paulphoto's Full Review: Conrad WD HDD 74GB SATA 3,5" RAPTOR WD740ADFD 74 G...
Eight months ago, I put together a small workstation machine for a friend. He wanted a dual-socket configuration but did not want to spend too much money on the extended ATX form factor motherboard utilizing SCSI technology. So I suggested using Asus K8N-DL motherboard and a pair of dual-core Opteron processors (275 series). The Asus K8N-DL features a single PCI-E x16 and two legacy PCI slots. It has four SATA-II (3.0Gb/s) for standard IDE devices and four more (on separate bus) for RAID configuration. The motherboard has six DIMM slots for ECC/REG RAM, and thus I suggested using 4GB with 1GB each for the first four slots. With only a single PCI-E, which will be used for video graphics display, and without the support of PCI-X slot or onboard SCSI, I suggested to use the WD Raptor hard drive to keep up with the dual-core Opteron processors. We decided to get the Raptor WD740GD 74GB.
During the early period of SATA technology, while everybody was making a 7200 RPM SATA drive, Western Digital in early 2003 took a leap to produce a 10,000 RPM (10K) SATA drive and called it the Raptor. It was considered by many to be the fastest hard drive in SATA technology on the planet. The second generation of the Raptor introduced in Spring 2008 was called the VelociRaptor that offers larger storage capacity up to 300GB; it is also still available in 74GB and 150GB.
To this day, there remains no competition on the market for 10K SATA hard drives. Many have claimed that the Raptor can deliver the same or better performance than the SCSI; even Western Digital company themselves advertised this claim several years ago. This would make the Raptor an alternative choice to SCSI both in terms of performance and price (low-cost). It should be noted that SCSI technology is available in 10K and 15K RPM. Therefore, the Raptor must have been meant that it could compete with the 10K RPM SCSI hard drives. More on this later....
I have never used the Raptor before; I have read good reviews about them. I have always been using SCSI hard drives. When I heard about the Raptor could take on SCSI, I was very skeptical. My rational was that the Raptor utilizes SATA (150MB/s) controller that is based on 33MHz/32-bit bandwidth, while SCSI hard drives can benefit from the 133MHz/64-bit SCSI controller via PCI-X bus. It is not difficult to do the math and obtain the results that SCSI definitely has the advantage both in terms of high bandwidth and sustain read/write capabilities. Based on this reason, I never thought about buying the Raptor just to confirm my rational. Having put together this workstation with the WD Raptor as the main system hard drive allowed me the opportunity to find out once and for all whether the Raptor can really challenge the SCSI as claimed. My review here discusses both the comparison between the Raptor and the SCSI as well as the current SATA technology and the general performance of the Raptor.
Among its impressive feature of 10K RPM, the Raptor utilizes fluid dynamic bearing in contrast to the conventional ball bearing of the 7200RPM SATA hard drives. Below lists the hard drive specifications of the Raptor.
Model: WD740GD (first generation) Type: SATA150 (SATA-I) Capacity: 74GB Form Factor: 3.5-inch x 1-inch Access Time: 4 ms Cache: 8MB Rotational Speed: 10000RPM
According to Western Digital the Raptor carries a five-year warranty, both parts and labor.
The Use of SCSI -- Installation/Preparation
I used the Raptor as a system drive to install Windows XP Pro operating system in NTFS filesystem. The hardware configuration of the system contains the following components. Motherboard/CPU: Asus K8N-DL with two Dual-Core Opteron 275 (2.2GHz each) RAM: 4GB Crucial DDR400 ECC/REG CL-3 Video: ATI Radeon X700 PRO 256MB x16 Optical Drives: LiteOn DVD-ROM (IDE); LiteOn DVD-RW (IDE) Hard Drive: Raptor 74GB (WDC WD740GD-00FLA1) PSU: OCZ 600-Watt EPS
With four SATA ports, I decided to use the SATA1 port for the system drive and subsequent ports for the other two Raptor for storage.
Unlike conventional 7200 RPM SATA hard drives from Hitachi or Seagate that come only with the new 15-pin power connector, the WD Raptor WD740GD comes with the standard 4-pin Molex power connector as well as the SATA power (15-pin) connector. This makes adapting the hard drive in older system much more convenient for old power supply unit that does not have the SATA power rail. However, I personally prefer the SATA power rail over the old Molex 4-pin style, since it is much easier to connect, and without the potential of breaking the Molex pin on the drive (which I have done in the past).
Operating system installation was a bit longer than I anticipated, especially during formatting and actual installation. I estimated it took roughly the same time as I installed Windows XP on an 80GB SATA 7200RPM hard drive. After Windows XP Pro installation, I only installed a few application software, so I could benchmark the Raptor before I proceed to install all the application software required for this workstation.
