Western Digital Raptor

The Western Digital Raptor (often marketed as WD Raptor) is an upmarket, enterprise-class hard disk drive series produced by Western Digital that created its own niche in the enthusiast, workstation and small-server market. Traditionally, servers relied on hard drives featuring a SCSI interface because of their advantages in both performance and reliability over consumer-level ATA drives.

Although pitched as an "enterprise-class drive" it won favour with the PC gaming and enthusiast community because the drive was capable of speeds usually only found on more expensive SCSI drives. Adopting the SATA interface meant that it could be used easily on all modern motherboards with no separate (and often expensive) controller card. Also, integration was made easier still by the inclusion of a standard 4-pin Molex power connector in addition to the standard SATA power port, meaning users of older PSUs were not alienated.

Despite having been in production since early 2003, there is no direct competition in the same market.

More recently, Western Digital acknowledged the primary consumer of its Raptor brand drives by releasing a revision of its flagship 150 GB drive. In keeping with the PC case modding trend of stylizing, the drive was given a Perspex window to match the internals of computer cases. This allows the user to see the drives inner workings while it is in operation.

On April 21, 2008, Western Digital announced the next generation of its 10,000 RPM SATA Raptor series of hard drives. The new drives, called WD VelociRaptor, feature 300 GB capacity and 2.5-inch platters enclosed in the IcePack™, a 3.5-inch mounting frame with a built-in heat sink. Western Digital claims the new drives are 35 percent faster than the previous generation Raptors. [cite news
url=http://www.wdc.com/en/company/releases/PressRelease.asp?release={5ABC5B81-92EE-470F-8FAE-A2191EB887F4}
title=WD® announces WD VelociRaptor™– The world's fastest SATA hard drive
date=2008-04-21
publisher=Western Digital
accessdate=2008-04-22]

Models

WD360

In 2003, the first incarnation of the Raptor series: the WD360GD. [cite news
url=http://www.wdc.com/en/company/releases/PressRelease.asp?release={DB097012-1643-4CF1-B7F7-7573035C067C}
title=Western Digital enters enterprise storage market with world's first 10,000 rpm Serial ATA hard drive
date=2003-02-10
publisher=Western Digital
accessdate=2008-04-22] It featured a capacity of 37 GB on a single platter, a Serial ATA interface and was the first ATA drive to operate at a spindle speed of 10,000 revolutions per minute. Like many early SATA drives, the Raptor was not a "real" SATA drive because it was really a PATA drive that used an 88i8030C interface bridge chip from Marvell. However, this fact did not significantly hamper the Raptor's performance. WD360GD raptors do not use the 3.3 V Serial ATA power line. There is no need to use a SATA power connector as it will not be fully utilized. [http://wdc.custhelp.com/cgi-bin/wdc.cfg/php/enduser/std_adp.php?p_faqid=872&p_created=1039465570]

As is usually the case for hard drives featuring a faster spindle speed, the Raptor outperformed other ATA drives and in some situations was able to even reach the performance of contemporary 10,000 rpm SCSI drives. SCSI drives still outperformed the Raptor in multi-user scenarios, but for high-end home computers it fared very well. For enthusiasts' systems, the Raptor also had the key advantages of low noise and temperature levels compared to similarly performing drives.

All WD360GD drives with Part Number WD360GD-00FNA0 (December 2003) and earlier cannot accept SATA latch cables as the SATA data connector does not have the required rails. So SATA latch cables cannot fit to the connector and only normal cables can be installed...

WD360GD raptors with the marvell 88i8030-TBC PATA to SATA bridge chip such as WD360GD-00FNA0 (December 2003) and earlier, are limited to UDMA 5 transfers. In Linux, "applying bridge limits" is displayed and then it allows transfers up to UDMA100. In windows they are reported as UDMA 6 but give a burst rate of 104 MB/s while WD360GD with the 88i8030-TBC1 chip are reported as UDMA 6 and give a burst rate of 122 MB/s, close their theoretical limit of UDMA 6. Those raptors limited at UDMA 5 were bought for SATA I 150 MB/s support but they only support the legacy PATA UDMA 5 at 100 MB/s.

Like its larger brother the WD740GD, the WD360GD was revised in 2006 and released with the designation WD360ADFD - incorporating twice as much on-board cache (16 MB vs 8 MB), at least one side of a single platter that offers twice the areal density (one 75 GB platter vs up to two 37 GB platters), and enabling NCQ.

WD740

The second generation Raptor was introduced in early 2004, featuring two platters for 74 GB of storage space. Unlike its predecessor, the WD740GD didn't use ball bearings to support the spinning disks, but rather used fluid dynamic bearings. These allowed the new Raptor to operate at a noise level comparable to the quieter 7,200 rpm drives.

