Today I received the Official Western Digital announcement for the new VelociRaptor 10,000 RPM 600G SATA 6G/s drive. Sounds impressive. If we were limited to mechanical drives, this one definitely would be the one to have for performance. The problem is, we are not limited to mechanical drives. Solid state drives are readily available. The Intel X25-M produces much faster results using a SATA 3G/s interface than the new VelociRaptor drive does using a 6G/s interface. Mechanical drives are wonderful for economical long term storage. The VelociRaptor is far from economical. The 300G model is selling for approximately $200 on Amazon. When compared to a 1TB Western Digital OEM Caviar Black at $100, that is a fairly hefty price for the performance. I recommend using a mechanical hard drive as your “long term” storage of choice. I also recommend using an SSD for your operating system, and key performance hungry applications. ANY SSD will outperform the fastest VelociRaptor any day of the week in any I/O performance test.
Comparison Figures
Latency
Intel X25-m
Read 65 micro seconds Decimal notation .000065
Write 85 micro seconds Decimal notation .000085
VelociRaptor
Read 3.6 milli seconds Decimal notation .0036
Write 4.2 milli seconds Decimal notation .0042
So for read seek times, the Intel SSD X25-m is 55X faster than the VelociRaptor.
For Write seek times the Intel SSD X25-m is 49X faster than the VelociRaptor.
Given that the cost of the drives is about the same the only other issue is space.
The Intel X25-m has 80G
The VelociRaptor has 300G
VelociRaptor has 4X the space for the price.
For my use, I’ll take 1/4 the space at 50X the speed for the same price. Your results and preferences may vary.