Benchmarks
Under Windows XP Pro, I was able to perform a number of tests and benchmarks. The two popular ones are HD Tach and SiSoft Sandra among WinBench and other benchmarking software. HD Tach allows me to see the overall hard drive performance from a visual graph as well as the unit's burst speed and throughput. SiSoft Sandra provides me a result based on sustain read/write. Below is a report of my findings on the Raptor:
Hard Drive:Raptor WDC WD740GD-00FLA1 (Manufactured Date: Dec 2004)
HD Tach (long zone analysis) Burst Rate: 125.7MB/s (higher is better) Sequential Read: - Outer Zone: 72 MB/s - Inner Zone: 52MB/s Ave Read: 65.1 MB/s CPU Time: 2 % Access Time: 7.7 ms (lower is better)
I was surprised to see such low scores, not what I had expected. So I ran several more tests, and there was no difference. The Drive Index fluctuated between 53 and 57 MB/s, while read and write scores were roughly the same, give or take a few MB/s. The above scores were tested on Asus K8N-DL utilizing the SATA-II technology that supports 3.0Gb/s compared to the SATA-I (that the Raptor is based on) which supports 1.5Gb/s. Thus, there was no bottleneck invovled here. I thought to myself: how could the Raptor claim to take on the SCSI with these scores?
According HD Tach benchmark, the Raptor was able to provide a sequential read from 72MB/s at the start of the disk all the way to 52MB/s towards the end of the disk at 74GB.
Unsatisfied with the test scores, I used the second Raptor to install Windows Vista Ultimate 32-bit and performed the benchmark using SiSoft Sandra 2009. Windows Vista Ultimate gave a score of 5.7/5.9 versus 5.9/5.9 for SCSI, which is not that bad for the Ratpor at 5.7. SiSoft Sandra yielded the same result, disappointedly, as reported below. Hard Drive:Raptor WDC WD740GD-00FLC0 (Manufactured Date: Dec 2005)
To compare this with the conventional SATA 7200RPM technology, I ran a benchmark of another system that I had recently built for a client based on ECS K3 motherboard with Seagate ST3160212SCE (160GB, SATA-II), under Windows XP Pro.
Hard Drive:Seagate ST3160212SCE (Manufactured Date: Unrecorded, 2005?)
HD Tach (long zone analysis) Burst Rate: 170.7MB/s (higher is better) Sequential Read: - Outer Zone: 77 MB/s - Inner Zone: 35 MB/s Ave Read: 61.9.0 MB/s CPU Time: 2 % Access Time: 20.2 ms (lower is better)
As the benchmark score shows, the Seagate ST3160212SCE 7200 RPM delivered quite a competition to the 10K RPM Raptor. Though, I did not get a chance to test both hard drives on the same motherboard.
The WD740GB Raptor takes on the SCSI/SAS
The Raptor was used as a data drive connected to my workstation motherboard Tyan S2915-E that supports SATA-II (3.0Gb/s). There are three SCSI hard drives on this system: Seagate Cheetah 15K5 74GB (15K RPM) SAS, Maxtor Atlas 10K V 10K (10,000 RPM) 147GB SAS, both connected to onboard SAS ports; Fujitsu MAW3300NP 10K RPM 300GB SCSI connected to PCI-X 133MHz/64bit LSI Logic 21320 SCSI controller.
I formatted the Raptor in NTFS under Windows Vista Ultimate 64bit. Since HD Tach is not compatible with Vista, I only ran SiSoft Sandra 2009 to benchmark the Raptor. Among the three SCSI hard drives listed above, the Maxtor Atlas 10K V (SAS) and Fujitsu MAW3300NP (SCSI) both are 10K RPM that can be used to test against the Raptor with fairness in regards to 10K RPM. Below are the SiSoft Sandra scores.
