[Eugene]

Though we've already reviewed the iconoclast Raptor WD740GD twice, a third revision of the drive has made its way into the testbed... and some of the differences are significant. Important enough, in fact, that the drive merits yet another formal writeup. Come with us as SR takes a one last look at WD's esteemed second-generation Raptor.

One Last Time... Western Digital's Raptor WD740GD

[grnmyeyes]

It might be useful to state explicitly in the review that single-user benchmarks were performed with TCQ disabled. This is actually sort of unfair to the SCSI drives, which (as far as I know) have something analagous to command queueing enabled by default. If you compare the Fujitsu and Maxtor to the Raptor with TCQ enabled, the two SCSI drives trounce it pretty soundly. Of course, they're also more expensive and noisier.

Personally, I'd like to see WD release a "Raptor 2" with a 147GB capacity, SATA 3.0G/s and 16MB cache.

[tntomek]

Wow these #'s look great.

Is there any news on the next generation Raptor?

[continuum]

Looks good!

Now only if I could get my work to pay for one for my work PC...

[Eugene]

grnmyeyes, on Dec 7 2005, 02:32 PM, said:

It might be useful to state explicitly in the review that single-user benchmarks were performed with TCQ disabled.

You're right this was a regrettable omission. The graphs have been fixed to indicate the lack of TCQ.

[zillatech]

grnmyeyes, on Dec 7 2005, 11:32 AM, said:

Personally, I'd like to see WD release a "Raptor 2" with a 147GB capacity, SATA 3.0G/s and 16MB cache.

This is "Exactly" what I am waiting for!!! You know its coming & 74GB is not enough for an Extreme Gaming Boot/System Drive (even w/ 2 in RAID-0). I can see the need for High Capacity drives like the 250/400/500 for main stream but what about us Gaming Enthusiasts that crave (and are willing to pay for) "Extreme Performance"?

Come on WD, give us some on News on a "Raptor II"

This post has been edited by zillatech: 07 December 2005 - 11:38 PM

[Ender17]

on the first page at the top, it says "250GB" under capacity

anyone have any tips on the best place to buy from if I want one of these?

This post has been edited by Ender17: 08 December 2005 - 12:11 AM

[jrbloch]

Eugene, on Dec 7 2005, 11:00 AM, said:

Though we've already reviewed the iconoclast Raptor WD740GD twice, a third revision of the drive has made its way into the testbed... and some of the differences are significant. Important enough, in fact, that the drive merits yet another formal writeup. Come with us as SR takes a one last look at WD's esteemed second-generation Raptor.

One Last Time... Western Digital's Raptor WD740GD

Is there a way to upgrade to the 00FLC0 version if everything else about the hardware the same?

This post has been edited by jrbloch: 11 December 2005 - 10:22 AM

[tygrus]

grnmyeyes, on Dec 8 2005, 06:32 AM, said:

Personally, I'd like to see WD release a "Raptor 2" with a 147GB capacity, SATA 3.0G/s and 16MB cache.

I'd vote for that as well. 74GB is OK for OS+swap+hibernate+temp files but need considerably more for program files and games. Array for media files would require too many drives eg. 7 drives for 518GB raw RAID0 to compare with 500GB 7200rpm desktop drives. 4 drives of about 147-150GB would be easier to handle to get the performance and storage capacity.

300GB would definitely blow the thermal budget of a desktop drive. I wonder what WD is waiting for before the release an update (increase capacity). A short stroked array of similarly priced ~300GB drives can offer similar performance for typical desktop use when you get close to filling Raptors (>50GB of data each).