WD VelociRaptor vs. Seagate Cheetah

[Platypus Team]

Ok, so we've been getting some questions on whether the faster 15K RPM Seagate Cheetah is a higher performing hard drive for high end workstations than the Western Digital VelociRaptor.   And on paper I can see why that seems like a valid question.   The major reason we choose to use the VelociRaptor in our systems is mainly that the Seagate Cheetah is a SCSI drive as opposed to a SATA drive for the VelociRaptor.  SCSI drives are generally not optimised for desktop applications as they are designed with server usage scenarios in mind.  Therefore the Raptor generally outperforms the SCSI drives in real-world desktop usage scenarios.  SCSI drives and controllers are faster when processing large amounts of random accesses whereas SATA drives are designed more for sequential accesses.  Furthermore motherboards generally don't come with built in SCSI controllers, which consequently requires the purchase a controller card which adds another cost to the build.  The Seagate Cheetahs do perform exceptionally well and we have always had good experiences with these drives as well as all Seagate components.  We always value all input we can get so tell us what you think!

[kamu-sama]

SCSI cards are just way too expensive for any standard setup... 

[2times2fast]

yeah my buddy has a pair of the cheetahs, they're nice but you can definitely hear em when they crank up...

[maybelle]

here are some interesting statistics:

                                             Cheetah                                 VRaptor
Avg. Price                        $450(without cont card)          $275

Sustained Read Speeds       171 MB/s                                120 MB/s

Average Read Seek Time    3.4 ms                                 4.2 ms    
Average Write Seek Time    3.9 ms                                 4.7 ms    
Average Latency                    2.0 ms                                  5.5 ms    
Noise level                                36 dBA (Idle)                         29 dBA (Idle)


Cheetah seems to be the winner from a statistics only standpoint, but i think price will end up being the deciding factor in most situations...

[David]

i've had a velociraptor for about 8 months now and its the best hard drive i've owned.

 

[Chris F.]

I bought the 150gb raptor a while back and it recently stopped working..... 

[3DX]

if it still spins when powered up, basically the controller board in the hard drive is overheating causing it to not to work properly.  You can:

a. find a way to keep the hard drive cool -  water cool or open it up and place a 120mm fan over it....

b. buy an identical hard drive & swap either the platter, or the controller board with the working one. 

c. pay to send it off and have it done for you.

All depends on the value of the information stored on the hard drive....