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Matthew Attoe · 04:45 AM

Hi,

I'm toying with the idea of getting a 74Gb Raptor drive and using it as my main drive and using my 160Gb drive to store my music, pics etc.

BUT are there any faster and/or larger Raptor (or other make) drives just around the corner - I'm not in a huge rush to swap the drives so I can always hang on a couple of months if need be.

I appreciate that no-one has a crystal ball, but are there any mumblings on the grapevine?

Thank you very much,

Matthew

PS. This may well be a stupid question, but what is the reason why Raptor drives have relatively small capacity when compared to other drives?

Eriamjh · Jul 1, 2005, 05:59 AM

There hasn't been a jump in hard drive technology/speed in 10 years. Interface changes (like ATA133 and SATA) don't result in big speed bumps because that is not the bottleneck. HDs with 16MB cache are a slight improvement. The industry is concentrating on SIZE.

OreoCookie · Jul 1, 2005, 06:35 AM

Hitachi brought the first 500 gig hd to the market, but it's very pricey. The sweet spot is around 200-300 gig right now.

crooner · Jul 1, 2005, 07:07 AM

If you're looking for speed and affordability, think about a RAID setup using some 10K Raptors. SATA drives in RAID configuration are damn good.

Then again, if money is no object and you enjoy the fine art of SCSI voodoo, the nothing touches a big, honkin' SCSI RAID chock full of 15K Seagate Cheetahs!

And OreoCookie is right... 300GB SATA drives are starting to hit a nice price point right now. Get Seagates, there, too. Fast and five year warranties.

Markarian421 · Jul 1, 2005, 09:32 AM

I've been bitten by RAID a couple times, so just keep in mind that if you go with RAID 0 (the usual first option) you are multiplying the risk of failure -- one disk dies and all your data is gone.

Superchicken · Jul 1, 2005, 04:37 PM

Someone mind explaining why a Raptor is fast... I think I've heard em mentioned but I don't know what the difference is.

Kyros · Jul 1, 2005, 05:32 PM

Raptors spin faster than normal HD's, 10k RPM instead of the usual 7.2k RPM. Seagate also makes 15k RPM drives but I'm not even sure if they are desktop drives.

OreoCookie · Jul 1, 2005, 06:42 PM

Originally Posted by Kyros

Raptors spin faster than normal HD's, 10k RPM instead of the usual 7.2k RPM. Seagate also makes 15k RPM drives but I'm not even sure if they are desktop drives.

They are used in workstations and servers.
15k drives (like early 10k drives) are special -- their platters (and hence their capacities) are often smaller to get better seek times (crucial for databases, etc.). I'm not sure whether the Raptor's platters are smaller, but I don't think so (judging from the seek times). (It's too late to dig around in the internet.)

Also, those heavy-duty drives (I include the Raptor here) are tested for a much longer period for increased reliability. The product cylces are longer and the data density on the Raptor is thus lower compared to 7.2k drives.

New 7.2k drives offer much larger capacity and due to their higher data density per platter, they are (for raw read/write tasks) not a lot slower than the Raptor. Especially considering that the extra capacity is a multiple of what you can fit on a Raptor. IMHO, if you don't know what you need the Raptor for (except for bragging maybe

), I wouldn't recommend you one.

bowwowman · 05:57 PM

the 2nd version of SATA, (SATA II, 300mb/s) are in production now, & should be readily available soon. But you'll also need a faster controller to take advantage of them too. If you can't wait, get a Raptor NOW, prefereably an SATA model, if your machine is so equipped.

All of the hardware site reviews I have read lately says the Raptor easily smokes all other drives currently on the market speed-wise, and is very, very, very close to the 15k SCSI cheetah by Seagate, but far easier to deal with and far cheaper too