Western Digital's VelociRaptor 10K RPM SATA Drive

MojoKid was one of a number of people to submit about WDs new 10k RPM SATA Drive. He says "Western Digital's Raptor line of Hard Drives has been very popular with performance enthusiasts, as a desktop drive with enterprise-class performance. Today WD has launched a new line of high-performance desktop drives dubbed the VelociRaptor, and the product finally scales in capacity as well. The new SATA-based VelociRaptor weighs in at 300GB with the same 10K RPM spindle speed, but with one other major difference — it's based on 2.5" technology. Its smaller two-platter, four-head design affords the VelociRaptor random access and data transfer rates significantly faster than competing desktop SATA offerings. Areal density per platter has increased significantly as well, which contributes to solid performance gains versus the legacy WD Raptor series."

Solid State, Fast Disks... all for wimps

[MosesJones]

If you want real performance and aren't afraid of having to do a complete rebuild on a regular basis then the best bet is to purely use a huge amount of RAM, not Flash or other solid state disks but real genuine RAM.

Okay so its insanely expensive and a power cut and UPS failure means you lose everything.... but the SPEED is fantastic.

I mean I'm running Vista Ultimate on a dual quad-core server with 500GB of standard RAM as a disk and I can boot in under a minute and use Outlook AND Word at the same time.

Raptors? Run!

[Nushio]

I'm sure I'm not the only one who is constantly reminded of XKCD when someone mentions Raptors [xkcd.com]...

Re:Raptors? Run! - apologies to Yakov Smirnoff..

[CdBee]

In corporate America, geeks consume Velociraptors..

Re:ARGH! Stupid WD!

[PopeRatzo]

Uh, actually, hard drive upgrades are easier in the Mac Pro than in any other computer I have ever owned.

You didn't mention that your other computers were DEC Alphas and PDP-3's.

Re:ARGH! Stupid WD!

[WhoBeDaPlaya]

Exactly. It would only be flamebait if you posted something like :
Mac: Hey PC, what are you doing?
PC: Playing a video game.
Mac: Which one?
PC: All of them.

Re:1 GB/$, ouch

[Tumbleweed]

Gee, a super-fast drive costs more per gigabyte than a normal drive. Who woulda thunk it?

You should read some reviews of cars just to make sure a Ferrari costs more per mph than, say, a Ford Focus.