Mini FAQ:
Official links:
Raptor x: http://www.westerndigital.com/en/products/products.asp?DriveID=190
Raptor 150g: http://www.westerndigital.com/en/products/Products.asp?DriveID=189
Raptor X site with flash graphics to wow gamers
http://www.wdraptorx.com/index.asp?bhjs=0
Raptor X Spec sheet: http://www.westerndigital.com/en/library/sata/2879-001164.pdf
Raptor 150g spec sheet: http://www.westerndigital.com/en/library/sata/2879-001165.pdf
Raptor X:
http://www.storagereview.com/articles/200601/WD1500ADFD_2.html
The raptor X only significant differance is a window on top of the drive (i.e. if you ever wanted to mod a hdd with a plexiglass cover). No other mechanical or firmware differance. The raptor x will be about $50 more. If I was thinking about modding a hdd to put a window on it, an additional $50 would be more than worth it to avoid the possability of destroying it with a minute particle of dust since you would have to ripp off the cover and put a piece of plexiglass on it.
If you aren't into modding, and and dont have a way to show it off (like a clear case) dont waste the extra $50.
One other differance is that the raptor X has an MTBF of 600,000 hours, while the normal raptor 150g has a MTBF of 1.2 million hours. However both have 24 hour burn in period and 5 year warranties. As mentioned by labgeek, we are talking around 70 years and 140 years MTBF, so I doubt that spec on the spec sheet will make a differance.
I am not aware of any differances besides these.
Pricing: The drive is the same price per gig as the 74g. The 74g is around $150, this is around $300. The X with the window is around $350
Storeagereview review
http://www.storagereview.com/articles/200601/WD1500ADFD_1.html
From the storagereview review, this drive is a SCREAMER. Totally crushes the raptor 74g. And in quite a number of benchmarks it matches or beats the SCSI 15k drives (except the multi user benchmarks, SCSI still holds the top ground there. And a heavy multitasking computer is NOT a multiuser one, as the storeagereview article says, a number of enthusiasts mistakenly believe they should be in the multi user category).
And the raptor 150g is especially good in the gaming benches. Unlike what some people think, this is not just a simple capacity upgrade with more platters. It has same number of platters as the 74g, and has quite a few technological improvements. I'm thinking that one of these would beat 2 of the 74g raided.
Some Specs and info (rpm, platters, seek time, and more):
This drive is the only non scsi drive to have an RPM above 7200. Its a 10,000 RPM drive. 2 Platters.
The drive has 16 megs of cache, and a 4.6ms seek time.
The drive supports the more standard NCQ instead of the old TCQ that the old raptors had.
It also supports a special raid feature (default is disabled, and it should remain off if you do not have this in a raid setup) to reduce the read time if it ever hits a bad sector, it wont retry forever. Time Limited Error Recovery (TLER) is the name of this feature.
Previous raptors have apparently used a PATA (ide) to SATA bridge internally. The 150g raptor now has a native SATA interface.
The drive DOES have both legacy 4 pin MOLEX power connector and the more modern SATA power connector (do NOT use both at once). But like all SATA desktop drives to date, it doesn't use the 3.3v portion of the SATA power connector, which means that a molex to SATA adapter will still work. Which is probably why no manufacture has yet used the 3.3v for desktop SATA (besides having to re-engineer the drive), they would instantly obsolete all power supplies without the special SATA connector that was fully wired, no molex to SATA adapter would work.
SATA I vs SATA 3g (often mistakenly called SATA II):
Someone mentioned an AT review on SATA 3g drives. However, that review is of old drives compared with new drives. Of course the new drives are better, they are better mechanically, higher platter densities, etc.
transfer rates from the storeagereview article:
http://www.storagereview.com/articles/200601/WD1500ADFD_3.html
At the moment, excluding the 150g raptor, no drives even come CLOSE to needing anything beyond 150meg/sec for sustained transfers. The raptors are the fastest transfer rates in non scsi drives, and the raptor 74g has transfer rates between 54 megs/sec and 72 megs/sec. This is not even HALF of the availible bandwidth of the SATA I interface.
A similar thing occured in IDE drives. A number of manufactures didn't even bother to change the interface on thier later IDE drives to ata 133, they left them at ata 100. Because they didn't use the extra bandwidth.
