WD740GD (Yes, the new Raptors)

[randomlinh]

Originally posted by: Dormant
I don't understand why WD wants to make the Raptor drives bigger. 36GB is more than enough for an O.S. I think the other improvements to the Raptor drives is a wonderful idea though. The FDB and faster access times are more than welcome. The harddrive companies should be using their resources to design 500GB 5400RPM drives with 1meg of cache. We need more cheap Mass-storage solutions to share massive amounts of DIVX/Xvid movies. I figure I could fit all of my Movies on a half-terra no problem, but I can't afford $500 Canadian per 250gb. Think about how nice it would be if you could bring a terrabyte over to a friends place in a hot-swapable caddy and move 10 years worth of movies in one night!

i think you're missing the point... who is the raptor drive aimed at? not the general enthusiast public (altho it's nice to touch on the market). It's market is small servers and whatnot... speed, reliability, and able to beat out scsi in cost.

 

[Dormant]

>>>> And come on. $500 canadian is like, what, $3US?

LOL! Actually, our dollar is worth 76 cents to the American dollar. Around 4 years ago our dollar was hovering around 60 cents. Thanks Bush!

 

[mrgoblin]

Originally posted by: NFS4
293????

No way. I'll keep my two RAID-0 36GB Raptors

Now those raptors will be prime for my to buy. Who the hell would spend 300 on a drive before sata 2 comes?

 

[Dormant]

Re: lnguyen

I understand that these drives target the non-enthusiast market, however the fact remains that hard drives are a major bottleneck point on ALL PCs. I think the enthusiast market has embraced Raptor because traditional hard drives have been unable to keep up with the users desire to multitask. I spend the bulk of my 'downtime' on harddrive functions, processing power is hardly ever a concern to me and I only have an XP2000. I find my O.S. RAID 1 array has a difficult time playing Mp3s, burning CDs, Downloading w/emule & Bit torrent simultaneously.

 

[ucdbiendog]

Originally posted by: NFS4
293????

No way. I'll keep my two RAID-0 36GB Raptors

yah me too

 

[StraightPipe]

$500! I just got a 200GB WD from fleabay sealed and shipped for $135 USD (check the hot deals forum to get them closer to $160)

this raptor technology is great, eventially we'll make large drves with the speed too.

as far as HDD being the slowest tech on the PC, thats wrong, it's definately the networks. for example my gigbit is only pulling speeds like 250mbps but my RAID 0 drives can easily kick out 480-640mbps...

(yes I realize the gigbit should be able to get closer to 1000, but I dont see that happening on Win OS's)

 

[Excelsior]

Originally posted by: StraightPipe
$500! I just got a 200GB WD from fleabay sealed and shipped for $135 USD (check the hot deals forum to get them closer to $160)

this raptor technology is great, eventially we'll make large drves with the speed too.

as far as HDD being the slowest tech on the PC, thats wrong, it's definately the networks. for example my gigbit is only pulling speeds like 250mbps but my RAID 0 drives can easily kick out 480-640mbps...

(yes I realize the gigbit should be able to get closer to 1000, but I dont see that happening on Win OS's)

No, when people mean slowest tech on/in the PC they mean exactly that. Not networks or other outside technologies. Fact is, within a workstation, the hard drive is still the weakest link.

 

[Nebor]

Originally posted by: StraightPipe
$500! I just got a 200GB WD from fleabay sealed and shipped for $135 USD (check the hot deals forum to get them closer to $160)

this raptor technology is great, eventially we'll make large drves with the speed too.

as far as HDD being the slowest tech on the PC, thats wrong, it's definately the networks. for example my gigbit is only pulling speeds like 250mbps but my RAID 0 drives can easily kick out 480-640mbps...

(yes I realize the gigbit should be able to get closer to 1000, but I dont see that happening on Win OS's)

Gigabit ethernet is capable of speeds far greater than hard drives allow. Hard drives are the slowest part because they're mechanical in nature.

 

[Matthias99]

146GB 10KRPM SCSI drives have been available for a while, and they're looking to go up to like 343 or something in the next year. However, if you think the 74GB Raptors are bad... 146GB/10KRPM ones start at about $600, but I think the Raptors are actually a bit faster than those.

There's also native Fibre Channel drives (well over $600 for 73GB), if you really have money to burn.

 

[Slash621]

by the time they have 200gb 10Krpm they'l have 36gb in 20K rpm and i'll be buying that instead LOL

 

[SUOrangeman]

Well, I consider myself a power user with a good number of apps in play. I currently have 6 OSes installed on my Raptor. That's 3GB for FreeBSD, 2GB For Win2K Server, 4GB for WinXP Pro (my main OS), 2GB for Win2K Pro, 2Gb for WinME, and 4GB for Linux (currently Mandrake 9.2). On top of that, I think I've even got 4GB space dedicated to personal files. And I've even left a few GBs for other OSes like BeOS, Solaris, QNX, etc.

What do not keep of my Raptor includes games/benchmarks, MP3s, and download archives. I've got at least one 120GB and a few spare/backup drives for those files.