Hard Drive:Maxtor Atlas 10K V (147GB) SAS (OEM, no date recorded, guessed around 2005) Drive Index: 73.99 MB/s Buffered Read: 229.91 MB/s Sequential Read: 85.17 MB/s Random Read: 58.08 MB/s Buffered Write: 55.42 MB/s Sequential Write: 80.74 MB/s Random Write: 60.39 MB/s Access Time: 5 ms
Hard Drive:Fujitsu MAW3300NP SCSI (Manufactured Date: July 2006) Drive Index: 74 MB/s Buffered Read: 250 MB/s Sequential Read: 82 MB/s Random Read: 63 MB/s Buffered Write: 56 MB/s Sequential Write: 81 MB/s Random Write: 63 MB/s Access Time: 4 ms
Hard Drive:Raptor WDC WD740GD-00FLC0 (Manufactured Date: Dec 2005) Drive Index: 54 MB/s Buffered Read: 122 MB/s Sequential Read: 69 MB/s Random Read: 29 MB/s Buffered Write: 86 MB/s Sequential write: 68 MB/s Random write: 50 MB/s Access: 20 ms
Based on the test results from these three hard drives under the same system, it is apparent that the Raptor cannot stand against the SCSI. I kept a record of benchmark scores from all SCSI hard drives I have used (and still using). Among them were Hitachi 10K RPM 146GB (Feb 2004) and Hitachi 15K RPM 36GB (Sept 2005). These two roughly match the manufactured date of the Raptor (Dec 2004 and Dec 2005). The HD Tach benchmark scores from the Hitachi reported below were done on my workstation based on Tyan S2885 motherboard with PCI-X LSI Logic 21320 controller:
Hard Drive:Hitachi HUS103014FL3600 10K RPM 146GB (Manufactured Date: Feb 2004)
HD Tach (long zone analysis) Burst Rate: 211.0 MB/s (higher is better) Sequential Read: - Outer Zone: 90 MB/s - Inner Zone: 55 MB/s Ave Read: 72.3 MB/s CPU Time: 1% Access Time: 8.0 ms (lower is better) Hard Drive: Hitachi HUS151436VL3800 15K RPM 36GB (Manufactured Date: Sept 2005)
HD Tach (long zone analysis) Burst Rate: 229.8 MB/s (higher is better) Sequential Read: - Outer Zone: 94 MB/s - Inner Zone: 69 MB/s Ave Read: 82.5 MB/s CPU Time: 1% Access Time: 5.7 ms (lower is better)
Again, these numbers confirm that the Raptor has no match for the SCSI technology, which also confirmed my rational stated at the beginning of this review.
Usage and General Performance
With the Raptor as the system hard drive, Windows XP Pro (32bit) was quite responsive. The Windows operating system booted very quick. In terms of operation noise and heat, the Raptor is quite good, reasonably quiet compared to the standard 7200-RPM SATA drives from Hitachi and Seagate. Originally, this workstation was configured to use one Raptor for the system drive and two Raptors (74GB each) combined as RAID 0 (soft RAID, that is) for storage. Needless to mention, the motherboard has four SATA ports for hardware RAID. Initially, I tried to configure two hard drives for RAID but failed, many problems were encountered. However, the problem was more of motherboard issue related rather than the Raptors. Therefore, we decided to use one Raptor for the system drive and two for soft RAID. The owner has a 1TB (1000GB) USB external hard drive; thus, any finished data will be transferred (or backed up) to the external hard drive. Thus, the combined 74GB (150GB total) should prove useful and responsive for video editing as well as for other media application and temporary storage.
Before I could finish everything, one of the Raptor failed after being formatted. I encountered several more problems. Sometimes, the motherboard could not pass the POST, with three Raptors connected; the system kept saying "Verifying DMI Pool Data ... " and never completed, and so the system never gotten around to boot, since the System Management BIOS failed to send information to the operating system, in this case, Windows XP. I figured the CMOS was corrupted; so I cleared the CMOS and reconfigured the BIOS, still no improvement. If I disconnected the two Raptors from the system and boot with the single Raptor, everything ran fine. I figured it must be the two Raptors that caused the problem. So I tested them on my personal workstation (Tyan S2915-E), but they tested out fine, except the one that failed now does not even format. I tried formatting it on my personal workstation, and it just kept formatting. This one is definitely hard drive failure. However, for the one that tested out fine on my personal workstation, I reconnected it to the Asus K8N-DL system, only to find sporadic problem related to DMI failure as well as imcomplete boot, that is, Windows XP just kept booting but never successfully completed. There goes the plan for using the Raptor as RAID0. So we bought a new standard SATA-II hard drive (Hitachi Deskstar P7K500 SATA-II 500GB) from newegg.com for $50 to use in place of the Raptors. The system booted fine with one Raptor as the system drive and Hitachi Deskstar P7K500 as data drive. This proved that the problem was not related to the motherboard alone.
The three Raptor hard drives we bought, two of them were used and one new. It turned out that the used one was causing the problem. With regards to the unpaired Raptor, I am still trying to fine a good use for it; perhaps I will use it for an operating system on a different system.
Real-world data Transfer Rate I prepared a 4.36GB video folder to test the transfer rate of the Raptor (the one used solely as data storage). To ensure that there is no bottleneck on the source location, I placed the video folder in a temporary partition created by a pair of 15K RPM Fujitsu MAX3367NP 36GB each. A 4.36GB folder transferred into the WD Raptor took 2 minutes and 38 seconds, while the same file transferred into my Fujitsu MAW3300NP 10K RPM SCSI (68-pin) took 2 minutes 14 seconds. Here, the write speed of the Raptor is almost as fast as the SCSI. But as the file size increases, the transfer rate of the Raptor decreased rapidly, while the SCSI still maintained its roughly constant speed. I tested the read speed by transferring the same video folder back into the RAID0 partition. The Fujitsu MAW3300NP 300GB SCSI took 48 seconds, while the Raptor took 62 seconds. Again, as the file size increases, the transfer rate of the Raptor decreases.
