JAFFA

I haven't seen much written up anywhere about it but Western Digital are making the switch to 160Gb platters from the old 125Gb platters for their new range. The WD5000KS is a 4 x 125Gb Platter design whereas the new WD5000AAKS is a 3 x 160GB platter design. The benefit of a larger capacity platter is that you can use less platters for the same capacity and in turn there should be a speed increase and supposedly a reduction in heat output.

The PCB is entirely different to the old version and the only other noticable difference is the absence of a molex power connector which can sometimes be a handy thing to have, but that's progress I suppose.

Here are a few Benchies I ran to see what had changed if anything:-

Intel E4300 @ 3.2GHz
Asus P5WDG2 WS Pro (ICH7R controller)
2 x Samsung Spinpoint 2504c RAID0 (OS)
1 x Western Digital WD5000KS - Connected to ICH7R
1 x Western Digital WD5000AAKS - Connected to ICH7R
OS used - XP Media Center Edition 2005

WD5000KS HDTach 32mb


WD5000AAKS HDTach 32mb


WD5000KS vs WD5000AAKS HDTach 32mb


For comparisons sake I also included HDTune benchmarks to verify the findings in HDTach:-

WD5000KS HDTune


WD5000AAKS HDTune



As you can see there is a noticeable speed increase with the move to 160Gb platters, but there is no discernable drop in temperatures. Overall I'm fairly impressed and especially being as the WD5000AAKS is £25 cheaper than the WD5000KS at just £89 including tax.




Maff

eva2000

Wow that's a very substantial improvement from platters between disks

Coincidently, I just setup raid 0 on my Asus 680i striker since it has 6x SATAII ports i can transfer my OS disk to a 4x SATA raid 0 array for some pcmark05 benching for the team

JAFFA

Yup pretty surprising the Sustained Transfer Rate is up approximately 20%, fair enough when on the slowest part of the disk that advantage drops off to almost 0%, but it's still good to see.

Looking forward to you PCMark05 adventures eva, I assume thats with Seagates .10's in RAID0 ?

eva2000

Nah 4x 80GB Hitachi 7K80 SATAII raid 0 is alot faster for pcmark05

JAFFA

oooh, hehe nice!

Jammer

That sustained transfer rate is up there with the Raptors!!! Sure the random access is not but for single user computing you will not know the diff between this and a Raptor. Looks like some dam fine drives u have there Mafflich.

EDIT: Just ran a HDTach test on my Raptor 36GB and got STR of 72.0MB/s It looks like these new WD drives may be quicker than the Seagate 7200.10's

JAFFA

I couldn't say whether they are any better or worse than the 7200.10's Jammerlito dude.

The only reason I didn't go for the 7200.10's is because I heard they are quite loud when seeking and this drive is going in the HTPC which needs to be silent and WD are always really quiet compared to other manufacturers... it'd be fair to say I'm a fanboi hehe. In a way it's a bit of a shame though because this drive will never get used for anything other than mass storage, but I can't help but wonder how 4 of these lil critters would do in a matrix raid setup.

Jammer

I have a 7200.10 and there are actually 2 types. You can distinguish the two by the different motor. One motor has pink glue on it and the other white. The motor with the white glue is actually quieter. But yes you're 100% correct the WD KS series is definitely quieter than the Seagates.