Western Digital Raptors versus RAID Arrays - Western Digital RAPTOR
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Western Digital RAPTOR
Western Digital's Raptor series are the world's fastest SATA drives. The latest WD1500ADFD has the following specs: 150GB, 1.5Gb/s, 16MB cache, 10,000 RPM. Couple that with a 5 year warranty and 1,200,000 hours MTBF. At the time of this writing, the bare drive (OEM) costs US$249.99. Check out what it looks like:
WD Raptors are considered "must-have" disk drives by enthusiast gamers. Due to the success that Western Digital earned with the Raptor series, they've also released the Raptor X series, which are specifically intended for gamers. This aforementioned X series has an acrylic window and, therefore, the user is able to see how the reading and writing process happens on the inside. More about these here.
As a side note, I for one am not advocating Raptor X series because all you get is a standard RAPTOR drive with a clear top for the sake of looking cooler, nothing more.
Let's see the performance specifications for all of the new generation Western Digital Raptors. The table below applies to the following drives:
150GB WD1500ADFD for US $249.99
74GB WD740ADFD for US$179.99
36GB WD360ADFD for US$109.99.
Performance Specifications:
Rotational Speed | 10,000 RPM (nominal) |
Buffer Size | 16 MB |
Average Latency | 2.99 ms (nominal) |
Start/Stop Cycles | 20,000 minimum |
Read Seek Time | 4.6 ms |
Write Seek Time | 5.2 ms (average) |
Track-to-Track Seek Time | 0.4 ms (average) |
Full Stroke Seek | 10.2 ms (average) |
Buffer to Host (Serial ATA) | 1.5 Gb/s (Max) |
Buffer to Disk | 84 MB/s (Sustained) |
Next: The Comparison >>
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