Seagate > Velociraptor? Benchmarks inside!

[Puddle Jumper]

I don't see buying a 1.5tb drive as a bad move by any means, there really is no other fast and effective way to store that quantity of data. I just don't see a reason to buy one and limit it to a small fraction of its capacity to get somewhat better performance.

I do consider the Velociraptor to be a bad purchase because it is expensive while still being relatively slow. Because of that I consider beating it to be a hollow victory, especially when that victory is accomplished in a unrealistic situation.

If they want to compare price/performance between a $120 drive and a $220 drive they should pick the best from each price range and compare them. At the timer that would have meant the OCZ Vertex would have been used instead of the Velociraptor.

 

[hikaricloud]

The main reason behind this article was really to prove just how pointless the Velociraptor series is in general, which I think is a fact we can both agree on. I hardly doubt this was a serious benchmarking session. The 1.5tb drives are ridiculously fast for their capacity, and that was the other point of this article, which again, is another point we can both agree on.

 

[Puddle Jumper]

^^ Yeah I think we are saying the same thing in regards to the Velociraptor. We are just coming at it from different directions.

 

[zmatt]

I would never use ridiculous as an adjective to describe hard drive speed unless you were using it to describe the lack thereof. No hard drive is fast.

 

[hikaricloud]

That's just not true. Speed is relative. For example, you're comparing the speed of a hard drive to the overall speed of a full computer system, in which case sure, a hard drive isn't technically fast.

But in the sense of what type of hard drives there are on the market at the moment, and the fact that you need a hard drive to run a computer, there are "fast" hard drives, because they are being compared to each other as opposed to other components that have a different nature of speed as well as different tasks to do with such speed.

So in that sense, the 1.5tb Seagate is a pretty "fast" drive.

 

[zmatt]

That's just not true. Speed is relative. For example, you're comparing the speed of a hard drive to the overall speed of a full computer system, in which case sure, a hard drive isn't technically fast.

But in the sense of what type of hard drives there are on the market at the moment, and the fact that you need a hard drive to run a computer, there are "fast" hard drives, because they are being compared to each other as opposed to other components that have a different nature of speed as well as different tasks to do with such speed.

So in that sense, the 1.5tb Seagate is a pretty "fast" drive.

You right it is relative. I'm comparing it to SSDs which compete against them. SSDs make them slow. It might be fast for a hard drive, but that isn't saying much. Anything beyond that is arguing semantics out of stubbornness.

 

[hikaricloud]

I don't really think it's arguing semantics out of stubbornness. You have to think about price ranges and the needs of a user.

For example, I really needed a big HDD. The 1.5tb Seagate was the best bet for me, since it was definitely fast for having 1.5tb of storage space.

If storage wasn't a need and I wanted pure speed, I would totally go for a 60gb Vertex for 100 bucks more. Makes sense if I already had the storage space.

Again, speed is relative. In the case of needing storage, the 1.5tb is a "fast" drive. If I was going for pure performance, SSD all the way.

Being faster than another drive is pointless if it doesn't suit your needs in the first place.

 

[yzmxer608]

I agree with cloud on that. If you are only going to store things, then a "fast" regular hd is better, if you are going to use a hd for a OS then a ssd would be better, since they truly are "fast" compared to all other drives out there.

It depends on the application of the drive, "fast" means different things for different applications.

 

[zedman3d]

I think the motto of the story is this then:

Based on 4K Writes:
Barracuda: 0.0164 MB/s PER DOLLAR
Velociraptor: 0.0127 MB/s PER DOLLAR

 

[Puddle Jumper]

When you compare the 4k random write speed/price of SSD's to the conventional drives the results are impressive.

Intel X25-E: 0.09 MB/s PER DOLLAR
Intel X25-M Gen 1: 0.073 MB/s PER DOLLAR
Intel X25-M Gen 2: 0.153 MB/s PER DOLLAR

While none of those drives are cheap they are good vales as far as random write performance is concerned.