Are WD6400AAKS worth $75/drive?

S

S3th13

Gawd
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Aug 2, 2007
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Discuss.


I'm thinking about putting 2 into a Raid 0 setup, but I think that price is a bit higher than what I want to spend. Any other recommendations with a cheaper price and similar performance? I don't need all 1300GBs either... just something that will net me over at least 500.

Edit:

Just to give you a reference as to what I'm currently using:

HDTuneTestSeagateBarracuda72008.jpg


AKA, fucking awful performance. I can't stand this 5 year old Seagate anymore.
 
They were worth the price when they were $100.
They were worth the price when they were $95.
They were worth the price when they were $90.
They were worth the price when they were $85
They were worth the price when they were $80
So yes they are worth the price at $75.

The single platter WD3200AAKS is only a little bit slower than the WD6400AAKS and costs only $55. However, the single platter WD3200AAKS shares the same model number as the slower and dual platter WD3200AAKS, stupid mistake on W'Ds part. Not many online stores will distinguish between the dual platter and single platter WD3200AAKS so there's a good chance that you might get the slow dual-platter.

Also, single or dual plattered, the WD3200AAKS is not that cost effective since you're basically paying ~17 cents a gig whereas with the WD6400AAKS you're paying ~12 cents a gig. So the WD6400AAKS is the more cost effective buy.

Other than the 3200AAKS, there aren't any other cheaper and similar performing drives I know of.
 
S3th13 said:
Yeah... I searched the hot deals/for sale forums for AAKS and found several posts from a week or so ago about sales on this drive. Pretty disappointing....
Click to expand...

Well, you can still save $10 over Newegg's price if you buy the WD6400AAKS from amazon.com for $70.
 
newegg had them for $69 a couple of weeks ago. I'm kicking myself for only getting one! I say they're not worth $75 when the 32mb version is $79. Try to find it for under $70.


Btw, Dell has the 640 "black" (AALS - 32mb cache) for $66 + $4.99 shipping with coupon code:

http://accessories.us.dell.com/sna/...&cs=04&c=us&l=en&dgc=SS&cid=39888&lid=1022051

codes are "3XQW3BK2SCTG4Q" and "JMQTDQ?BPWFFFX"

that's definitely worth it!
 
Or... if you're really so disinterested in having gobs of fast and plentiful space, there's always the chance that FLECOM (one of the Mods here) might have some 80GB Velociraptors in his stash someplace. I just bought 2 of 'em off him last week, been playing around with 'em this week so far and getting some damned fine speeds like these:

hdtach80gbvelociraptoras1.png


hdtune80gbvelociraptordg7.png


Smokin' fast drives. Using software striping in Windows 7 yesterday I was getting ~225MB/s average reads with ~215MB/s average writes, so I'm hoping to get a proper hardware striped situation soon (mobo chipset doesn't support it so I'll add in a card or replace the mobo).

Go find FLECOM and ask if he's got some of the 80s left. Sometimes he's got 150GBs too for good prices. I'm very happy with the purchase, that's for damned sure. :D
 
synaptical said:
newegg had them for $69 a couple of weeks ago. I'm kicking myself for only getting one! I say they're not worth $75 when the 32mb version is $79. Try to find it for under $70.


Btw, Dell has the 640 "black" (AALS - 32mb cache) for $66 + $4.99 shipping with coupon code:

http://accessories.us.dell.com/sna/...&cs=04&c=us&l=en&dgc=SS&cid=39888&lid=1022051

codes are "3XQW3BK2SCTG4Q" and "JMQTDQ?BPWFFFX"

that's definitely worth it!
Click to expand...

Wow, great deal. I got free shipping too. (Electronics over $129.99) Thanks a lot!
 
I paid $75 each for the Velociraptors... and I plan to get more if I can manage it, at least one more, perhaps two. The case I have now can handle 6 drives, so 4 of these bad boys striped with some parity just for the helluvit... yeah, that'll work nicely. And they run cool too, even when I'm stressing one or the other with random access testing and massive file copies, I can't even detect them being warm at all really.
 
HOLY CRAP...that's SLOW...
I just did these benchmarks this week...

Ask and you shall receive...
These are two WD640AAKS drives in RAID 0
SuperSpeedHDTuneBench.jpg


And just for reference, this is a 300gb Velociraptor
VRaptorBench2.jpg
 
The average read on that looks like 2 drives, but that burst is impossible with 2 so... either something is seriously wrong with the drives, or something is seriously wrong with HDTune 3.50 (and I suspect HDTach, actually). What exactly is that striped set made up of, which drives, and how shortstroked are they?

Using a software stripe in Windows 7 Beta 1 the other day I eeked out ~226MB/s average read speed and ~218MB/s average write speed on the 2x80GB Velociraptors - that's software striping and not hardware too. Access time showed about 7.3 ms, and the burst was ~490MB/s soooo... and the 80's are faster than the 300's by nature of them being shortstroked the proper way. :D

I still want to get a proper striping controller so I can do actual testing of 'em at 2x5GB, 2x10GB, 2x20GB, and 2x40GB just to see what these little screamers can do...
 
