New Raptor Review

Netvyper said:
I've got 1tb disks in my fileserver, thats fine. What I need is a well performing, but not ridiculous on noise/heat disk for windows/games.

WD have hit the capacity with this disk, but the speeds arent too far away to justify it, like they were when comparing the previous generation 7200rpm disks with raptors.

As for SAS, its a real hell of a price jump to that, you need a sensible controller; as well as some disks that are a bit more than a raptor... and if your going to justify the cost of the controller, you need more than a couple of disks.
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The benefit to games is a couple of seconds off of loading times, that's all.
 
I tend to stick with the Storage review website for hard drive reviews. Not completely sure some of the others are that competent.

Not only does it use less power, generate less noise (Quite a bit) its a real decent upgrade.

I am not sure people should moan overly about the disk space. This is a primary drive, buy a cheap data drive for movies/music and what ever.
 
They did mention you get 2.5" for OEM and 3.5" for rest of us.

Also they did mention a Single Platter model later (could be using Perpendicular Recording).

(Somewhere in them reviews linked to above lol).

It would have been good to leave it 2.5" or else simply 3.5", not a housing thats not needed as its cooler and smaller than the Raptor X etc and they do not need a massive Heatsink.

They mention it will help noise also, well only if they made the join between the HDD and Heatsink from rubber or such with NO metal to metal contact (would not transfer heat then).

This would help peeps like me where GTX/Ultras are too long for PC case and you have had to Move the 3.5" HDD's

I ideally dreamt of a Single 100GB Platter using Perpendicular Recording to get about 200GB (not sure if thats rule of thumb) on it and a 15k Spindle Speed and 32MB of Cache (claims say it dont benefit much on a 7.2k HDD over 16MB).

If it was made in 2.5" form with some kind of adapter that took it up to 3.5" but used rubber to isolate HDD from adapter it would be quiet.
 
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This will be my next RAID 0 array until SSD comes down at reasonable prices. The 0.1ms access times is win but the price makes my eye bleed when I look at it :p
 
stoofa said:
Bah.
Give me a sub £100 1TB F1 any day of the week.
"Slower" in benchmarks, hardly so in the real world and over 3 times the capacity.

If you want to go fast then go the whole hog and look into SAS.
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Have you checked out the reviews?

SAS slower unless you spend BIG $$$
 
Looks nothing like an enthusiast product. I understand their need to satisfy both pc and workstation markets but would much prefer them to do a separate enthusiast version with 3.5" casing and clear window and leave the 2.5" version to server/workstation.

Read/write speed is nothing that impressive as well for those who are already running raid 0 systems.
 
Its $300 so why is it £258 here ?.

Ok I paid high launch price on Raptor X but it was WELL ahead of other HDD's at that time, this new drive is nothing special IMO.
 
It's because ocuk are making an enormous margin on them. Normal places will likely charge £200. $300 ~= £200 after tax, importing etc.
 
RAID 0 these for some serious gain will cost me a 500+ quid.

I think an SSD for 500quid is a better option at these prices.

There are places with very high performance SSDs for such price.

PS: why the 300GiG? Who is buying raptors for size!?
 
helmutcheese said:
Its $300 so why is it £258 here ?.

Ok I paid high launch price on Raptor X but it was WELL ahead of other HDD's at that time, this new drive is nothing special IMO.
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clocka said:
It's because ocuk are making an enormous margin on them. Normal places will likely charge £200. $300 ~= £200 after tax, importing etc.
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Incorrect. We are only going on the rough price WD are giving us at the moment. When the 6400AAKS was first released it was exactly the same price as the 750GB...stupid yes and hence why OcUK did not buy stock until we could source at the right price.
As with anything new if you are prepared to wait a bit longer for that initial rush then you get it cheaper.

We will of course try and get WD down in price and should have a more firm price in the next few days. Bear in mind that 2.5" drives are more expensive than their 3.5" counterparts (320GB around £70 on a 2.5" rather than £35 on a 3.5" format). The current Raptor X is still selling around £110 +VAT in the UK yet in the US, You can buy it for £88 (Plus any possible State Tax). It would be daft of WD to sell the drive at £150 as they're potentially going to kill their own 150GB sales. They could drop the price again to stop this but then it does damage further down the range at 74GB and 36GB.
 
Hmm I was tempted until I saw the price. I think I'll wait for that to drop quite a bit lol
 
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