Western Digital Raptor 150GB SATA2 NCQ

[malware]

Good Christmas news for WD Raptor fans. New Raptors with 150GB capacity are expected to be released. That's not a press release statement on the part of Western Digital Technologies but Germany-based online store Alternate.de is currently offering its clients to pre-order WD1500AD hard disk drive, also known as Raptor 150GB. The new Raptor drives have 16MB cache, average seek time of 4.5ms, 10 000rpm motor, support for native command queuing (NCQ) technology and also has SerialATA-300 interface and promises to offer leading performance. The new Raptor hard drive from WD will not only be an interesting purchase for gaming enthusiasts and workstation users, but will also be a valuable option for servers that require high performance. The new hard disk drive will be available in January, 2006. The price for pre-order is approximately $380 (€319).

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[mnm222876]

Why don't they make them 15K RPM? It's not like they can't. 15K SCSI's have been around for many years now. They used SCSI 10K motors in the 36 and 74 Raptors, why don't they just use 15K's? Lame.

I have two of the 74GB Raptors in Raid 0 and they're pretty fast. If the benchmarks on the new 150's is much faster than the 74's maybe I'll upgrade. Too bad they won't be 15K. That would be sweet.

 

[Darksaber]

Well, this may sound a bit crazy. But the 10k already have passive heatsinks, and are pretty loud. the 15k SCSI drives are usually for the Server market, not for home use and as the Raptors are aimed at the die hard home user / workstation (for what ever use that may be) 15k drives don't seem to be a sweet spot for price / performance...

10k drives are way to expensive for my taste already (200gb 7200RPM costs around 100€s, and a 150GB 10000RPM over 300€s?). Imagine what a 150GB S-ATA II drive with 15k kosts...I would guess around 500-600€ at least ey?...

But thats just my opinion here *G*.

cheers
DS

 

[wtf8269]

Hmm tempting but too much money. Probably wouldn't see a huge performance increase over RAIDed 74gb raptors. Unless you RAID two 150gb's, but that would cost a bit much now wouldn't it?

 

[mnm222876]

Well, this may sound a bit crazy. But the 10k already have passive heatsinks, and are pretty loud. the 15k SCSI drives are usually for the Server market, not for home use and as the Raptors are aimed at the die hard home user / workstation (for what ever use that may be) 15k drives don't seem to be a sweet spot for price / performance...

10k drives are way to expensive for my taste already (200gb 7200RPM costs around 100€s, and a 150GB 10000RPM over 300€s?). Imagine what a 150GB S-ATA II drive with 15k kosts...I would guess around 500-600€ at least ey?...

But thats just my opinion here *G*.

cheers
DS

First of all, you are obviously not familiar with Raptor drives as they are cooler and quieter than most 7200RPM drives. Second, I know what SCSI drives are for as I have two servers, my point was that WD used motors from 10K RPM SCSI drives in the Raptors so using 15K's instead would not raise the production costs too much. Third, these drives are not for storage so you don't need massive amounts of space instead they are for the OS and programs and so you want speed. Fourth, the new 150GB is being sold from that retailer as a pre-release pre-order. As soon as they come out and every retailer has them the price will quickly drop to about $250-280.

I think you have a lot of misconceptions about these drives. Maybe you should head on over to http://www.storagereview.com/ and educate yourself.


wtf8269, you will see a substantial increase in performance because the current raptors use an IDE to SATA adaptor and they are not true SATA. They also have an 8MB cache and no NCQ support. The new Raptor will have true SATA II 3.0GB/s hardware and a 16MB cache and NCQ support. When the first 36GB Raptor came out 3 years ago, it was MUCH faster than 7200RPM drives at the time. 7200RPM drives that have SATA II, 16MB caches, and NCQ now have almost caught up to the first generation raptors. Now with the new generation raptors getting all those features I think they will make another major leap. One 150 raptor will probably be a 25% increase over one 74 raptor. And yes, I would go Raid 0 even with the cost.

 

[tony929292]

i cant wait to get them (2) and settup up an array its so hard to keep up just bulit my new comupter and it all ready time to upgrade

new hard drive -true sata II ncq 16mb cache raptors
new mobo- probably will go with the new amd scokets
new cpu 940 socket amd
new memory ddr3
new gpu ati or nividia g71 with ddr4
when all that hit the market i will be upgrading
oh yeah,
new os vista 64