Western Digital Raptor WD360

[§eth]

Holy moly this drive ROCKS I\'m having trouble finding them to purchase but they are comparable to SCSI drives at 20%-30% of the cost! My only bad with them is they are only 36 gig. Anyone out there using them yet?

Description: Raptor Enterprise WD360GD Serial ATA Hard Drive 36.7GB 10000RPM 8MB
Manufacturer: Western Digital
Access Time: 5.2 ms
Capacity: 36.7 GB
Interface: SATA (Serial ATA)
Internal/External: Internal
MTBF: 1200000 hour(s)
Number of Drives Supported: 1
Rotational Speed: 10000 RPM
System Type: PC
Transfer Rate: 150 Mbps
Cache Size: 8 MB
Dimensions
Height: 1.028 in
Width: 4 in
Depth: 5.787 in
Weight: 1.6 lbs
Warranty
Base Warranty: 5 year(s)
Labor Warranty: 5 year(s)
Parts Warranty: 5 year(s)
Reference
SKU: DWD360GD

Muahahahahahaaa images/icons/wink.gif (evil laugh)
I think they price around $170

[Simon Ravn]

5.2ms is rather impressive. Now, if only they were as noiseless as Seagates... images/icons/smile.gif

[Scott Cairns]

SATA is certainly exciting but dont forget that SATA II is already in development and is touted at being twice the speed. I only say this cause if you need to modify your existing mobo to accomodate SATA and are about to buy a SATA drive you might want to hold off. Also, you may need a SATA II controller when it comes out.


Although, having said all that, I just found this at extremetech;
Later this year, a second serial ATA specification will tweak the protocols used on the drive to better support enterprise and networking applications. In 2005, drive makers expect an entirely new generation of Serial ATA, which will transfer data at 300 Mbytes/s. By mid 2007, a third generation will appear, doubling the transfer rate again to 600 Mbytes/s, according to the Intel roadmaps. <font size=\"2\" face=\"Verdana, Arial\">Don\'t you just love technology....? images/icons/confused.gif

Cheers, Scott.

[Bill]

One of the current draw backs to SATA is that you can’t get them yet.

[Hudson]

I go through Western Digital drives like tissues during pollen season. They make crap drives. After a few months of use, they start in with a high pitched whining sound and they drive me nuts. I\'m about to replace my fifth drive under warranty, a 120gig 8mb cache model which started up with the whining last week. A 60 gig warranty replacement drive, which I just noticed was \"refurbished\", recently died with no warning whatsoever, too, so now I\'m waiting on a replacement for a replacement, and I\'m furious that they\'d ship refurbished hard drives in the first place. And if you\'re curious, I have cooling fans on the drives and I upped the power supply to a 430W. Still have problems with them. Avoid WD like the plague...just my experience. I have a few friends that swear by the Seagates and will follow suit with the Fluid Bearing Drives from now on.
-Hudson

[csduke]

Originally posted by Scott Cairns:
SATA is certainly exciting but dont forget that SATA II is already in development and is touted at being twice the speed. <font size=\"2\" face=\"Verdana, Arial\">I don\'t know how the disk makers are going to make this great technological leap i.e. higher transfer rates, since IDE drives can barely push ATA-33 let alone 100/133 or serial. The interface is not the problem, its the drive. Infortunately, the benefit of S-ATA will be a thin cable.

[Scott Cairns]

I don\'t know how the disk makers are going to make this great technological leap i.e. higher transfer rates, since IDE drives can barely push ATA-33 let alone 100/133 or serial. The interface is not the problem, its the drive. Infortunately, the benefit of S-ATA will be a thin cable.
<font size=\"2\" face=\"Verdana, Arial\">Hi Craig, SATA is actually based on a whole different technology from IDE or even EIDE. I had an article on it that I now cant find but from memory the developers pretty much admitted that IDE had been pushed as far as it could go.

Cheers, Scott.

[Scott Cairns]

I go through Western Digital drives like tissues during pollen season. They make crap drives. After a few months of use, they start in with a high pitched whining sound and they drive me nuts. I\'m about to replace my fifth drive under warranty, a 120gig 8mb cache model which started up with the whining last week. A 60 gig warranty replacement drive, which I just noticed was \"refurbished\", recently died with no warning whatsoever, too, so now I\'m waiting on a replacement for a replacement, and I\'m furious that they\'d ship refurbished hard drives in the first place. And if you\'re curious, I have cooling fans on the drives and I upped the power supply to a 430W. Still have problems with them. Avoid WD like the plague...just my experience. I have a few friends that swear by the Seagates and will follow suit with the Fluid Bearing Drives from now on.
-Hudson <font size=\"2\" face=\"Verdana, Arial\">That\'s interesting to hear. I am a big fan of the Seagates and have them in all of my machines. However, I did recently buy a Western Digital as a samples drive. I haven\'t had it long but hopefully it wont crap out on me! images/icons/smile.gif

Cheers, Scott.

[KingIdiot]

using mostly WD (8 of them) drives here

no probs.

[§eth]

King have you tried the \"caviar\" WD hard drives yet?

[KingIdiot]

I\'ve tried multiple WD variations. 8MB cache, no 8MB cache. Honest to god truth is I dont really see any difference in Giga performance. Mind you most of these are on different machiens, or are for different usage. (giga, general data, etc)

I do think thye could be a little quieter, but thats what I\'m checkingout isoraxx for images/icons/smile.gif