150GB WD Raptor

[Admiral]

http://www.dvhardware.net/article8814.html

Western Digital's Raptor hard drives are known for their high performance but a major complain is the low storage capacity of these drives. Western Digital now tries to resolve this by launching a higher capacity Raptor drive that features 150GB storage capacity. These new Raptor HDDs have already appeared on a couple of webshops and they come in two versions.

[Gurm]

Finally! Now if they were only quiet...

[schmosef]

I just bought another 74GB Raptor for my home PC yesterday! D'oh!

[Tjalfe]

Finally! Now if they were only quiet...

Other features like the noise levels (32 dBA in idle mode and 36 dBA in seek mode) and the 4.5ms seek time are the same as the previous generation.

so it seems nothing has changed for noise

[Jammrock]

Finally! Now if they were only quiet...

The newer 74 GB drives are fairly quiet. Of course not quieter than the 7200 RPM Samsung and Seagate drives, but compared to the first gen 34 GB drives, they are much better. But higher RPM always translates into more noise.

Now IF WD uses a 160 GB single platter to make the drive, the noise would relatively quiet. Even a 2 platter rig wouldn't be too bad.

[Tjalfe]

I thought the platters were physically smaller in diameter in these high speed drives, hence they would not have a 160GB platter, or is that just the case for the 15K RPM drives?

[Mehen]

wow, looks pretty sweet, expensive, but tempting... I'm looking at getting a new HD... hrmmm