Western Digital HDD or SSD?

This is for my gf's laptop, she's also heading into video editing, production development and graphic design field so I'll probably be looking at something large. I heard great things about Western Digital's Scorpio Black series but my friend keeps telling me that you should definitely get the WD VelociRaptor Drive, but when I go online to their website I couldn't find it.

Eventually, I was able to discover it on NewEgg but it was like $260 which is okay because I don't mind paying for performance as long as it's lasting. Now my question is should I get this drive or make a push for an SSD and if so does anyone know which one I should get (SATA II/SATA III)?

 

VelociRaptor Drives are not Laptop Drives.... they say a 2.5 in drive with 3.5 .... If you need the performance grab a ssd but more then likey you will need more space for storage.... If she doesnt use the cd drive you could place the orginal drive in the optical drive bay via an adapter...

 

As stated, you cannot use the Velociraptor on a laptop for many reasons (size, power requirements, cooling, etc.) and the best option is the SSD/HDD combo replacing the ODD. Don't look at interface for the SSD since that alone makes no contribution to performance. If you're laptop can handle SATA/600, then you can consider a SATA/600 drive but a SATA/300 drive can perform just as well. Most users will not notice a difference between say the Intel 320 and Intel 510 drives, other than in benchmarks. Unfortunately, the most important metric for comparing SSDs is random R/W speed and that is not published by the manufacturer. These speeds typically do not even saturate SATA/150, but are orders of magnitude higher than HDDs (along with access times), which make the biggest impact on real life speed.

 

For video editing and production, I agree with Texan, get a SSD, then buy caddy and put it in ODD bay with WD Black for storage. With video work you will see a huge improvement in times on SSD, run your OS and those programs from SSD. Also, since she will most likely be using large files, she will see a huge boost from the sequential speeds of an SSD. Night and day compared to any hdd for your laptop.

 

indeed. map her user folders to the hdd in the drive bay, and let the deskop folder stay on the ssd. then tell her what ever she works on shall be on the desktop, and then once finished, she can move it to her user folder. so all the stuff she works on is on the very fast ssd.

just set that up for my dad with a c300 128gb for video editing and stuff, and (not yet done) 6tb of save storage to put all the done stuff onto. (a desktop, not a laptop)

 

Thanks all for your input, I didn't realize Velociraptors were only Desktop Drives, normally when I see 2.5, my natural instinct is to associate it with laptops. The size is purely the difference maker at the moment, because I started looking at suitable replacements, such as the OCZ Agility 2 (480GB) SSD, it's well into the mid-$1200s or more, which is fine but I don't know which one I should get though? People tell me I should get the Patriot SSD, but I'm not sure where I can go to find reasonable comparisons/reviews for the SSD.

 

If you need stability nab a Intel drive... For speed however check into the new vertex 3 drives or corsair's drives or even Western digitals drives

 

Vertex? I'll have to take a look, I don't want to spend a ridiculous amount of money on this as within a year I could just see all of these prices taking a nosedive from what they are today. I might do something along the lines of getting a mSATA drive and then using it in conjunction with a 7200RPM drive, perhaps the Momentus XT? Would that be a better solution for the time being?

 

I Suggest a Western Digital Scorpio Black 750 if you want a mechanical drive, but if you can have two drives, then get an SSD also for the Operating System, and Programs.

 

What laptop does she have? How much space does she need for her OS and programs? Most users can do with a 32 or 64GB SSD for OS/programs and a 750GB-1TB HDD for storage in the ODD slot (depending on if you have a 9.5mm or 12.7mm drive).

 

You need a large drive but don't want to pay too much, so SSD's will be out for you. Most people with SSD's get a small system drive coupled with a second HDD for their music/video files that take up a lot of space.

If you can't be bothered to replace your DVD with a second HDD (or you need the DVD), the next best option is the 500GB Momentus XT Hybrid from seagate. It's no SSD, but it's faster than a conventional HDD.

 

At the moment, all she has is the standard 250GB @ 5400RPM as her working boot drive, so I guess pretty much anything is an improvement.

At the moment she currently has the Dell Latitude E6520 that she was able to get through her company. It's a very efficient laptop but the issue is that she decided that it'd be better if I just got her a HDD instead of paying Dell boat loads of money for semi-decent HDD/SSD. So she's currently pushing the 250GB @ 5400RPM HDD that comes standard with the laptop.

I really was hoping to see if the Dell Latitude E6520 would be able to utilize mSATA, specifically the Intel 310 Soda Creek series which would eliminate pretty much any issue she would have as I could get the 80GB PCI-E one. Another alternative that I've gotten around to thinking is that her laptop comes with hot-swappable e-modular bay which can hold any HDD/SSD that is of the 2.5" form factor. I may get the WD Scorpio Black 750GB and put it there instead.

The thing is she's going to be using a great deal of high-end video editing programs such as Avid Media Composer (kind of gives problems because it requires there to be at least 80GB free at any given time, I think), Adobe Premier, Sony Vegas bundled with lots of other programs (Adobe Creative Suite, Corel Suite, Vue Infinite, Lightwave and etc.) Not all at once but at the moment her HDD is 75% full and she's just gotten into it for about a week or two. Perhaps paying almost a grand for an SSD isn't bad idea at this point then right?

That maybe true, I would've gotten the Momentus XT for my laptop but the issue is that it's the first of it's kind, so I tend to usually stay away from products like that. Even reading upon the compliments and complaints the drive has gotten, I must admit that at this point, it's probably better if I just wait for a much better drive to present itself.

 

An SSD is a luxury item for people willing to both pay for and make sacrifices for performance. Just like a Ferrari.

If you want an idea of the kind of performance improvement you can expect from an SSD, check out the links to some YouTube videos in my signature. One of them is a direct comparision between SSD vs HDD on the same bootup + applocation load process.

 

I'd recommend that you use Western Digital HDD if you want long term reliability in laptops. My Western Digital HDD has lived for more than 3 years (it came from my dead Dell Inspiron 1525 to my T61). I would not recommend that you use high capacity Western Digital HDD for desktops (1TB, 2TB, etc) because the many reviews (more than a few) on those drives claim that their broken upon arrival or they die within weeks. If you get a SSD, the most reliable SSD would be the Intel 320 series (w/ TRIM support).