Got a tip for us?
Let us know
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.
WD Velociraptor VS. WD640
- Thread starter Frozonecold
- Start date
- Sort by reaction score
Custom machined parts in small batches aren't cheap, particularly when you need to have one large block of metal for a heatsink.$50 for a bit of metal!
And considering that the market we're talking about here is people who have spent top dollar to get a Mac Pro, and $300 for a single VelociRaptor, $50 doesn't seem to be that out of line with what the market would bear, especially considering the limited number of prospective buyers over which they have to spread their overhead.
Personally if I were in the market for this, $50 wouldn't be totally unreasonable, but I'd want something a little more substantial - make the mount a larger heatsink without the need for a custom sled. I've heard the VRaptor doesn't run all that hot even without the sink, but why not make it at least a little beefier than it is currently. And I don't see any reason why the design should necessitate a custom carrier when the Pro already has 4 perfectly good ones.
Also, if they designed it in such a way that it would work with any other 3.5" mounting system, it would broaden the market to any PC users that want to use these in other hotswap bays or similar. I'm sure there are more than a few.
Am I the only one who thinks warranties are largely irrelevant on hard drives? I mean, your hard drive will fail at some point. That is a fact; HDDs are the component of your machine most "rated" for failure. And the warranty isn't going to entitle you to data recovery, which is comparably expensive. I've had no problem with the F1s (most of my slowdowns are a result of letting the hard drives go to sleep, which combined with a large amount of RAM, occasionally allows them to rest a bit more than they ought to), and I noticed that a lot of the poor ratings on NewEgg were due to firmware/chipset compatibility issues that the Mac Pro is exempt from. I think a warranty on a "guaranteed failure" part is not all that important if they're not going to replace what really matters, the data. After all, 1.5 TB drives are out now and if your drive fails within 3 years, a new 1TB drive is going to be even cheaper (they're already as low as $165 in some stores). Your drive is cheap. Your data is expensive (either to replace or in terms of man-hours spent generating it). I'd consider the technical aspects (fewer platters, higher density, running cooler...) of the drive to be far more relevant in purchase than the replacement warranty. And I can't speak to the experiences of others here, but I've had far, far more WD drives fail on me than Samsungs. Obviously, everybody else's mileage is going to vary. But isn't the warranty a pointless obsession with package print?
Disclosure: I scorn TN panels, integrated graphics chipsets, and I plan to fill all of the PCIe slots on my mac pro, so my opinion is necessarily irrelevant to a lot of people.
Disclosure: I scorn TN panels, integrated graphics chipsets, and I plan to fill all of the PCIe slots on my mac pro, so my opinion is necessarily irrelevant to a lot of people.
Sorry, I should have clarified. Seagate recently announced 1.5 TB drives. Won't take too long for them to hit the market, though, and I'm certain this will cause all the other manufacturers to bump up their schedules with their own competing drives.
My buddy has been looking at getting a new HDD. The velociraptor is obviously the fastest, but is the difference between it and the WD640 that big?
I've got 3 of the 750gb F1 drives. They function perfectly, fast and quiet. I think if you read many of the Newegg reviews you'll find that the issues are largely confined to PCs due to some interface issue I don't really know anything about. That was the case when I was clicking through them a few months ago when I was in the market for drives. I've yet to hear of similar problems on macs.
If it is a problem with certain batches I must have hit a lucky batch. The serial numbers are sequential for my three drives and they're wonderful. Hopefully this negative info floating around will drive the prices even lower so I can pick up a few more.
I agree on the warranty bit, they ought to handle the issues directly.
The velociraptor's a pretty illmatic drive. I'd go for that since you don't need the space; it'll be a good bit faster, especially with access times (10K RPM + 2.5" platter = )
)
Another option?
Just to suggest another option. I was looking at both these drives for my new Mac Pro and neither ticked all the boxes for me. Conflicting info about the speed of the WD640 and worry about the noise of the VR made me search further. In the end I have opted for the WD320 RE3. Enterprise class so highly tested for reliability with 5 year warranty. High density, single platter and the 'R' in the name stands for RAID as these are designed for this in mind. As a single drive these are very fast but if your into RAID they double their speed which is unbelievable.
The base 320GB standard Mac Pro drive (that I now use as a storage drive) sounds very loud in comparison to the RE3. I'm waiting for the 1TB RE3 to become available so I can get one as a back up drive.
I've not seen any official tests, but from my own experience and the user tests I've read on forums suggests they are one of the fastest 7200 rpm HD's around at the moment.
Just to suggest another option. I was looking at both these drives for my new Mac Pro and neither ticked all the boxes for me. Conflicting info about the speed of the WD640 and worry about the noise of the VR made me search further. In the end I have opted for the WD320 RE3. Enterprise class so highly tested for reliability with 5 year warranty. High density, single platter and the 'R' in the name stands for RAID as these are designed for this in mind. As a single drive these are very fast but if your into RAID they double their speed which is unbelievable.
The base 320GB standard Mac Pro drive (that I now use as a storage drive) sounds very loud in comparison to the RE3. I'm waiting for the 1TB RE3 to become available so I can get one as a back up drive.
I've not seen any official tests, but from my own experience and the user tests I've read on forums suggests they are one of the fastest 7200 rpm HD's around at the moment.
Do what I did...get both!
Running a bare 2.5" 300GB Velociraptor in a Maxupgrade drive sled for my main system drive and current photography work as well as a 1TB WD Caviar Black for long-term storage.
The VR is noisy (lots of clicking from seeking heads) but the speed is definitely noticable and worth it to me.
Running a bare 2.5" 300GB Velociraptor in a Maxupgrade drive sled for my main system drive and current photography work as well as a 1TB WD Caviar Black for long-term storage.
The VR is noisy (lots of clicking from seeking heads) but the speed is definitely noticable and worth it to me.