Another advantage the WD740GD had over its predecessor was Tagged Command Queuing, a feature that had previously only been available in SCSI drives. Command queuing resulted in a notable increase in the WD740GD's multi-user performance--a key discipline where its predecessor failed compared to SCSI drives. However, enabling command queuing on the WD740GD resulted in a performance decrease in single-user scenarios. It is worth noting that as of 2005, only a few SATA controllers can fully support command queuing. This drive became immensely popular in high-end gaming systems because of these features.

In 2006 Western Digital revised the WD740GD specification and released the WD740ADFD, ostensibly the same drive but with 16 MB of on-board cache, and a larger single platter (one 75 GB platter vs two 37 GB platters). Support for TCQ (rarely supported on SATA RAID controllers) was dropped in favor of NCQ, and at the same time replacing the SATA-to-PATA bridge controller chip with a native SATA controller. Unfortunately one of the major enhancements of WD740ADFD, the NCQ, is implemented so [http://inferno.slug.org/cgi-bin/wiki?Western_Digital_NCQ badly] in the WD740ADFD-00NLR1 that it has been added to the Linux libata drive blacklist. In order to deal with it, NCQ is disabled [http://bugzilla.kernel.org/show_bug.cgi?id=8627 Link to the NCQ-Bug in the Kernel Bug Tracker] . In TCQ capable controllers, the WD740GD is possibly faster than its successor as some of the WD740ADFDs' gains are lost. The WD740ADFD has also caused problems in some motherboards and their manufacturers had to release BIOS updates.

WD1500

The third generation Raptor was released by Western Digital in January 2006. It features two 75 GB platters (for a total of 150 GB) and a more advanced system of Native Command Queuing. At the same time, the Raptor X was released. It has identical specifications to the standard Raptor, [cite news
url=http://www.tomshardware.com/2006/02/06/wd1500ad_raptor_xtends_performance_lead/page5.html
title=WD1500AD Raptor X-Tends Performance Lead
page=5
date=2006-02-06
publisher=Tom's Hardware
author=Schmid, Patrick
accessdate=2008-04-22] but it has the addition of a clear polycarbonate window in the drive cover, making the movements of the disks and magnetic heads visible. This unique feature is likely to be popular with case modders. Like the regular Raptor, the Raptor X has a MTBF rating of 1.2 million hours, or 137 years. Both drives are covered by a five-year warranty. While this drive is using the NCQ feature of SATA 2, it lacks support for the increased bandwidth of SATA 2. [cite news
url=http://www.tomshardware.com/2006/02/06/wd1500ad_raptor_xtends_performance_lead/page14.html
title=The Raptor-X is Unrivaled
page=14
date=2006-02-06
publisher=Tom's Hardware
author=Schmid, Patrick
accessdate=2008-09-10]

WD3000

The fourth generation Raptor was announced by Western Digital in April 2008 and is expected to be available for purchase in May. The new drive is being sold under the VelociRaptor name. [cite news
url=http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/04/21/wd_velociraptor_hdd/
title=Western Digital uncages ferocious VelociRaptor data hunting drive
date=2008-04-21
publisher=The Register
author=Modine, Austin
accessdate=2008-04-22] As well as increasing the capacity to 300 GB (split over two 150 GB platters), the form factor was reduced from 3.5" to 2.5". The drive is sold in a 3.5" mounting frame, that doubles as a heat sink, to facilitate mounting in standard desktop cases. Western Digital claims that the drive is 35% faster than the previous generation of Raptor drives. [cite web
url=http://www.wdc.com/en/products/products.asp?driveid=459
title=WD VelociRaptor 300 GB SATA Hard Drives (WD3000GLFS)
publisher=Western Digital
accessdate=2008-04-22]

The drive had been criticised for being incompatible with 3.5" SATA hot swap bays due to the position of the connectors, however recently a new revision of the ice pack has been released which remedies this problem (the WD3000HLFS). [cite news
url=http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/HDD-SATA-VelociRaptor,1914-14.html
title=WD's New Raptor Drive Is a Bird of Prey!
page=14
date=2008-04-21
publisher=Tom's Hardware
author=Schmid, Patrick
accessdate=2008-04-23]

Western Digital later released a 2.5 inch Velociraptor which is nearly identical to the 3.5 inch version except that it doesn't have an icepack. These drives are designed for use in blade servers and are not to be used in laptops because of their power requirements and 15mm thickness.

Revisions

References

External links

Official
* [http://www.wdraptorx.com/ Western Digital – WD Raptor X (Official promotional site)]
* [http://www.wdc.com/en/products/products.asp?driveid=459 Western Digital – WD VelociRaptor (WD3000)]

Reviews
* [http://www.hothardware.com/Articles/Western_Digital_Velociraptor_300GB/ HotHardware's Review of The WD VelociRaptor WD3000 Drive]
* [http://www.hothardware.com/articles/Western_Digital_Raptor_WD1500ADFD__Bigger_Faster_Stronger/ HotHardware's Review of The Raptor WD1500ADFD]
* [http://www.reviewsteam.com/wd-raptor-150-gb-10000-rpm Index of Reviews for WD1500]