast.
The 74GB Raptors are still a great drive, and with prices as low as $152 USD, they make a good choice for a fast primary drive where you don't need gobs of storage. The 150GB versions are as low as $279 USD, and represent another jump forward for this family of drives. Check out the review for the full scoop.
