WD Velociraptor

[nicky9499]

Hi guys,

Does anyone know which shop in Sim Lim still sells WD Velociraptor in 250/500GB? I only see Bizgram selling 1TB $320 plus which is out of my budget and exceeds my requirements.

Thanks in advance.

 

[bhtan83]

Y bother? Just get a ssd and it's faster.

 

[Yureak]

No one buys those anymore man. $320 can buy a huge ssd

 

[MoneyFace =p]

Crucial M500 240GB from just $175 locally with full 3 years warranty by Convergent....

 

[saysuzu]

Crucial M500 240GB from just $175 locally with full 3 years warranty by Convergent....

wow only $30-40 differnece compared to buying from amazon

 

[shadow84]

Just get a normal WD blue 1tb hdd and 240gb ssd will do. Both combined still chepaer than $320.

 

[jtjt00]

I am surprised WD still producing Velociraptors.
SSD is the way forward.

 

[oldskool061283]

Hi guys,

Does anyone know which shop in Sim Lim still sells WD Velociraptor in 250/500GB? I only see Bizgram selling 1TB $320 plus which is out of my budget and exceeds my requirements.

Thanks in advance.

hi bro, i ve got 2 x 300hlfs model to let go, no bad sectors.

 

[fockyerdod3r]

Amazon sell M500 480GB for only USD223.

 

[nicky9499]

Hi guys, thanks for all the suggestions. The reason why I'm looking specifically for Velociraptors (as opposed to SSDs + Blacks) is due to:

Current boot drive (250GB Blue) is very old and starting to show errors.
This same drive contains separate partition for all of my games.
Looking for direct clone replacement (equal or higher capy).
500GB SSD is out of my budget.
SSD+HDD means only OS performs but games still load from slow drive.
WD drives have never let me down, unprecedented reliability. Bought a Seagate one as backup + Time Machine because it was cheap. Dead within half a year; claimed RMA and sold it. I know they have a 15k drive but not willing to take risk.

So, Velociraptors look like an attractive compromise between reliability, cost, performance and capacity right now.

If anyone can propose a suitable solution to my current situation, I'd really appreciate it.

 

[devilwahaha]

Hi guys, thanks for all the suggestions. The reason why I'm looking specifically for Velociraptors (as opposed to SSDs + Blacks) is due to:

Current boot drive (250GB Blue) is very old and starting to show errors.
This same drive contains separate partition for all of my games.
Looking for direct clone replacement (equal or higher capy).
500GB SSD is out of my budget.
SSD+HDD means only OS performs but games still load from slow drive.
WD drives have never let me down, unprecedented reliability. Bought a Seagate one as backup + Time Machine because it was cheap. Dead within half a year; claimed RMA and sold it. I know they have a 15k drive but not willing to take risk.

So, Velociraptors look like an attractive compromise between reliability, cost, performance and capacity right now.

If anyone can propose a suitable solution to my current situation, I'd really appreciate it.

Seagate cheetahs are not bad at all, their enterprise and consumer HDD's have totally different levels of quality so you might wanna look into it first before dismissing that option.

But from what I recall they're priced pretty high too so if you have a budget to stick to, blacks is a pretty good alternative now with 5 year warranty.

Alternatively you can try Hitachi's Ultrastar. I've been running 3 7k3000 3TB almost 24/7 for about a year or more now, havent had a single issue. I believe theres a updated 7k4000 model now.

 

[nicky9499]

Thanks for the advice. I did spent an hour or so reading up on Cheetah and Savvio drives, it appears these 15k ones are only available in the "advanced" interfaces like SCSI and Fiber Channel, which means I'll need to buy a controller card (hello extra cost).

I have a couple other Blacks and Reds all humming along 24/7 very nicely but the thing abot all of these is they're still 7.2k RPM. I am considering sourcing Vraptors from Amazon if there's FSSG provided.

 

[negativzero]

If you're looking at a velociraptor to improve the performance of your games or other programs, don't bother. Things like applications and games have multiple files, and these files are all scattered throughout the platter, which increases seek time on conventional harddisks. Seek time is the main killer still for HDDs, even on high RPM HDDs. All high RPM disks do is increase read speed, it doesn't really do much for seek time. All it does it read large files faster.

On the other hand seek time on SSDs is negligible and they have faster read speeds. I honestly suggest you bite the bullet on a good SSD once and for all instead of getting a higher rpm harddisk.

 

[xkiller213]

lol if you're willing to spend around $320 on a 15k drive, you can get a 480GB Crucial M500 from Amazon for the same price...

For warranty claims, you send the SSD back to Crucial for ~$7 (Singpost), and they'll DHL the drive back to you for free...

 

[nicky9499]

That is a valid observation. To what extent does a good defragmenting utility offset this downside? The games partition is very seldom written to (ie, rarely install new ones). This would keep fragmentation to a minimum as well?

As a last resort I'd most probably get a 250GB-class SSD.

@xkiller: Actually my original intentions was for a 250GB Vraptor for about $100 rather than couple hundred in which case yes of course I'd go for an SSD since capacity is not the highest priority.

 

[negativzero]

Well I've never seen any defraged harddisk load an OS within 8secs and OS files are purposely flagged to be in the same proximity in the platter. Anyway the files still need to be seeked, so it doesn't really matter that much if the drive has been defragged or not.

 

[hankook]

or get a hybrid drive. Amazon.com: WD Black2 Dual Drive 2.5" 120 GB SSD + 1 TB HDD Kit (WD1001X06XDTL): Computers & Accessories

 

[nicky9499]

From the reviews I've read, the Black2 is basically just SSD+HDD put together, which makes it completely pointless for all situations where multiple drives can be installed (ie. towers or laptops with 2.5" optical bay caddies).

Anyway, I caved in and bought a 240GB Intel 530 SSD and a 150GB Velociraptor. Thanks for all the help guys.