WD6401AALS comparison

[rampantandroid]

How does the WD6401AALS stack up to a Velociraptor, in terms of seek times? I'd read it has some issues with firmware causing unusually high seek times around 16ms.

Also, can I short stroke these on my X58 motherboard using ICH10R? I looked but saw no real guide on this - aside from mentions of Intel matrix; do I set up the short stroke in the RAID controller setup right after POST, or elsewhere? I'm thinking of getting two of these, short stroking them.

Lastly, how are these in terms of reliability? Would I just be better off getting a 300GB Velociraptor, ignoring RAID, and enjoying only having a single hard drive?

Thanks!

 

[DeathFromBelow]

I don't have the AALS drives, but here's the data for my 2 AAKS drives in RAID 0 (ICH9R). The AALS drives should be pretty similar:

True shortstroking just means you only use the first part of the drive/array and leave the rest unpartitioned. Waste of good disk space for a minor performance boost IMO.

 

[k1pp3r]

I don't have the AALS drives, but here's the data for my 2 AAKS drives in RAID 0 (ICH9R). The AALS drives should be pretty similar:

True shortstroking just means you only use the first part of the drive/array and leave the rest unpartitioned. Waste of good disk space for a minor performance boost IMO.

Thats about right the the AALS in seek times, mine was around there. But then i did a RAID0 shortstroked to 100 GB volume in the RAID config.

I did hit 213 ms and seek time around 7.7 i believe, screenshot is at my house

 

[rampantandroid]

Thats about right the the AALS in seek times, mine was around there. But then i did a RAID0 shortstroked to 100 GB volume in the RAID config.

I did hit 213 ms and seek time around 7.7 i believe, screenshot is at my house

Any news on reliability of these? I've avoiding doing RAID with anything but Raptors for the last few years, since I've found Raptors to be pretty reliable; are these drives comparable?

Also, am I correct in thinking that the AALS is slightly preferable to the AAKS?

 

[k1pp3r]

Any news on reliability of these? I've avoiding doing RAID with anything but Raptors for the last few years, since I've found Raptors to be pretty reliable; are these drives comparable?

Also, am I correct in thinking that the AALS is slightly preferable to the AAKS?

I have had them for 2 weeks and they havn't crapped out yet, does that help? lol

 

[DeathFromBelow]

Any news on reliability of these? I've avoiding doing RAID with anything but Raptors for the last few years, since I've found Raptors to be pretty reliable; are these drives comparable?

Also, am I correct in thinking that the AALS is slightly preferable to the AAKS?

I've had my AAKS drives for several months with no issues.

The AALS drives have a longer warranty, larger cache, and black series features like "stable trac" and "dual processors." Everything I've read suggests that performance is pretty similar, but its probably worth the extra $5 for the 5 year warranty with the AALS drives. I bought my AAKS drives before the AALS drives were released.

 

[JRS]

I've got both AALS and AAKS versions of the WD640gb drives - the benchmark differences are so close that you couldn't guess which is which. IMHO, the 5 year warranty is worth at lest $5, maybe $10 though.

My boot drive is a single Velociraptor. A big part of the reason I got it was because I got a big Best Buy coupon from a customer and at the time, the Best Buy price on a Velociraptor was about the same as an online OEM price and Best Buy had nothing else I wanted. After the coupon, I did pay a bit more than what you can get a Velociraptor for online now. I am very glad I got it and even though you can get somewhat close short-stroking a couple of drives, I still like having 7ms access times on a single boot drive.

 

[rampantandroid]

I've got both AALS and AAKS versions of the WD640gb drives - the benchmark differences are so close that you couldn't guess which is which. IMHO, the 5 year warranty is worth at lest $5, maybe $10 though.

My boot drive is a single Velociraptor. A big part of the reason I got it was because I got a big Best Buy coupon from a customer and at the time, the Best Buy price on a Velociraptor was about the same as an online OEM price and Best Buy had nothing else I wanted. After the coupon, I did pay a bit more than what you can get a Velociraptor for online now. I am very glad I got it and even though you can get somewhat close short-stroking a couple of drives, I still like having 7ms access times on a single boot drive.

This is the main reason I am thinking about a VR 300 GB...I already have a 1 TB WD drive, so space is of no concern at this point.

While the 640 looks great, I may just go with the VR, as being rid of RAID is, well...attractive.

Thanks!

 

[k1pp3r]

This is the main reason I am thinking about a VR 300 GB...I already have a 1 TB WD drive, so space is of no concern at this point.

While the 640 looks great, I may just go with the VR, as being rid of RAID is, well...attractive.

Thanks!

Here is my two AALS 640's in RAID0 with a 100 GB OS Volume

 

[Malakai]

Wow so striped WD6401AALS with a little bit of short stroking can basically perform better than anything but striped velociraptors? Very impressive considering 2x WD6401AALS costs less than 1 150gb velociraptor!

I would use ~250gb for OS and use the rest of the space for other OSes/os backup images/other stuffed rarely or ever accessed by windows, esp during gaming/benching!