One hidden factor that should be conisdered is that the Raptor is 74GB which should have a fast accessing speed, while the Fujitsu MAW3300NP is 300GB, and thus a larger storage capacity drive takes longer to access. Yet, the Fujitsu MAW3300NP SCSI is still faster than the Raptor.
Warranty & Reliability The WD Raptor carries a 5-year warranty with parts and labor. With regards to reliability, it is too soon for me to conclude anything. However, from past experience, I have had WD IDE and SATA drives failed on me, including unrepairable bad blocks/sectors. For the Raptor that failed on me, I would say that because it was used. However, its manufactured date was Dec 2005. Thus, based on this date, it still has one more year left of warranty and its life expectancy.
Discussion & Conclusion
As a system drive, the Raptor delivered very good performance, quiet operation and low heat. Nonetheless, from a user's experience standpoint, I did not find it faster than the Seagate 7200.11 RPM 160GB SATA-II drive. Back in the period between 2004 and 2006, the Raptor may be the fastest SATA hard drive, and it was fast compared to the standard SATA of 7200-RPM spindle speed or the IDE (P-ATA) counterparts. However, with the Raptor having pushed to compete with the SCSI is clearly a misguided optimism and ambition, particularly based on the benchmark scores reported above. SCSI as well as SAS (Serial Attached SCSI) technology is based on well-thoughtout and carefull engineering aimed at delivering performance and reliability. For SCSI, maintaining peak performance in sustain read/write and reliable storage have been its main goal to protect valuable data. The Raptor cannot be placed in this similar category. Hence, the WD Raptor might find itself useful in a gaming system where data may not be considered vitally important, especially for those who prefer the 10K RPM SATA over the 7200-RPM counterparts, and that the SCSI maybe too costly to set up.
It is interesting to realize that the new 7200-RPM SATA-II proves quite competitive in terms of performance; they are also much cheaper than the Raptor. In terms of price per gigabyte, for example, the new Hitachi P7K500 7200-RPM SATA-II 500GB hard drive is $50 compared to the new WD VelociRaptor 74GB at $99 (at newegg.com). A new SAS from Fujitsu of the same storage capacity and RPM speed as the Raptor is $149. The WD VelociRaptor WD3000HLFS 300GB 10K RPM is $230, while the fastest 15K RPM SCSI of 300GB from Fujitsu (Fujitsu MBA33000NP) is $309. With Raptor's performance not much better than the current 7200-RPM SATA-II drives and definitely inferior to SCSI, it begs the question whether the Raptor is worth owning. The test results reported above convinced me to stick with the SCSI. For general users, I think the Raptor is not worth owning since the cheaper and larger storage capacity SATA-II 7200-RPM hard drives are far more desirable. In fact, a pair of standard 7200-RPM hard drives (80GB or 120GB) could be put as RAID0 to yield a better throughput in terms of read and write and at a cheapter price compared to a pair of Raptors. For instance, an 80GB SATA-II hard drives from WD, Seagate or Hitachi runs at $35 on average. Two of them would cost $70, much less than a single Raptor, but with twice the storage capacity, yielding a faster throughput.
With regards to the Raptor versus the SCSI, it is true that the overall SCSI configuration is far more expensive than the Raptor. In general, the Raptor can be connected to any motherboard that supports SATA technology. The same is not true for SCSI, which requires a motherboard (most often the larger extended ATX form factor) that features onboard SCSI controller. It is however possible to use a PCI or PCI-Express SCSI controller. The problem with standard ATX form factor motherboard is that it only supports 33MHz/32bit legacy PCI compared to the more powerful PCI-X 133MHz/64bit available on eATX motherboard. With the standard PCI controller, there is a bottleneck and the full potential of the SCSI is not utilized, such as a post here who was convinced that the Raptor was faster than the SCSI: http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/174408-32-raptor-cheetah. The best way to utilize SCSI is to obtain a motherboard that has built-in SCSI controller. If not, a PCI-X controller can be obtained at a cheap price if one is willing to look around (such as on eBay, $25 to $50). I have built many systems based on SCSI configuration and they were farely cheap. It turns out that the system I built based on the Raptor (being reviewed here, using the Asus K8N-DL motherboard) wasted more time and money than we originally anticipated. In retrospect, we should have gone with the SCSI, but only after the fact, oh well...
In conclusion, at the rate that the Raptor performs and according to what I found here, I judge it is too expensive to own, while a superior SCSI can be had for just a few dollars more. For a standard desktop PC system, the conventional 7200-RPM SATA-II drive is a wiser choice over the Raptor.
Some hard drive companies design desktop-class drives with the SATA interface. To meet the demands of enterprise storage, WD is going one better. WD i...More at Buy.com Marketplaces
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