Now one valid reason for needing additional headroom in an interface is for burst transfers from a hdd (like from a cache transfer). But so far the sata 150meg interface hasn't seemed to hold any drives back.
And I have not seen any reviews that review a sata 3g drive in both a sata I and sata 3g controller that have shown any significant performance differance. If drives NEEDED a sata 3g interface, the differances when you plugged the SATA 3g drives into the SATA I and SATA 3g controllers should be immediate and obvious. This would be the only real way to determine if any drives need the SATA 3g interface. Deprive a SATA 3g drive of the SATA 3g interface and see if it slows down (and leave things such as NCQ off for the test so they dont confuse the issue).
Now there are additional technological differances in sata 3g, such as the NCQ feature. But NCQ often slows down single user performance (even a heavily multitasking single user), so this has not turned out to be an important performance feature to most users.
Now, if we talk specifically about the 150g raptor. This drive DOES come much closer to the sata I transfer barrier. It can approach up to an amazing 90 meg/sec transfer rate! This is getting unconfortably close (especially if you consider bursts) to the SATA 150 meg barrier. However, obviously WD decided they did not need to change the interface, so we have to trust them on this, that its not needed yet for the raptor. And if the additional BW is not needed for the fastest non scsi drive availible, its surely not required for any other SATA drives yet either (this supposition can be tested as mentioned above).
Here's a graph of some interface rates:
http://www.tomshardware.com/2006/02/06/...tor_xtends_performance_lead/page9.html
Notice how the raptor 150g and all the sata 3g drives they test are all right around 150mb/sec? The only one significantly higher is the raid setup, and its 150m/s drives.
(BTW, check out even the SCSI 15k drive transfer rates, even they max out at under 100 meg/sec. However, a higher BW interface is more important in SCSI with the multi user and the often much larger cache sizes on the more expensive SCSI controllers).
HOWEVER, I would still make sure to put SATA 3g on my required list of features when I'm purchasing a motherboard. Its likely if I plan on using it a few years, I WILL need the extra bandwidth at some point, probably for the next generation of raptors after this one. Even though IDE never came close to needing the fourth generation ata 133 interface, with the raptor 150g being so close to passing the 1st generation SATA already, I think that we will need SATA 3g sooner rather than later.
Official links:
Raptor x: http://www.westerndigital.com/en/products/products.asp?DriveID=190
Raptor 150g: http://www.westerndigital.com/en/products/Products.asp?DriveID=189
Raptor X site with flash graphics to wow gamers
http://www.wdraptorx.com/index.asp?bhjs=0
Raptor X Spec sheet: http://www.westerndigital.com/en/library/sata/2879-001164.pdf
Raptor 150g spec sheet: http://www.westerndigital.com/en/library/sata/2879-001165.pdf
Raptor X:
http://www.storagereview.com/articles/200601/WD1500ADFD_2.html
The raptor X only significant differance is a window on top of the drive (i.e. if you ever wanted to mod a hdd with a plexiglass cover). No other mechanical or firmware differance. The raptor x will be about $50 more. If I was thinking about modding a hdd to put a window on it, an additional $50 would be more than worth it to avoid the possability of destroying it with a minute particle of dust since you would have to ripp off the cover and put a piece of plexiglass on it.
If you aren't into modding, and and dont have a way to show it off (like a clear case) dont waste the extra $50.
One other differance is that the raptor X has an MTBF of 600,000 hours, while the normal raptor 150g has a MTBF of 1.2 million hours. However both have 24 hour burn in period and 5 year warranties. As mentioned by labgeek, we are talking around 70 years and 140 years MTBF, so I doubt that spec on the spec sheet will make a differance.
I am not aware of any differances besides these.
Pricing: The drive is the same price per gig as the 74g. The 74g is around $150, this is around $300. The X with the window is around $350
Storeagereview review
http://www.storagereview.com/articles/200601/WD1500ADFD_1.html
From the storagereview review, this drive is a SCREAMER. Totally crushes the raptor 74g. And in quite a number of benchmarks it matches or beats the SCSI 15k drives (except the multi user benchmarks, SCSI still holds the top ground there. And a heavy multitasking computer is NOT a multiuser one, as the storeagereview article says, a number of enthusiasts mistakenly believe they should be in the multi user category).
And the raptor 150g is especially good in the gaming benches. Unlike what some people think, this is not just a simple capacity upgrade with more platters. It has same number of platters as the 74g, and has quite a few technological improvements. I'm thinking that one of these would beat 2 of the 74g raided.
