[NEWS] - Western Digital to introduce 72GB Raptor.

[CougTek]

Unexpectedly high demand for its Raptor Serial-ATA hard drive has pushed Western Digital into doubling its quarterly production plans.

[...]

...Raptor has been selling against SCSI into the entry level server market, where 36GB is still an important capacity point and adds that a dual-platter 72GB model is due out around October.

So? Are all you speed and capacity freaks happy with this announcement? Personally, I hope they will develop a newer firmware closer to the second one SR reviewed with the 36GB Raptor.

Another interesting bit in the original news...

WD recently added a 250GB SATA drive to its Caviar family too, but Keene points out that this uses a 7200 RPM desktop IDE mechanism designed for a 30 percent duty cycle, whereas Raptor is a 10,000 RPM drive intended for 24x7 server usage.

W.D. seemed to like IBM's power-on rating.

News Source

 

[blakerwry]

just like everything else, things are designed for a set life and duty cycle...

I expect this raptor to outperform the original... would be nice to have one.. but they're probably not for me till WD uses FDB.

 

[Tea]

I could be very tempted. I'd like a faster storage drive (to sit alongside the 18GB X15) but 36GB is too small. What I'd really like is a 180GB X15.

sigh

 

[Mercutio]

This from a man who, two years ago, swore up and down that hard disks were ridiculously large.

It only takes one data-consuming hobby to make 80GB into "a good days' work".

Is this 72GB drive just due to extra platter count or did WD up areal density significantly?

And why isn't a decent company doing 10k yet?

 

[blakerwry]

there's no way they could have upped the density... WD has just recently started making drives with 80GB platters on the 7.2k IDE drives... and even then they had to slow down the seeks on them.

With the smaller platter size of the raptor (3" diameter?)that would probably be the equivalent density of a 106GB platter on ths standard 3.5" disk.. no way WD could have done that yet. WD are using 2 platters

 

[Buck]

WD is using two platters for the latest Raptor design, which in itself is a difficult task, as the dynamics of the spindle, platters, and airflow changes inside the chasis. All of this affects the ability to read and write properly. I'm happy to see that one of the top three HDD manufacturers is at least pursuing faster technology.

Merc, obviously you have a disdain for WD, nonetheless, they did win the VAR Business ARC award again this year -- they swept all categories for desktop drives. I think there is a conspiracy, and almost all bad WD drives are sent to you.

 

[Jan Kivar]

Mickey has commented @ SR. Seems that there might not be enough space to include a second platter in the original design; thus the drive might have been "updated" to accommodate two (or more?) platters.

Cheers,

Jan

 

[Mercutio]

Merc, obviously you have a disdain for WD, nonetheless, they did win the VAR Business ARC award again this year -- they swept all categories for desktop drives. I think there is a conspiracy, and almost all bad WD drives are sent to you.

You seem to be mistaking marketing and WD's strong Sales Force for decent products. WD has pretty much always won Computer Shopper magazine's consumer choice awards, again because it's the only one of the HDD companies that really does marketing work. I could get people to demand more herpes if I had a big enough advertising budget.

At some point, the problems I had with recent WD drives either became a statistical singularity or else there were/are widespread problems with their products.

 

[Buck]

You seem to be mistaking marketing and WD's strong Sales Force for decent products. WD has pretty much always won Computer Shopper magazine's consumer choice awards, again because it's the only one of the HDD companies that really does marketing work. I could get people to demand more herpes if I had a big enough advertising budget.

Indeed, they do have a very strong marketing department, hence our wonderful world of ATA drives now go by EIDE.

Nonetheless, hard drive failures are very interesting. Tannin has unbelievable success with Samsung, whilst others have the exact opposite experience. You have had dreadful experiences with WD drives, whilst others do not. I'm not at all concerned that you or anyone else chooses not to sell WD drives (I rarely sell them myself), but it is a shame that individual resellers or users can have such differing experiences from one another -- even with large quantities of product.

 

[freeborn]

You seem to be mistaking marketing and WD's strong Sales Force for decent products. WD has pretty much always won Computer Shopper magazine's consumer choice awards, again because it's the only one of the HDD companies that really does marketing work. I could get people to demand more herpes if I had a big enough advertising budget.

Indeed, they do have a very strong marketing department, hence our wonderful world of ATA drives now go by EIDE.

Nonetheless, hard drive failures are very interesting. Tannin has unbelievable success with Samsung, whilst others have the exact opposite experience. You have had dreadful experiences with WD drives, whilst others do not. I'm not at all concerned that you or anyone else chooses not to sell WD drives (I rarely sell them myself), but it is a shame that individual resellers or users can have such differing experiences from one another -- even with large quantities of product.

I thought it was the other way around. Didn't WD trademarked EIDE so the standards committee created the ATA name ? This is ATA-1 though so its been around since the 80s and I've only been in the game since the late 90s. Perhaps I was misinformed but I've been taught that WD created the EIDE name and trademarked it.

Free

 

[Buck]

I thought it was the other way around. Didn't WD trademarked EIDE so the standards committee created the ATA name ? This is ATA-1 though so its been around since the 80s and I've only been in the game since the late 90s. Perhaps I was misinformed but I've been taught that WD created the EIDE name and trademarked it.

Free

They did trademark the name. ATA is a derivative of AT, both of which define the physical, electrical, transport, and command protocols for the internal attachment of storage devices to host systems. IDE was WDs way of showing that they moved the drive electronics onboard (although XT/AT/ATA drives weren't the first to have this feature). ATA-1 became an official standard in 1994.