NEW 150Gb Raptors

benjo plz. · 26 Dec 2005 at 14:15

tomos said:
i hope they dont bother trying, much better to move to solid state drives

Not really, because at the moment solid state stops working after a certain number of writes, until we get round that problem we won't see anything worth having.

beh · 26 Dec 2005 at 18:14

Not keen on the idea tbh. As many people have pointed out, 150gb is simply too big for a "system" drive, it makes very expensive storage for anything else. The rather old 74gb raptors are still pretty much ahead of latest sata drives despite the ide to sata bridge thing. Making them native sata and perhaps adding ncq isn't going to make a noticeable leap in performance, it was always the 10k rpm that made it stand out. Only worthy addition would be 16mb cache.

benjo plz. · 27 Dec 2005 at 00:00

Problem is programs are getting bigger, meaning drives have to be bigger, 74gb is NOT big enough by today's standards.

WJA96 · 27 Dec 2005 at 08:43

Phnom_Penh said:
Problem is programs are getting bigger, meaning drives have to be bigger, 74gb is NOT big enough by today's standards.

What program is it exactly that you can't run on a 74GB HDD?

The problem is that people are storing all their lives (music, video, pictures) on HDD and that's what's filling them up.

74Gb is plenty for the type of drive it is.

tomos · 27 Dec 2005 at 11:04

personally, i think the 36 gig drive is ok. i always put all other files on another drive so the 36 is fine for windows and some progs/games

only went for the 74gig since its faster

wish the platters they used were denser too in the new drives

Duke · 27 Dec 2005 at 12:25

74GB is generally ok for Windows/Program Files/Games, but the problem is that the other drives have caught up in transfer rate and are not very far behind now.

Hopefully the new 150 will put it way ahead again.

Slackworth · 28 Dec 2005 at 00:35

The 150GB as far as I know will have all the SATA-II features such as NCQ, 16MB cache but without the 3.0Gbs transfer speed. I shall speak to WD as soon as they are back from their Xmas holidays to find out more.

smids · 28 Dec 2005 at 01:29

adwhitworth said:
The 150GB as far as I know will have all the SATA-II features such as NCQ, 16MB cache but without the 3.0Gbs transfer speed. I shall speak to WD as soon as they are back from their Xmas holidays to find out more.

Thanks adwhitworth. Useful info - though extremely odd why WD haven't gone for 300mb/s seeing as the raptors run at 128mb/s when RAID0'ed so anyone thinking of RAID0'ing these faster drives will probably hit 140-150MB/s maxing out the channel. Add inefficiencies into the equation, and it's possibly limiting them.

The Halk · 28 Dec 2005 at 01:44

smids said:
Thanks adwhitworth. Useful info - though extremely odd why WD haven't gone for 300mb/s seeing as the raptors run at 128mb/s when RAID0'ed so anyone thinking of RAID0'ing these faster drives will probably hit 140-150MB/s maxing out the channel. Add inefficiencies into the equation, and it's possibly limiting them.

Will that matter though Smids? It's the controllers bandwidth not the drives that matters for RAID0?

As long as the controller on the drive can cope with that particular drives bandwidth, then it's up to the controller to be able to cope with several drives supplying that at once. Well, I'm thinking it'll be that anyway

smids · 28 Dec 2005 at 10:09

The Halk said:
Will that matter though Smids? It's the controllers bandwidth not the drives that matters for RAID0?

As long as the controller on the drive can cope with that particular drives bandwidth, then it's up to the controller to be able to cope with several drives supplying that at once. Well, I'm thinking it'll be that anyway

You are right, I think. It was late, I was tired and not thinking properly

.

However, they will still be slightly slower I should think, as the burst of each drive would be capped at 150MB/s, whereas a 300Mb/s drive can burst higher. It would make a very small difference but one all the same.

Sputnik II · 28 Dec 2005 at 13:28

smids said:
However, they will still be slightly slower I should think, as the burst of each drive would be capped at 150MB/s, whereas a 300Mb/s drive can burst higher. It would make a very small difference but one all the same.

