The fastest SATA hard drive ever!

**madmatt** · April 21st, 2008

Western Digital 300GB VelociRaptor.
10,000 RPM, 3Gbps SATA, 16MB cache.
Available for $300.00 in May.

http://www.engadget.com/2008/04/21/w...isk-the-300gb/
http://www.maximumpc.com/article/the...ard_drive_ever

**kcnychief** · April 21st, 2008

Loved reading about this earlier. The cool thing is that it seems to really kick ass in Raid 0, which from what I recall the 150GB/74GB versions made less than a 1% performance increase.

**Sazar** · April 21st, 2008

I am so underwhelmed, I am almost bored.

**Dark Atheist** · April 21st, 2008

tdinc pinched this for front page!!!

**Sazar** · April 21st, 2008

Poor matt, people always stealing his cookies.

**Dark Atheist** · April 21st, 2008

well he needs proper protection on them - glass jar with a lid on it and a sign saying Matts cookies DO NOT EAT - just wont cut it

**tdinc** · April 21st, 2008

never paid attention to matt's post,

cookies given to matt.

**Steevo** · April 22nd, 2008

Pinch off this crap and get a SAS drive like a real man.

**ElementalDragon** · April 22nd, 2008

*waits for countless quantites of sheep herding towards a $300 300GB drive*

seriously.... i'd rather have space than speed. don't remember hard drive performance making a drastic improvement in gaming or anything like that..... except for maybe in RAID. Even so...... if you pay $600 to have a 600GB RAID array, just so you can gain a few frames while gaming.... you're an idiot. why not just spend ~$450 and get a 2TB array.

**Steevo** · April 22nd, 2008

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16822116059

Exactly.

Moar bettar for almost the same. Seagate has 450Gb available for less than $700. To in RAID 0 = 1.4TB and huge performance

**Steevo** · April 22nd, 2008

http://www.serversdirect.com/product.asp?pf_id=HD1336

**X-Istence** · April 22nd, 2008

The real feat is the fact that they were able to fit it into a 2.5" form factor rather than the standard 3.5", this means that fast storage for notebooks is not too far into the future, now if they could only find a way to shrink that huge heatsink on it :P

These days a Seagate running at 7200 RPM with 32 MB of cache and 750 GB of space is plenty fast for most things that people do. You will long hit the bottle neck of whatever application/computer you are using/have. And in the server world this is not exciting what so ever, SAS is just as fast, and has been there for a while now.

**madmatt** · April 22nd, 2008

Great guys, way to piss on my parade. Thanks!

And no, I didn't order one.

**Dark Atheist** · April 22nd, 2008

*gives matt a cookie*

**kcnychief** · April 22nd, 2008

Are they taking pre-orders yet?

rotjong · April 27th, 2008

That WD drive does look very nice but for the price... no thanks. I'd also like if the cache was larger.

I'd rather go with 2 x Seagate Barracuda 7200.11 ST3750330AS 750GB 7200 RPM SATA 3.0Gb/s Hard Drive even though they aren't as fast.

129.99 USD a piece giving you a total of 1.5 TB for less money and they have a nice 32 MB cache.

http://www.newegg.com/product/produc...82E16822148298

Regardless, I was interested when I heard about that WD drive.

**ElementalDragon** · April 27th, 2008

i'd honestly avoid the Barracuda 11 series. they seem to be having a bad reputation so far. Hell, i had one of them (think it was the 500GB version).... and it died in JUST over a month. i mean literally went from working one night, to nowhere remotely close to even being able to be connected to a working computer the next afternoon. Thankfully Newegg took the RMA anyway. Now i'm sitting happily with a Western Digital 640GB drive.

rotjong · April 27th, 2008

Originally Posted by ElementalDragon

i'd honestly avoid the Barracuda 11 series. they seem to be having a bad reputation so far. Hell, i had one of them (think it was the 500GB version).... and it died in JUST over a month. i mean literally went from working one night, to nowhere remotely close to even being able to be connected to a working computer the next afternoon. Thankfully Newegg took the RMA anyway. Now i'm sitting happily with a Western Digital 640GB drive.