Some Specs and info (rpm, platters, seek time, and more):
This drive is the only non scsi drive to have an RPM above 7200. Its a 10,000 RPM drive. 2 Platters.
The drive has 16 megs of cache, and a 4.6ms seek time.
The drive supports the more standard NCQ instead of the old TCQ that the old raptors had.
It also supports a special raid feature (default is disabled, and it should remain off if you do not have this in a raid setup) to reduce the read time if it ever hits a bad sector, it wont retry forever. Time Limited Error Recovery (TLER) is the name of this feature.
Previous raptors have apparently used a PATA (ide) to SATA bridge internally. The 150g raptor now has a native SATA interface.
The drive DOES have both legacy 4 pin MOLEX power connector and the more modern SATA power connector (do NOT use both at once). But like all SATA desktop drives to date, it doesn't use the 3.3v portion of the SATA power connector, which means that a molex to SATA adapter will still work. Which is probably why no manufacture has yet used the 3.3v for desktop SATA (besides having to re-engineer the drive), they would instantly obsolete all power supplies without the special SATA connector that was fully wired, no molex to SATA adapter would work.
SATA I vs SATA 3g (often mistakenly called SATA II):
Someone mentioned an AT review on SATA 3g drives. However, that review is of old drives compared with new drives. Of course the new drives are better, they are better mechanically, higher platter densities, etc.
transfer rates from the storeagereview article:
http://www.storagereview.com/articles/200601/WD1500ADFD_3.html
At the moment, excluding the 150g raptor, no drives even come CLOSE to needing anything beyond 150meg/sec for sustained transfers. The raptors are the fastest transfer rates in non scsi drives, and the raptor 74g has transfer rates between 54 megs/sec and 72 megs/sec. This is not even HALF of the availible bandwidth of the SATA I interface.
A similar thing occured in IDE drives. A number of manufactures didn't even bother to change the interface on thier later IDE drives to ata 133, they left them at ata 100. Because they didn't use the extra bandwidth.
Now one valid reason for needing additional headroom in an interface is for burst transfers from a hdd (like from a cache transfer). But so far the sata 150meg interface hasn't seemed to hold any drives back.
And I have not seen any reviews that review a sata 3g drive in both a sata I and sata 3g controller that have shown any significant performance differance. If drives NEEDED a sata 3g interface, the differances when you plugged the SATA 3g drives into the SATA I and SATA 3g controllers should be immediate and obvious. This would be the only real way to determine if any drives need the SATA 3g interface. Deprive a SATA 3g drive of the SATA 3g interface and see if it slows down (and leave things such as NCQ off for the test so they dont confuse the issue).
Now there are additional technological differances in sata 3g, such as the NCQ feature. But NCQ often slows down single user performance (even a heavily multitasking single user), so this has not turned out to be an important performance feature to most users.
Now, if we talk specifically about the 150g raptor. This drive DOES come much closer to the sata I transfer barrier. It can approach up to an amazing 90 meg/sec transfer rate! This is getting unconfortably close (especially if you consider bursts) to the SATA 150 meg barrier. However, obviously WD decided they did not need to change the interface, so we have to trust them on this, that its not needed yet for the raptor. And if the additional BW is not needed for the fastest non scsi drive availible, its surely not required for any other SATA drives yet either (this supposition can be tested as mentioned above).
Here's a graph of some interface rates:
http://www.tomshardware.com/2006/02/06/...tor_xtends_performance_lead/page9.html
Notice how the raptor 150g and all the sata 3g drives they test are all right around 150mb/sec? The only one significantly higher is the raid setup, and its 150m/s drives.
(BTW, check out even the SCSI 15k drive transfer rates, even they max out at under 100 meg/sec. However, a higher BW interface is more important in SCSI with the multi user and the often much larger cache sizes on the more expensive SCSI controllers).
HOWEVER, I would still make sure to put SATA 3g on my required list of features when I'm purchasing a motherboard. Its likely if I plan on using it a few years, I WILL need the extra bandwidth at some point, probably for the next generation of raptors after this one. Even though IDE never came close to needing the fourth generation ata 133 interface, with the raptor 150g being so close to passing the 1st generation SATA already, I think that we will need SATA 3g sooner rather than later.