http://www.hothardware.com/Articles/Western_Digital_Velociraptor_300GB/



I'll be skipping that Raptor 150GB purchase TYVM!

i don't think i could ever bring myself to spend $350 on a hard drive, especially for a part that is meaningless for gaming and when you consider 500GB drives are under $100.

You don't buy one for the capacity, you'd get one because speed is king and these are the new kings of the hill. SSD's are still too damn expensive.

Well how fast do you need to get your system up & running before you do anything with it that any HD will handle? lol You'll be running seconds before I will by using this then from that point on there isn't any noticeable difference. Congrats you spent $350 & I spent $120 to bad you beat me 2 seconds in bootup lol.

I would hope I'd do more with my computer than just boot it up. That's 2 seconds per day, at least. Plus say 5 seconds to load up whatever favourite game of the day is. Over say a 5 year timespan (because that's how long it'll take to upgrade it) that's 3.5 hours. Not to mention the fact that it is quieter and consumes less power than your 120$ jobbie. And it looks tres chic!

Yeah there is probably no real reason why enthusiasts love to buy raptors. That's why we're the enthusiasts. If there was an 32GB SSD out there for 350$ I'd buy that instead.

I just came here to post the exact same link but you beat me to it. Anyways, the benchmarks look good but what's shocking/weird is that it's using a smaller drive size than "regular" desktop drives. The first thing I thought after reading that was that 10k RPM is going to be spinning faster on the older (larger) Raptors so how does this thing beat it in speed, but I guess it has a few different tricks to help it accomplish that.

Definitely an interesting piece of tech but I won't be buying one any time soon.

I used Raptors & since my system practically never shuts off I didn't notice Any difference from them or the $120 drive i'm using now in my new system when loading up a game.

Although I will say that a guy in my clan was dead set on Solid State Drives but is considering using these next. Probably because they are cheaper. lol.

Flama smaller drives spin faster as there's less rotating mass.

Then wouldn't the specs indicate the drive is spinning faster than 10,000 RPM, which is the same speed as the regular Raptors? If you have two cars driving with wheel rotations of 2,000 RPM and one car has 15" wheels and the other has 17" wheels which one is going to be moving faster?

Neither (same as the what weighs more a lb of lead or a lb of feathers) but if each vehicle was travelling the same speed the 15" tires will have higher rpm.

If the speed (10,000 rpm) is taken at the spindle then the tip speed will slow down as you move out from there.

So:
15" @ 2,000 RPM = 17" @ 2,000 RPM

Yet:
RPM @ X Speed 15" > RPM @ X Speed 17"

Sounds contradictory to me.

If you cut each tire so that the tred could be stretched out flat which one would be longer (ie. have the larger circumference)? Now if you multiplied the static RPM (in this case 2,000) by those lengths which one would cover more distance in the given time span (lets say 1 minute since it is RPM)? If it covers more distance in the same amount of time wouldn't that mean it's traveling faster?

Not trying to be a prick or anything but all things kept equal, a larger platter circumference at a given RPM should be faster then one with a smaller circumference. One of the things a good disc defragmenting program will do is put commonly used files on closer to the edge of the platter so that it will get faster read/write times there. As you move towards the point of rotation however, the difference in speed between a smaller and larger circumference becomes less noticable until you theoretically reach the sorce and it becomes zero.

Yeah, I had that backwards....

The outer edge has to travel further than the inner edge so it's actually traveling faster.

I graciously accept your surrender. jk

And sorry for derailing this thread for a few posts too everyone!

Basically the smaller drive will spin up to 10,000rpm faster & with wear/heat on the drive. These would be worth looking into I think. To bad I already put in my drive.

I'd never spend that much on a hard drive.

I Believe the review said it used smaller platters so there is less surface area for the heads to read, hence giving it a faster read write time...that would make sence to me...