I have been a WD fan for years and I have always swore by them but with the larger and larger drives I'm annoyed that they haven't increased their cache size. I can't believe they would release this new drive at 10,000 RPM and not increase the cache yet they did.

Thanks for the information on the Seagate drives, though. From numerous friends I had been told they are fast and work well while also having a decent warranty. I'd love to go with WD drives but I really want a 32 MB cache. For my new system I still have some decisions to make and I haven't purchased hard drives yet so I can still change my mind on that one.

**ElementalDragon** · April 27th, 2008

honestly i don't think there's really that much to gain, if anything, with a 32MB cache over a 16MB cache. the 640GB drives also use only two platters.... and do quite well with access times and such. reviews of the drive on Newegg are quite good.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...k=False&Page=5

**X-Istence** · April 27th, 2008

There is much of a gain with 32 MB over 16 MB. Especially with newer file systems that take advantage of the bigger cache (ZFS for example). It means more data can quickly be written "to" disk and then read back, which is awesome for metadata on what blocks have not yet been written, since it changes so often most of the time the data is just stuck in cache.

There are other speed improvements with OS's and file systems that properly take advantage of the extra cache.

April 21st, 2008	Top \| #1
madmatt Bow Down to the King Joined: April 2002 Location: New York Posts: 13,328 Reputation: 4090 Power: 266	The fastest SATA hard drive ever! Western Digital 300GB VelociRaptor. 10,000 RPM, 3Gbps SATA, 16MB cache. Available for $300.00 in May. http://www.engadget.com/2008/04/21/w...isk-the-300gb/ http://www.maximumpc.com/article/the...ard_drive_ever

April 21st, 2008	Top \| #2
kcnychief █▄█ ▀█▄ █ Joined: April 2005 Location: Massachusetts Posts: 16,961 Reputation: 4941 Power: 275	Re: The fastest SATA hard drive ever! Loved reading about this earlier. The cool thing is that it seems to really kick ass in Raid 0, which from what I recall the 150GB/74GB versions made less than a 1% performance increase.
	XBOX Live Gamertag: kcnychief

April 21st, 2008	Top \| #3
Sazar F@H - Is it in you? Joined: April 2002 Location: Between Austin and Tampa Posts: 14,920 Reputation: 4000 Power: 282	Re: The fastest SATA hard drive ever! I am so underwhelmed, I am almost bored.
	Media Server: Intel Q9450 \| 8GB Corsair XMS2 \| 4870 1GB \| 1.5 TB Storage \| Logitech G-15/G-9 \| Windows 7 Ultimate x64 HTPC: AMD 4400+ \| 2GB Corsair \| 2 TB Storage \| 8800 GTS (G92) \| Logitech Edge \| Hauppauge 1600 \| Windows 7 Ultimate x86 Notebook Dell E6400 \| Core2Duo 8400 \| 4GB \| Encrypted 160GB with FFS \| WXGA+ LED \| Quadro NVS 160 \| Windows 7 Enterprise x64 Folding @ Home \| XBL / PSN / Steam : SAZARIUS \| Zune Social : SAZAR99

April 21st, 2008	Top \| #4
Dark Atheist I never said I was nice Joined: April 2003 Location: In The Void Posts: 6,411 Blog Entries: 8 Reputation: 1788 Power: 162	Re: The fastest SATA hard drive ever! tdinc pinched this for front page!!!

April 21st, 2008	Top \| #5
Sazar F@H - Is it in you? Joined: April 2002 Location: Between Austin and Tampa Posts: 14,920 Reputation: 4000 Power: 282	Re: The fastest SATA hard drive ever! Poor matt, people always stealing his cookies.
	Media Server: Intel Q9450 \| 8GB Corsair XMS2 \| 4870 1GB \| 1.5 TB Storage \| Logitech G-15/G-9 \| Windows 7 Ultimate x64 HTPC: AMD 4400+ \| 2GB Corsair \| 2 TB Storage \| 8800 GTS (G92) \| Logitech Edge \| Hauppauge 1600 \| Windows 7 Ultimate x86 Notebook Dell E6400 \| Core2Duo 8400 \| 4GB \| Encrypted 160GB with FFS \| WXGA+ LED \| Quadro NVS 160 \| Windows 7 Enterprise x64 Folding @ Home \| XBL / PSN / Steam : SAZARIUS \| Zune Social : SAZAR99

