Western Digital Black Drives

newbski · Aug 27, 2009

I want an SSD but I still want to hold out for a price cut.

So I decided maybe a couple of WD Black's in a RAID 0.

My problem is I only find 500GB plus. I don't want one that big I was thinking 80GB-250GB. I only want this for my OS and my fav games.

Does anyone know if they made them this small and if they did where I might be able to still find some?

Thanks

EarthDog · Aug 27, 2009

The smallest WDCB was 320GB I thought. You can find those on ebay as they are not sold anymore.

dribblesnort · Aug 27, 2009

newbski said:
I want an SSD but I still want to hold out for a price cut.

So I decided maybe a couple of WD Black's in a RAID 0.

My problem is I only find 500GB plus. I don't want one that big I was thinking 80GB-250GB. I only want this for my OS and my fav games.

Does anyone know if they made them this small and if they did where I might be able to still find some?

Thanks

The larger the hard drive capacity, the greater the density of the data on the HDDs platter.

That's why a 1TB drive will generally have better peformance than a smaller drive.

I understand you want to find a smaller drive but, it's better to get a pair of the largest drives you can get because the denser platter contributes to the better performance.

Here's an 80GB Seagate Barracuda compared to a 1000GB WD

Now that 80GB Seagate doesn't perform all that badly...BUT the higher density of the platters on the larger drive really helps performance.

Here's three WD Caviar Black 1TB Drives in RAID 0 using a stripe size of 64k and a partition size of 750GB on Intel Matrix RAID on my Asus P5Q Turbo Pro

EarthDog · Aug 27, 2009

More or less Dribble...Drive density is a cosideration, however so is the number of platters it uses. Which the 320GB uses one, and I believe so does the 500GB WDCB. But I always though the 640GB was faster than the 1TB model???

newbski · Aug 27, 2009

All good info I didn't realize the bigger the size the better.

So how would a Velociraptor HDD compare since they are smaller in capacity?

dribblesnort · Aug 27, 2009

newbski said:
All good info I didn't realize the bigger the size the better.

So how would a Velociraptor HDD compare since they are smaller in capacity?

http://www.techwarelabs.com/seagate_1-5tb-mod/

In the test I linked to, the Seagate 1.5TB drive was short stroked to 300GB to match the VR and then tested in a variety of situations.

The test conclusion is the larger drive costs considerably less and has a lot better performance "overall", while the VR still exceeds in some areas.

For the cost of a VR you may be able to get a pair of those Seagates and short stroke them like the tester did and then run them in RAID 0 for even better performance.

dribblesnort · Aug 27, 2009

I decided to download Crystal Disk Mark and test mine to compare my RAID 0 scores to the Short Stroked Seagate single drive and the VR 300GB. I did a 5 pass test while they did a 3 pass test.

My arrays are set up as follows:

RAID 0 --- 750GB (64k Clusters)
RAID 5 --- 1.33TB(64k Clusters)

Here's the Crystal Disk Mark test for the Seagate(Hope they do not mind a hot link)

Here's the VR test

MattNo5ss · Aug 27, 2009

EarthDog said:
More or less Dribble...Drive density is a cosideration, however so is the number of platters it uses. Which the 320GB uses one, and I believe so does the 500GB WDCB. But I always though the 640GB was faster than the 1TB model???

The 500GB uses 2x250GB platters, the 640GB uses 2x320GB platters, and the 1TB uses 3x334GB platters. So the 1TB WDCB platters are only 14GB more dense than the 640GB WDCB platters. But the 640GB WDCB platters are 70GB more dense than the 500GB WDCB.

So, speed wise the order should be 1TB > 640GB > 500GB.

newbski · Aug 27, 2009

Well it sounds like I need 2 X 1TB Blacks then.

Thanks for the help this has been really informative.

EarthDog · Aug 28, 2009

dribblesnort said:
http://www.techwarelabs.com/seagate_1-5tb-mod/

In the test I linked to, the Seagate 1.5TB drive was short stroked to 300GB to match the VR and then tested in a variety of situations.

The test conclusion is the larger drive costs considerably less and has a lot better performance "overall", while the VR still exceeds in some areas.

For the cost of a VR you may be able to get a pair of those Seagates and short stroke them like the tester did and then run them in RAID 0 for even better performance.

Great test! The VeloR though easily has the TB drive in seek by 50%.

MattNo5ss said:
The 500GB uses 2x250GB platters, the 640GB uses 2x320GB platters, and the 1TB uses 3x334GB platters. So the 1TB WDCB platters are only 14GB more dense than the 640GB WDCB platters. But the 640GB WDCB platters are 70GB more dense than the 500GB WDCB.

So, speed wise the order should be 1TB > 640GB > 500GB.

I appreciate the correction! :bday:

Great information provided in this thread!

dribblesnort · Aug 28, 2009

EarthDog said:
Great test! The VeloR though easily has the TB drive in seek by 50%.

I appreciate the correction!

Great information provided in this thread!

No doubt that the VR excels in certain areas. I said as much in my posts. It's up to the person making the decision whether throughput, seek, price, or capacity is the number one consideration when trying to decide between the two.

You can't really go wrong either way...both are great performers.

newbski · Aug 28, 2009

Oh yeah, Newegg has 1TB Blacks for $89.99 today. Maybe I should suggest another product and it will go on sale the next day.

Whoo hoo.

Hookem · Sep 1, 2009

2 WD-1T Blacks in RAID-0 is hard to beat in the best bang for the buck catagory...In my humble opinion.

Alot of space and resonably fast.

Western Digital Black Drives

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