WD raptor failures

  • Thread starter Thread starter Lynn McGuire
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Lynn McGuire

At one point, we had about 10 WD 150 GB 3.5" raptors around
here. The 7th one failed yesterday with the click of death.
Are others experiencing this massive failure rate with the WD
150 GB raptors ? I am replacing them with a WD Caviar Black
1 TB drive which I have not had fail yet.

Thanks,
Lynn
 
In message <[email protected]> Lynn McGuire
At one point, we had about 10 WD 150 GB 3.5" raptors around
here. The 7th one failed yesterday with the click of death.
Are others experiencing this massive failure rate with the WD
150 GB raptors ? I am replacing them with a WD Caviar Black
1 TB drive which I have not had fail yet.
Click to expand...

I'd look toward whether the drives are running hot, at least some of the
Raptor series run much hotter than 7200rpm drives and without
appropriate cooling they'll be far more likely to fail quickly. The
2.5" versions also don't necessarily get as much surface contact with
your case, so they may not cool conductively (although my own case uses
rubber shock absorbers)

I've had a few Raptors over the years and never been particularly
impressed with the performance (or the $:performance ratio anyway), but
nor have I seen an above-average failure rate. At this point I'd
recommend a WD Black or a SSD, I wouldn't bother with a Raptor.

(Currently I've got a Crucial M225 SSD, Velociraptor, and a WD Black
640GB)

Conversely whenever I debate buying another publicly there is always one
or two people who have had high failure rates, so it's not just you.
 
Lynn McGuire wrote
At one point, we had about 10 WD 150 GB 3.5" raptors around
here. The 7th one failed yesterday with the click of death.
Are others experiencing this massive failure rate with the WD
150 GB raptors ?
Click to expand...

Not sure of the size, but yes with about that vintage of WD drives.
I am replacing them with a WD Caviar Black 1 TB drive which I have not had fail yet.
Click to expand...

I use Samsungs and have never had even a single failure.
 
Lynn McGuire said:
At one point, we had about 10 WD 150 GB 3.5" raptors around
here. The 7th one failed yesterday with the click of death.
Are others experiencing this massive failure rate with the WD
150 GB raptors ? I am replacing them with a WD Caviar Black
1 TB drive which I have not had fail yet.
Click to expand...

From what I know, the Raprors have reasonable reliability.

Was this the version with the additional cooler, (blow-up
to 3.5") or the "bare" 2.5" version that has special cooling
needs?

Any temperature statistics?

Arno
 
From what I know, the Raptors have reasonable reliability.

Not by my experience.
Was this the version with the additional cooler, (blow-up
to 3.5") or the "bare" 2.5" version that has special cooling
needs?
Click to expand...

This is the 3 year old 3.5". The velociraptor is 2.5" and has
a monster heat sink on it (got a 300 GB in this PC). I am
guessing that they added the monster heat sink to the
velociraptor for a good reason.
Any temperature statistics?
Click to expand...

I know that my office space gets to 95 F over the weekends.
I suspect that is the killer.

Lynn
 
In message <[email protected]> Lynn McGuire
Not by my experience.


This is the 3 year old 3.5". The velociraptor is 2.5" and has
a monster heat sink on it (got a 300 GB in this PC). I am
guessing that they added the monster heat sink to the
velociraptor for a good reason.
Click to expand...

I'm not so sure actually. The 3.5" ones were beasts for heat, but the
2.5" Velociraptor doesn't seem to put out much more heat than my WD
Black (3.5" 7200rpm)

I suspect that the monster heatsinks are more a marketing gimmick, a
combination of the fact that the drives shouldn't be installed in
laptops built for 5400rpm drives and that most users need some sort of
an adapter to mount them in 3.5" slots for desktop use, so as a result
it made sense to include a 3.5" adapter that would dissipate heat for
less than ideal installations.

In other words, I believe that a bit of a heatsink OR excellent airflow
is required for the 2.5" drives, but that the monster they include is
only really /needed/ for installations without adequate airflow, for the
rest of us, it just makes us feel geeky.
I know that my office space gets to 95 F over the weekends.
I suspect that is the killer.
Click to expand...

They do seem to be heat-sensitive, especially the older ones. I had
reasonably good luck with mine, but I also had them in a P180 (fans
blowing directly over the drives, in a separate cooling zone for the
drives away from the motherboard) and they definitely ran hotter than
any other drive I owned at the time.
 
Here is an article about the Velociraptor from a power, heat, and
quietness perspective:

http://www.silentpcreview.com/WD_Velociraptor
Click to expand...

The quieting mount mentioned in the article:

http://www.frozencpu.com/products/7...bes_25_Silent_Hard_Drive_Mounting_System.html

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Thanks, robots.
 
I've had a few Raptors over the years and never been particularly
impressed with the performance (or the $:performance ratio anyway)
Click to expand...

You can get the performance of a 300GB Raptor from a regular 1TB
7200RPM drive by limiting the latter's capacity by means of a HPA,
thereby short-stroking the drive, or by creating a 300GB partition at
the beginning of your drive for the speed sensitive tasks.

- Franc Zabkar
 
In message <[email protected]> Franc Zabkar
You can get the performance of a 300GB Raptor from a regular 1TB
7200RPM drive by limiting the latter's capacity by means of a HPA,
thereby short-stroking the drive, or by creating a 300GB partition at
the beginning of your drive for the speed sensitive tasks.
Click to expand...

I've been experimenting with doing similar, it's close although the
Velcoraptor still bursts faster. Comparison was done against a 640GB WD
Black, same SATA controller, AHCI enabled.

That being said, I'm currently doing similar with a 64GB partition at
the front of a 300GB Velociraptor to squeeze every bit of performance
out of some VMs that I can.

Recently I've been experimenting with putting a base VM image on my SSD,
and creating a linked clone on the Velociraptor. It works surprisingly
well, giving me most of the performance of a SSD without all of the
cost.
 
In message <[email protected]> "Timothy
Daniels said:
DevilsPGD said:
[...........]
Recently I've been experimenting with putting a base VM image
on my SSD, and creating a linked clone on the Velociraptor. It
works surprisingly well, giving me most of the performance of a
SSD without all of the cost.
Click to expand...

Does this mean that you put the hosting virtual machine software
on the SSD and put the hosted OS with its apps on the Velociraptor?
Click to expand...

The host OS is on the SSD, along with some VHD/VMDK files containing
pre-built (OS installed, VM tools/additions installed, a bit of
configuration and in some cases a frequently used application)

All of these VMD/VMDK files are treated as read-only, the actual VMs are
created on the Velociraptor, using a linked/differencing configuration.

In other words, when guests are running the entire OS and a small set of
preinstalled applications are read from the SSD, but any writes (and
reads of those same sectors) come from the Velociraptor.

Sorry to mix VMWare and Virtual PC terminology, but I'm actually running
both in this configuration in areas where each excels over the other.
 
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