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April 21st, 2008	Top \| #6
Dark Atheist I never said I was nice Joined: April 2003 Location: In The Void Posts: 6,411 Blog Entries: 8 Reputation: 1788 Power: 162	Re: The fastest SATA hard drive ever! well he needs proper protection on them - glass jar with a lid on it and a sign saying Matts cookies DO NOT EAT - just wont cut it

April 21st, 2008	Top \| #7
tdinc █▄█ ▀█▄ █ Joined: December 2003 Location: Sterling Heights, MICHIGAN Posts: 3,617 Blog Entries: 19 Reputation: 2580 Power: 134	Re: The fastest SATA hard drive ever! never paid attention to matt's post, cookies given to matt.

April 22nd, 2008	Top \| #8
Steevo Spammer representing. Joined: September 2004 Posts: 2,617 Blog Entries: 2 Reputation: 1630 Power: 106	Re: The fastest SATA hard drive ever! Pinch off this crap and get a SAS drive like a real man.
	Meow. Equal oppertunity hater.

April 22nd, 2008	Top \| #9
ElementalDragon The One and Only Joined: August 2002 Location: Lehighton, PA Posts: 3,240 Blog Entries: 3 Reputation: 770 Power: 128	Re: The fastest SATA hard drive ever! waits for countless quantites of sheep herding towards a $300 300GB drive seriously.... i'd rather have space than speed. don't remember hard drive performance making a drastic improvement in gaming or anything like that..... except for maybe in RAID. Even so...... if you pay $600 to have a 600GB RAID array, just so you can gain a few frames while gaming.... you're an idiot. why not just spend ~$450 and get a 2TB array.
	Core 2 Quad Q9450 \| 4GB DDR2 800 \| Abit IP-35 Pro \| eVGA GTX 295+ I Love Windows 7! Has my post been helpful to you? If so, please click the to the left to add to my reputation.

April 22nd, 2008	Last edited by Steevo; April 22nd, 2008 at 4:43am. Reason: 450Gb not 750 \| Top \| #10
Steevo Spammer representing. Joined: September 2004 Posts: 2,617 Blog Entries: 2 Reputation: 1630 Power: 106	Re: The fastest SATA hard drive ever! http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16822116059 Exactly. Moar bettar for almost the same. Seagate has 450Gb available for less than $700. To in RAID 0 = 1.4TB and huge performance
	Meow. Equal oppertunity hater.

April 22nd, 2008	Top \| #11
Steevo Spammer representing. Joined: September 2004 Posts: 2,617 Blog Entries: 2 Reputation: 1630 Power: 106	Re: The fastest SATA hard drive ever! http://www.serversdirect.com/product.asp?pf_id=HD1336
	Meow. Equal oppertunity hater.

April 22nd, 2008	Top \| #12
X-Istence * Joined: December 2001 Location: USA Posts: 6,358 Reputation: 2529 Power: 185	Re: The fastest SATA hard drive ever! The real feat is the fact that they were able to fit it into a 2.5" form factor rather than the standard 3.5", this means that fast storage for notebooks is not too far into the future, now if they could only find a way to shrink that huge heatsink on it :P These days a Seagate running at 7200 RPM with 32 MB of cache and 750 GB of space is plenty fast for most things that people do. You will long hit the bottle neck of whatever application/computer you are using/have. And in the server world this is not exciting what so ever, SAS is just as fast, and has been there for a while now.
	http://personal.x-istence.com/

April 22nd, 2008	Top \| #13
madmatt Bow Down to the King Joined: April 2002 Location: New York Posts: 13,328 Reputation: 4090 Power: 266	Re: The fastest SATA hard drive ever! Great guys, way to piss on my parade. Thanks! And no, I didn't order one.