That is with two 640's short-stroke to 300 gigs. Write back cache on. Strip size is 64kb

I may try 4 in a Raid 0 over the weekend.
 
SiG357 said:
That is with two 640's short-stroke to 300 gigs. Write back cache on. Strip size is 64kb

I may try 4 in a Raid 0 over the weekend.
Click to expand...

So you shortstroked 'em all the way down to 160GB each? 2x160 = 320GB as listed...

If that's using an Intel ICH chipset (which I'm sure it is since it says Intel Raid 0 Volume) you might try 128KB for stripe size: I've seen tons and tons of posts across a ton of forums and even some documentation from Intel itself that says they recommend 128KB stripes. Until I get a proper setup I can't verify that, but... the evidence that I've noted with benchmarks and tons of people commenting on it is that the 128KB stripe is better/best for Intel ICH RAID setups.

Could make a difference...
 
ND40oz said:
That burst rate is pretty damn high and the transfer rates are higher then some 15k SAS benches I've seen.

http://www.realredraider.com/vbulletin/showpost.php?p=15502&postcount=73
Click to expand...

Which means it's inaccurate. Since they're SATA II drives, the maximum speed anyone is going to see burst mode off two SATA II mode controller channels working together is roughly 550MB/s, max. Theoretical max is of course about 600MB/s but that ain't gonna happen unless it's RAM that's feeding the channels.

So whenever I see extremely high burst rates like that from just 2 drives (it would require 6+ drives to get a burst rate like that, roughly 220MB/s off each to give you 1.25GB/s bursts) so, it's a fairly well-known glitch in HDTune they've never been able to work out for some reason. Version 3.50 has some nice new additions, especially the Random Access testing, but... that burst is so wrong it's not even funny. :)

S3th13 said:
Short Stroking? Isn't that just creating a smaller partition?
Click to expand...

Yep, it means purposely limiting the amount of travel the drive heads would move to keep the transfer rates very high and access times very low = faster benchmarks. True shortstroking is done when the drives are manufactured by physically limiting them to a specific capacity on the platters.

"Fake" shortstroking is the practice of doing the partitioning so it's smaller and leaner, but most people that do such a thing also continue using the rest of the capacity of the drive for other partitions, which kills the entire idea of shortstroking it for performance in the first place.
 
Joe Average said:
So you shortstroked 'em all the way down to 160GB each? 2x160 = 320GB as listed...

If that's using an Intel ICH chipset (which I'm sure it is since it says Intel Raid 0 Volume) you might try 128KB for stripe size: I've seen tons and tons of posts across a ton of forums and even some documentation from Intel itself that says they recommend 128KB stripes. Until I get a proper setup I can't verify that, but... the evidence that I've noted with benchmarks and tons of people commenting on it is that the 128KB stripe is better/best for Intel ICH RAID setups.

Could make a difference...
Click to expand...

I chose 300 gig, not sure why it says 320.

I tried both, didn't see much difference. But thought that most of the files were smaller. So went with a smaller stripe.

I turned off write back cache. Look better?


raid0-1.jpg
 
Ugh... something ain't right in there, not sure what but, something just ain't right. If I can do faster than that with software based striping in Windows 7, geez... you should be able to get closer to what I was getting. That burst speed should be way higher, like at least 400MB/s. Are you using the latest Intel chipset and Storage Matrix drivers, and have you confirmed 100% for sure that the drives are working in SATA II mode?

Try this if those drives aren't used for anything else: break it down to 2 x 40GB (meaning create an 80GB RAID 0 array, 40GB off each drive, and nothing else). That would give you basically the same "size" of an array where I got those numbers I mentioned earlier, and see what happens.

If possible, try setting up a software based stripe solution with Disk Management (and not using the Intel RAID controller) and see what happens. I'm curious now...
 
Here's a comparison between the two:

Seagate 160
seagate160idebon1.png


WD 640AAKS
wd640aakshv3.png


Ignore the CPU usage as I have DC programs and such running in the background at all times. I'm also not sure what's up with the high access times but I don't seem to notice any problems with them. The WD640AAKS is my OS drive so that might have something to do with the access times. The Seagate test was done on Vista64 with the crappy JMicron IDE controller on my motherboard. I would have retested it but I just pulled the drives out a few hours ago to make room for a couple 1TB drives. The WD test was just done on Win7 and it's running off the Intel ICH9R southbridge.

I would definitely say the WD640AAKS is worth the money. It's an extremely quick drive. I switched to it from a Seagate 7200.11 500 gig drive and the difference was noticeable. Going from the 160 gig Seagate the difference would be night and day at the least. The Seagate 160 gig 7200.7 drives were really nice back in the day but they just don't cut it as a primary drive nowadays.

