*NEW* 150Gb Raptors

[maranello168]

Ah. Now that IS a very good point.

 

[smids]

doesn't matter about SATA II being useful or not, it's all about marketing.

And SATA-II isn't all it makes out to be - see my thread on SATA-II explained - marketing is everything as you rightly said.

 

[mysticsniper]

This is great news, I will deffo be upgrading my 74GB Raptor in the next few months.

Thanks for the heads up

 

[Cyber-Mav]

how many platters does this 150 gig drive use? im assuming its not a single platter drive like the 74 gig version?

 

[Combat squirrel]

well 74gig x 2 is 148gigs, maybe its that ? or a new 75 gig platter x2 in the disk itself

 

[The Halk]

From what I read elsewhere they've added more platters rather than making the platters larger.

I expect we'll see reviews of these drives before they arrive at OcUK.

 

[smids]

how many platters does this 150 gig drive use? im assuming its not a single platter drive like the 74 gig version?

74GB are two 36GB platters IIRC.

 

[The Halk]

I think we've pretty much said all there is to say about these until we see the reviews. Unless they do increase speed, or reduce noise though, they won't sell many. Nobody buys a Raptor for capacity, and a 250GB drive is buttons in comparison.

 

[Cyber-Mav]

no i think the 74 gig drive is a single platter drive since its transfer rate hits over 70megs a sec on the outer edges of the platter and at 10k rpm a 36 gig platter can't physically have a transferrate that matches the 74gig raptors.

 

[The Halk]

no i think the 74 gig drive is a single platter drive since its transfer rate hits over 70megs a sec on the outer edges of the platter and at 10k rpm a 36 gig platter can't physically have a transferrate that matches the 74gig raptors.

On the big thread on the storage review forums, people had said 4 platters for the new 150GB drive and that the 74GB had 2 platters. No offence, but the guys on those forums are likely to either get it right first time, or spot someone making a mistake. You're right about the speed difference, but I think that's not related to greater data density.

 

[Cyber-Mav]

yes i just checked it out on WD website. the 74gig raptor uses 2 platters.

 

[The Halk]

Adwhitworth, I think you and Gibbo should get on the phone to Western Digital, and get a review drive in so you can bench it and generate a pile of pre-orders

 

[Cyber-Mav]

whats the price of this drive to be expected at?

 

[The Halk]

As stated above, at least a couple of times, twice the price of the 74GB.

 

[Cyber-Mav]

hah, twice the price!! id rather go with the WD 400 gig raid edition drive.

 

[The Halk]

What's special about the raid edition drive? (Saves me googling and reading reviews!)

 

[geeza]

cant they just reduce the price of scsi drives and cards?

 

[max power]

for those of us using our inferiror dollar, that price comes to almost $400. now while there a lot of enthusiasts here in the us we still have a bit of common sence. for that price i would rather go get myself a nice scsi u320
http://www.unityelectronics.com/product-product_id/1432 (u.s. only company)

so i cant see a lot of people spending that kind of money on a 150gb drive.

 

[xolotl]

cant they just reduce the price of scsi drives and cards?

WD don't make an SCSI drives. The raptors are their competition to other companies SCSI drives.

 

[smids]

It seems a lot of Scandanavian retailers/reviewers are listing the drive as SATA-II with NCQ 16MB cache. How true this is, I don't know. Might be interested in this drive though, and perhaps they will upgrade the 74GB to a new revision - i.e. 16MB NCQ/TCQ and 300MB/s.