April 22nd, 2008	Top \| #14
Dark Atheist I never said I was nice Joined: April 2003 Location: In The Void Posts: 6,411 Blog Entries: 8 Reputation: 1788 Power: 162	Re: The fastest SATA hard drive ever! gives matt a cookie

April 22nd, 2008	Top \| #15
kcnychief █▄█ ▀█▄ █ Joined: April 2005 Location: Massachusetts Posts: 16,961 Reputation: 4941 Power: 275	Re: The fastest SATA hard drive ever! Are they taking pre-orders yet?
	XBOX Live Gamertag: kcnychief

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April 27th, 2008	Top \| #16
rotjong OSNN Senior Addict Joined: January 2004 Location: The far side of nowhere Posts: 577 Reputation: 270 Power: 78	Re: The fastest SATA hard drive ever! That WD drive does look very nice but for the price... no thanks. I'd also like if the cache was larger. I'd rather go with 2 x Seagate Barracuda 7200.11 ST3750330AS 750GB 7200 RPM SATA 3.0Gb/s Hard Drive even though they aren't as fast. 129.99 USD a piece giving you a total of 1.5 TB for less money and they have a nice 32 MB cache. http://www.newegg.com/product/produc...82E16822148298 Regardless, I was interested when I heard about that WD drive.

April 27th, 2008	Top \| #17
ElementalDragon The One and Only Joined: August 2002 Location: Lehighton, PA Posts: 3,240 Blog Entries: 3 Reputation: 770 Power: 128	Re: The fastest SATA hard drive ever! i'd honestly avoid the Barracuda 11 series. they seem to be having a bad reputation so far. Hell, i had one of them (think it was the 500GB version).... and it died in JUST over a month. i mean literally went from working one night, to nowhere remotely close to even being able to be connected to a working computer the next afternoon. Thankfully Newegg took the RMA anyway. Now i'm sitting happily with a Western Digital 640GB drive.
	Core 2 Quad Q9450 \| 4GB DDR2 800 \| Abit IP-35 Pro \| eVGA GTX 295+ I Love Windows 7! Has my post been helpful to you? If so, please click the to the left to add to my reputation.

April 27th, 2008	Top \| #18
rotjong OSNN Senior Addict Joined: January 2004 Location: The far side of nowhere Posts: 577 Reputation: 270 Power: 78	Re: The fastest SATA hard drive ever! Originally Posted by ElementalDragon i'd honestly avoid the Barracuda 11 series. they seem to be having a bad reputation so far. Hell, i had one of them (think it was the 500GB version).... and it died in JUST over a month. i mean literally went from working one night, to nowhere remotely close to even being able to be connected to a working computer the next afternoon. Thankfully Newegg took the RMA anyway. Now i'm sitting happily with a Western Digital 640GB drive. I have been a WD fan for years and I have always swore by them but with the larger and larger drives I'm annoyed that they haven't increased their cache size. I can't believe they would release this new drive at 10,000 RPM and not increase the cache yet they did. Thanks for the information on the Seagate drives, though. From numerous friends I had been told they are fast and work well while also having a decent warranty. I'd love to go with WD drives but I really want a 32 MB cache. For my new system I still have some decisions to make and I haven't purchased hard drives yet so I can still change my mind on that one.

April 27th, 2008	Top \| #19
ElementalDragon The One and Only Joined: August 2002 Location: Lehighton, PA Posts: 3,240 Blog Entries: 3 Reputation: 770 Power: 128	Re: The fastest SATA hard drive ever! honestly i don't think there's really that much to gain, if anything, with a 32MB cache over a 16MB cache. the 640GB drives also use only two platters.... and do quite well with access times and such. reviews of the drive on Newegg are quite good. http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...k=False&Page=5
	Core 2 Quad Q9450 \| 4GB DDR2 800 \| Abit IP-35 Pro \| eVGA GTX 295+ I Love Windows 7! Has my post been helpful to you? If so, please click the to the left to add to my reputation.

April 27th, 2008	Top \| #20
X-Istence * Joined: December 2001 Location: USA Posts: 6,358 Reputation: 2529 Power: 185	Re: The fastest SATA hard drive ever! There is much of a gain with 32 MB over 16 MB. Especially with newer file systems that take advantage of the bigger cache (ZFS for example). It means more data can quickly be written "to" disk and then read back, which is awesome for metadata on what blocks have not yet been written, since it changes so often most of the time the data is just stuck in cache. There are other speed improvements with OS's and file systems that properly take advantage of the extra cache.
	http://personal.x-istence.com/