150gb SATA2 NCQ Raptors ARE Coming!!!

maverik-sg1

New member
Having now tested the latest SATA drives against the raptors - I have to tell you that I still prefer raptor drives. Even more intersting is this from GURU3D:

Western Digital's Raptor hard drives are known for their high performance but a major complain is the low storage capacity of these drives. Western Digital now tries to resolve this by launching a higher capacity Raptor drive that features 150GB storage capacity. These new Raptor HDDs have already appeared on a couple of webshops and they come in two versions.

There's the Raptor WD1500AD for servers and the Raptor WD1500AH for gamers. Both drives feature 150GB storage capacity, 16MB cache memory, Serial ATA 2 (300MB/s) and Native Command Queuing (NCQ) support.
Other features like the noise levels (32 dBA in idle mode and 36 dBA in seek mode) and the 4.5ms seek time are the same as the previous generation.

It's expected the Raptor WD1500 will be as fast as the current generation of 10,000 RPM SCSI and SAS hard disks, with sustained transfer rates (STR) of minimum 85MB/s.

The difference between the gaming and server version of the Raptor WD1500 is that the latter one features support for Time Limited Error Recovery (TLER). If you want to learn more about this feature that improves error coordination between hard drives and RAID controllers I suggest to check out this
PDF file from WD.

A Euro e-tailor
is already selling the WD1500AD for a price of 319EUR. That's twice as much as the Raptor WD740GD which features 74GB storage capacity. The price of the WD1500 for gamers isn't available yet, but I expect it to be slightly less.

Another post xmas pressie for Mav ;)
 
they will rock just like the old raptors still do, still too noisy though :(, but i guess you cant have your cake and eat it

phil
 
PHILIP1193 said:
they will rock just like the old raptors still do, still too noisy though :(, but i guess you cant have your cake and eat it

phil

Whack em in an enclosure and jobs a goodun!

I'm deciding whether or not to go major on a new build and build new PSU and motherboard waterblocks (low flow). If I do I'll grab me a few Silent Star hard disk enclosures again as they keep drives cool and silent quite nicely.
 
Pah, just turn your music/game up :D

Saw this posted on XS, good to see some new Raptors, i love my 74GB one, run my OS and games off it and it flies, might take the plunge on a new one cos i love them so much.

G
 
Just an update:

I have it from a fairly reliable source that they're actually going to be SATA, not SATA II drives.

Not that this will have much impact on performance as we are no where near utilising the theoretical bandwidth of the existing architecture as it is.

NCQ and the increased cache should bring things on par (marketing and access time wise) with the 7,200 rpm SATA II drives that are currently whooping ass, but unless they drop the price I can't see anyone but the enthusiast buying into them as they are just too big to be a "System" drive.
 
Seems a bit of a strange idea to have this drive SATA not SATA II, they arent cheap drives and are aimed at the top of the market. Anyone got a reason as to why this is?

G
 
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