What on earth would you put on a 74GB Raptor? I'd better understand your point if you only had one Raptor, but I don't think these drives were specifically intended for long-term storage.

-SUO

 

[oldfart]

I like to have both OS and apps on the fastest drive. Nothing wrong with having those huge maps in games like BF1942 open faster, or any large application for that matter. The big slower drive gets the archives, mp3s, video files, scanned images and digital pictures, etc.

When I get mine, I'll have a 10 Gig partition for WinXP, the rest of the drive for apps. My WD 1200JB will be used for data storage and video capture space.

 

[SUOrangeman]

Again, assuming your system will have more than one drive, the Raptor is not going to load huge files any better than non-10K drives regardless of the interface. At that point, everything is read-only. Max transfer rate is key not the superior access and seek times that higher-rotation drives like the Raptor can offer.

-SUO

 

[JustAnAverageGuy]

I would think sustained transfer rate would be more important than max SUOrangeman

 

[beatle]

Since we know there are no 1st generation 74 gig drives, we know they'll have the new features. What's confusing will be finding a second generation 36.7 gig drive. WD seems to have used the same nomenclature as the 1st gen drives. I'm chomping at the bit for a little extra speed (pending SR's review of the drive) and a fdb motor! Now if I could only find someone selling a confirmed 2nd gen drive...

 

[oldfart]

Don't know about that. I've seen marked differences in app and game launching and loading times each time I've got a faster HD. 5400 to 7200 made a difference, 7200 to faster 7200 made a difference. I dont see why a 10K SATA wont again be faster. Why not have everything fast instead of just the OS?

 

[JSSheridan]

SR's story on the 74GB Raptor mentions that it will use 2 37GB platters. Wester Digital's specs list the drive only has one platter. Link to Spec page. Also, the old 36GB Raptor was the WD360. I believe the new one will be the WD360GD. Peace.

 

[SUOrangeman]

Yes, I did mean a higher sustained transfer rate. Because of the differences in areal density, a faster spindle speed doesn't automatically equate to a higher sustained transfer rate. Some charts on SR should illustrate this point.

Since games and other file file "footprints" will likely be read more than written, non-10K-RPM drives will not slaughtered by the Raptor's performance. Heck, I'm not totally blown away by my Raptor right now. Yes, it is a little better than the WD1200JB I used to boot.

If you are going to run multiple drives (where only one is a Raptor), I think you'll be better off keeping large files like games, downloads, and other archived materials on non-Raptor drives. I seriously doubt you'll notice the difference. If the cost of the Raptor wasn't such a premium, I'd probably be saying something else.

My Raptor is a WD360GD, as I presume all Raptors are. I doubt WD will introduce a new model number once everything has been moved over to the new internals. I can't imagine that WD would conitnue to make Raptors with current/old internals, so they only way we'll be able to identify the new goods will be by date of manufacture.

Finally, I think the single-platter 74GB is a typo. But being wrong isn't necessarily a bad thing!

-SUO, needs a week's worth of sleep

 

[Boonesmi]

i cant wait to get a pair of these for a raid

 

[oldfart]

Well, since I'm getting a 74 Gig drive, I gotta put something on it!! . I've always been able tell the difference when I got a faster drive, sometimes not dramatic, but it is there. I could see the diff when I went from an IBM 60GXP to the 1200JB. The HD is still the slowest part of a system. I'm all for anything that speeds that up (as long as it does not add any noise). It certainly cant hurt having my big slow loading apps apps on my fastest drive. Honestly, the 74 + the 120 I have now is a bit overkill, but I'll use it. When I'm doing a big video project, its amazing how fast I can eat up HD space.

 

[Dormant]

Honestly, the 74 + the 120 I have now is a bit overkill, but I'll use it. When I'm doing a big video project, its amazing how fast I can eat up HD space.

I wish that were my problem. Between my computer systems technician courses at college and my divx collection I own 8 hard drives. My personal drive letter record is M:

A:, C:, D:, E:, ... M:

When I got to (M: ) there were so many partitions that my host O.S. (XP) was unable to boot reliably. The drive letters included virtual drives and CD-roms, not just HDs.

 

[Sideswipe001]

It wouldn't boot reliably? I didn't know the number of drives affected XP that way.

Most drives I had was in windows 95 when I had to chop up our new 3 GB drive into partitions the OS could handle.

 

[slag]

Originally posted by: Megatomic
I like the 36.7GB model better.. Only $150 shipped 3Day UPS. That's the next drive I'm buying. I'll keep my 2 x 60GB DiamondMax Plus9 drives for storage and use the Raptor for OS/Programs.

Its been a heck of a lot cheaper than that for the past week + Price: $112.00

http://www.monarchcomputer.com/Merchant2/merchant.mv?Screen=PROD&Store_Code=M&Product_Code=150237&AFFIL=G&NR=1

And people wondered why I scoffed at others selling their USED in FS/FT for $105+

 

[oldfart]

Its $108 w free shipping @ Newegg!

 

[Chadder007]

Originally posted by: NFS4
From what I understand, they STILL aren't native SATA drives...they still use a Marvel arbitrator

Yeah....when the crap are they going to go straight Serial??