I doubt that any currently available(or in the near future) drive would be capped by the 150MB/s interface. Try running HDtach on some hard drives to see how slow they really are.

The Halk · 28 Dec 2005 at 21:28

adwhitworth said:
The 150GB as far as I know will have all the SATA-II features such as NCQ, 16MB cache but without the 3.0Gbs transfer speed. I shall speak to WD as soon as they are back from their Xmas holidays to find out more.

I can feel some Raptors coming my way when I get my annual bonus...

Or maybe even my quarterly, if it's big enough.

mosfet · 28 Dec 2005 at 22:19

Any idea when these are hitting the UK? They're available on Europe etailers already, not just pre-order. €300.

What kind of price drops can we expect on the current generation 36 and 74 gig drives?

smids · 29 Dec 2005 at 11:09

Sputnik II said:
I doubt that any currently available(or in the near future) drive would be capped by the 150MB/s interface. Try running HDtach on some hard drives to see how slow they really are.

I know - it's the burst I was referring to. The burst would still be capped, and although it is a small thing, it is still slower than a 300mb/s drive. The average read for a drive is 55-60mb/s, and a raptor 74gb about 70mb/s.

Sputnik II · 29 Dec 2005 at 20:45

smids said:
I know - it's the burst I was referring to. The burst would still be capped, and although it is a small thing, it is still slower than a 300mb/s drive. The average read for a drive is 55-60mb/s, and a raptor 74gb about 70mb/s.

I was talking about everything including burst. The only drive I've seen that exceeds the 130mb/s is a seagate cheetah.
I'm pretty sure that WD would have gone to a faster interface should they have found that they were getting anywhere near the limits of 150mb/s.
I would be very surprised if the burst speed on a raptor got anywhere near to exceeding 120mb/s.

Cyber-Mav · 29 Dec 2005 at 20:46

current prices on 36 and 74 gig raptors will still be the same im guessing. tese are drives that seem to hold thier value.

max power · 29 Dec 2005 at 22:45

isnt amazing that after all of these YEARS of these drives being out and despite their relatively small size, western digital has been able to sustain these high prices. for just a few dollars more than a 74gb drive u
can get a 400gb drive

smids · 29 Dec 2005 at 23:15

max power said:
isnt amazing that after all of these YEARS of these drives being out and despite their relatively small size, western digital has been able to sustain these high prices. for just a few dollars more than a 74gb drive u
can get a 400gb drive

I really don't see your point. The performance of the 74GB drive is unparalelled. The high price is for the reliability and speed of a drive which performs almost on par with SCSI but at a consumer level/price range, even though it is the top end of the market. Yes, a 74GB will set you back a good £115 but you do get what you pay for. If someone needs the performance, and there is an obvious demand for it, then how can they not sustain the price. The drives are expensive, yet cheap compared to an SCSI drive/system especially given that they run on a standard SATA interface.

Sputnik II · 29 Dec 2005 at 23:24

max power said:
isnt amazing that after all of these YEARS of these drives being out and despite their relatively small size, western digital has been able to sustain these high prices. for just a few dollars more than a 74gb drive u
can get a 400gb drive

You get what you pay for basically. The raptor is high performance high reliability with a 5 year warranty. Other 400Gb drives would have shorter warranty's with a much slower read / write speed.

The Halk · 30 Dec 2005 at 03:14

max power said:
isnt amazing that after all of these YEARS of these drives being out and despite their relatively small size, western digital has been able to sustain these high prices. for just a few dollars more than a 74gb drive u
can get a 400gb drive

They don't have any competition. Nobody else makes drives that perform to the same level as the Raptor, if they did, we'd see cheaper prices I'm sure.

It's only now that 7.2K drives are starting to beat Raptors in some benchmarks, add the 16MB cache and it's way ahead with just that, add NCQ too and it's even further ahead, and that's assuming that WD haven't coaxed any additional speed on top of that out of it.

*NEW* 150Gb Raptors

NEW 150Gb Raptors