Thursday, January 7th 2010
Western Digital Readying 600 GB VelociRaptor HDD
Western Digital (WD) is reportedly giving its flagship performance hard drive, the VelociRaptor a specifications update with a new 600 GB model. The new VelociRaptor HDD will succeed a four generations of Raptor HDDs from the company. It will implement developments in areal density to place 600 GB of data onto two platters, a two-fold increase over the previous generation. A single-platter 300 GB model also seems to be on cards. The drive will also feature improved electronics with a 'significantly' larger cache. It is also indicated that the 600 GB model will be priced on par with what the current-generation 300 GB VelociRaptor was upon release (~$250).
In this era of SSDs, Western Digital believes it can still compete with high-performance HDDs. The new VelociRaptor will strike the right balance between price, performance, and capacity. A $250 HDD with 600 GB capacity seems to be a good deal compared to a 250 GB SSD which can go for as much as ~$700. Past models in the Raptor family of HDDs have come with high spindle speeds backed by large caches to give out high read-write speeds and low access times compared to other HDDs.
Source:
DailyTech
In this era of SSDs, Western Digital believes it can still compete with high-performance HDDs. The new VelociRaptor will strike the right balance between price, performance, and capacity. A $250 HDD with 600 GB capacity seems to be a good deal compared to a 250 GB SSD which can go for as much as ~$700. Past models in the Raptor family of HDDs have come with high spindle speeds backed by large caches to give out high read-write speeds and low access times compared to other HDDs.
46 Comments on Western Digital Readying 600 GB VelociRaptor HDD
but do they offer 2,5" inch harddrives with performance?
i need one for my laptop :-)
I really don't see the point here the bigger the drive gets the slower its going to be
i just keep windows and my games on my 150gig raptor and put all the other A/V where speed isn't an issue stuff on a large drive.
P.S. I still want my Rectangular HDDs.
IMO WD would be better served by investing into SSD tech, they will keep getting cheaper and cheaper, and will always be faster than mechanical drives. Also there is little point of having a 600 gig drive, do you need all 50 games you own installed? Mechanical drives are still far from being obsolete, but honestly, they should have just made a single platter 300 GB raptor and cut the price to $150, rather than make new tech that really doesn't matter.
As for these drives, sounds like it might be my next upgrade in my DAW from my 1st Gen Raptor 150s.
They work great for live mixing and recording.
I expected better from you.
Although, I do hope everyone here realized how completely worthless the VelociRaptors are, compared to SSD's.
This isn't even a price/capacity comparison - it's 4ms vs 0.2ms.
I will just convince myself that anyone who finds the Raptors interesting has never had an SSD.
Velociraptor uses 12V. At least i was told before it wouldn't even work.
For performance HDD, currently almost nothing beats Seagate Momentus 7200.4 16MB cache and can even compete with some desktop drives.
This should bring up the bandwidth and bring down the latency...
1. you dont need to worry about degrading performance/TRIM
2. you dont need to worry about the drive physically dying in 2 years time
SSD's and raptors might not make much of a difference to a gamer, but that should be blatantly clear - its not targeted at them. its for high performance systems like rendering workstations, or servers.