 
Are you just talking about the burst speed?

Yes, Intel drivers are the lastest. The drives are in Sata II mode.

I'll see if I can try those suggestions this weekend.

Joe Average said:
Ugh... something ain't right in there, not sure what but, something just ain't right. If I can do faster than that with software based striping in Windows 7, geez... you should be able to get closer to what I was getting. That burst speed should be way higher, like at least 400MB/s. Are you using the latest Intel chipset and Storage Matrix drivers, and have you confirmed 100% for sure that the drives are working in SATA II mode?

Try this if those drives aren't used for anything else: break it down to 2 x 40GB (meaning create an 80GB RAID 0 array, 40GB off each drive, and nothing else). That would give you basically the same "size" of an array where I got those numbers I mentioned earlier, and see what happens.

If possible, try setting up a software based stripe solution with Disk Management (and not using the Intel RAID controller) and see what happens. I'm curious now...
Click to expand...
 
SmokeRngs said:
Here's a comparison between the two:

Ignore the CPU usage as I have DC programs and such running in the background at all times. I'm also not sure what's up with the high access times but I don't seem to notice any problems with them. The WD640AAKS is my OS drive so that might have something to do with the access times. The Seagate test was done on Vista64 with the crappy JMicron IDE controller on my motherboard. I would have retested it but I just pulled the drives out a few hours ago to make room for a couple 1TB drives. The WD test was just done on Win7 and it's running off the Intel ICH9R southbridge.

I would definitely say the WD640AAKS is worth the money. It's an extremely quick drive. I switched to it from a Seagate 7200.11 500 gig drive and the difference was noticeable. Going from the 160 gig Seagate the difference would be night and day at the least. The Seagate 160 gig 7200.7 drives were really nice back in the day but they just don't cut it as a primary drive nowadays.

Click to expand...

Good. I hope 2 of the 6400s in Raid 0 will be even more of a difference over my 7200.7/8.

Would the fact that I bought the AALS versions give me any more performance?
 
SmokeRngs said:
. I'm also not sure what's up with the high access times but I don't seem to notice any problems with them. The WD640AAKS is my OS drive so that might have something to do with the access times.
Click to expand...

Did you check the AAM setting? One of my AAKS drives came with it set pretty low, when I went to max performance settings the access time dropped significantly.
 
S3th13 said:
Good. I hope 2 of the 6400s in Raid 0 will be even more of a difference over my 7200.7/8.

Would the fact that I bought the AALS versions give me any more performance?
Click to expand...

It won't hurt. I have 4 of those drives and they are pretty fast.
 
VolvoR said:
HOLY CRAP...that's SLOW...
I just did these benchmarks this week...

Ask and you shall receive...
These are two WD640AAKS drives in RAID 0
SuperSpeedHDTuneBench.jpg


And just for reference, this is a 300gb Velociraptor
VRaptorBench2.jpg
Click to expand...

What raid controller are you using? Because I'll be using the onboard one.
 
Joe Average said:
Try this if those drives aren't used for anything else: break it down to 2 x 40GB (meaning create an 80GB RAID 0 array, 40GB off each drive, and nothing else). That would give you basically the same "size" of an array where I got those numbers I mentioned earlier, and see what happens.

If possible, try setting up a software based stripe solution with Disk Management (and not using the Intel RAID controller) and see what happens. I'm curious now...
Click to expand...


Here is one set up as a 80 gig

raid0-80
 
About what I expected, thanks. I've got one more day to either keep this Gigabyte board or return it tomorrow and grab something with the ICH10R so I can do some more advanced setups and testing... I just hate tearing this machine apart right now because it runs so damned well. :)

But, since my basic hobby is and has been hardware testing and schtuffz for a long time, most likely I'll be gutting it out later on tonight and boxing it up for return to Fry's... bleh.
 
S3th13 said:
What raid controller are you using? Because I'll be using the onboard one.
Click to expand...

Judging by the array name that HDTune picked up, "Super Speed", I'm guessing it's the DriveXpert controller that Asus likes to use. That controller sucks compared to the ICH-R chipsets.
 
Hah. That Dell WD6400AALS got delayed until March 13th. WTF?

I canceled and picked them up off another site for $150 with 2-day shipping.
 
New to hard drives scene , You guys are talking about aaks series is the 7500aaks good compared to the 640 yall speak of?
 
tvdang7 said:
New to hard drives scene , You guys are talking about aaks series is the 7500aaks good compared to the 640 yall speak of?
Click to expand...

The 7500aaks is not as fast as the 6400aaks. The 750 has an additional platter and therefore lower platter density. The 640 drive with 2 333GB platters is IMO the best price/performance drive out there. The 500GB Seagate 7200.12 is a close second. I really want to see the 1TB 7200.12 drives when they come out - 2 500GB platters ought to be pretty fast.
 
I tested both the 640 and the 750. The 640 are faster. That is why they ended up being my backup drives
 
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