2CPU

Main Menu

· Content
· News
· Articles
· Mailinglists
· Knowledgebase
· Trouble Tickets
· Files
· Glossary
· Links
· Compatibility Lists
· Forums

News

· News Overview
· News Channels
· News Archive
· Search News
· Submit News

What's New

Login to see an overview of all news stories since your last visit.

News Channels

· General Site News
· Folding@Home
· SETI@Home
· General Web News
· General Distributed Computing
· RC5
· General Articles
· Hardware
· Motherboards
· Video Cards
· Storage
· Cases
· Optical Drives
· Barebones, Servers and SFFs
· Processors
· General Hardware
· Operating Systems
· Applications
· How-To
· General Technical
· Frequently Asked Questions
· Editorials
· Press Releases

News Tags

The news tag list is currently empty

Online Users

There are currently 17 user(s) online

Managed with Contentteller(R) Community Edition, (C) 2002 - 2009 Esselbach Internet Solutions. The Community Edition of Contentteller(R) is free software released under the GNU/GPL v3

Latest News

· Best CPU: 10 top processors from AMD and Intel
· Happy New Year
· AMD aim Opteron at the Cloud
· Cisco doing the silicon shuffle
· Juniper goes after the SDN market
· China gives birth to Godson, rival Intel
· HP intros the Proliant SL4500 series Server
· Tech Jobs and Minimum wage
· Linux Mag's Linux for Small Business Servers
· AMD's Sweet 16

Top News

· Best CPU: 10 top processors from AMD and Intel
· Samsung To Enter the Server Market?
· Weekend Topic: Should employers be able to fire employees caught looking for job
· Site Redesign: Comments? Suggestions? Help?
· Poll Time: Milkshake - Beverage or Dessert?
· Help Wanted!
· Neoseeker plays with Iwill's DVD266-R!
· Honesty: The best policy?
· No comment!
· It's Official: nitro_fish owns me...

Latest Poll

There are currently no polls in the news database

News Archive

· November 2015
· January 2013
· December 2012
· November 2012
· October 2012
· August 2012
· July 2012
· June 2012
· May 2012
· April 2012
· March 2012
· February 2012
· January 2012
· December 2011
· November 2011
· April 2011
· March 2011
· February 2011
· January 2011
· November 2010
· October 2010
· September 2010
· August 2010
· July 2010
· June 2010
· May 2010
· April 2010
· March 2010
· February 2010
· January 2010
· December 2009
· September 2009
· August 2009
· July 2009
· June 2009
· May 2009
· April 2009
· March 2009
· February 2009
· January 2009
· December 2008
· November 2008
· October 2008
· September 2008
· August 2008
· July 2008
· June 2008
· May 2008
· April 2008
· March 2008
· February 2008
· January 2008
· December 2007
· November 2007
· October 2007
· September 2007
· August 2007
· July 2007
· June 2007
· May 2007
· April 2007
· March 2007
· February 2007
· January 2007
· December 2006
· November 2006
· October 2006
· September 2006
· August 2006
· July 2006
· June 2006
· May 2006
· April 2006
· March 2006
· February 2006
· January 2006
· December 2005
· November 2005
· October 2005
· September 2005
· August 2005
· July 2005
· June 2005
· May 2005
· April 2005
· March 2005
· February 2005
· January 2005
· December 2004
· November 2004
· October 2004
· September 2004
· August 2004
· July 2004
· June 2004
· May 2004
· April 2004
· March 2004
· February 2004
· January 2004
· December 2003
· November 2003
· October 2003
· September 2003
· August 2003
· July 2003
· June 2003
· May 2003
· April 2003
· March 2003
· February 2003
· January 2003
· December 2002
· November 2002
· October 2002
· September 2002
· August 2002
· July 2002
· June 2002
· May 2002
· April 2002
· March 2002
· February 2002
· January 2002
· December 2001
· November 2001
· October 2001
· September 2001
· August 2001
· July 2001
· June 2001
· May 2001
· April 2001
· March 2001
· February 2001
· January 2001
· December 2000
· November 2000
· October 2000
· September 2000
· August 2000
· July 2000
· June 2000
· May 2000
· April 2000
· March 2000
· February 2000
· January 2000

Theme Selector

The theme override option is disabled

Welcome to our website

To take full advantage of all features you need to login or register. Registration is completely free and takes only a few seconds.

2CPU.com » News » December 2003 » Western Digital

Western Digital

Posted by: Jim on: 12/16/2003 03:04 PM [ Print | 14 comment(s) ]

GamePC has busted out six of Western Digital's latest Raptor drive, the WD740GD, and combined those with an LSI MegaRAID-6 SATA controller for some RAID lovin'.
So why is the Raptor so popular, and why has the market made such a fuss for the upcoming 74GB variant of this drive? I can tell you from first hand experience. Speed. Western Digital Raptor drives best the competition in terms of raw transfer rates by 10% or more, making them great candidates for OS/application drives, which constantly need quick access to data. In addition, gamers love Raptors as they decrease long level load times in very visible ways. Couple a few of them together in RAID-0 and you


Digg it! Slashdot Del.icio.us Technorati Fark it! Binklist Furl Newsvine Windows Live Netscape Google Bookmarks Reddit! LinkaGoGo Tailrank Wink Dzone Simpy Spurl Yahoo! MyWeb NetVouz RawSugar Smarking Scuttle Magnolia BlogMarks Nowpublic FeedMeLinks Wists Onlywire Connotia Shadows Co.mments

Related Stories

02/11/2003 05:59 AM: Western Digital's official announcement of the 10K SATA drives. by dadmin
Western Digital have posted the official press release dealing with the new 10,000 rpm SATA drives.Expected to be shipping later this month, the WD Raptor hard drive is expected to sell for approximat...

08/09/2001 09:55 PM: Western Digital Caviar WD1000BB Review @ Storage Review... by Jim
Storage Review is at it again; this time with Western Digital's latest creation, their 100GB, 7200rpm Caviar 1000BB. Overall, Western Digital's latest drive is a package that's hard to beat. It delive...


« Intel buys Opteron Servers? · Western Digital · IBM Thinkpad T40 review at Ars »

Comment

burmese
Registered User


Posts: 186
Joined: 2002-01-20

#25449 Posted on: 12/16/2003 08:11 PM
Pages 8 and 9 show the differences between the 32-bit, 33 MHz PCI bus and the 64-bit, 66 MHz bus. Those slots on the K8W go faster, I believe, but the LSI controller was limited to 66 MHz. I know what the theoretical limits on the Athlon MPX chipset roughly are but not sure about the K8W.

~\_/~\_O Burmese

Comment

NerdZero
Registered User



Posts: 197
Joined: 2003-03-11

#25450 Posted on: 12/16/2003 09:20 PM
I was surprised to see that the 4, 5, and 6 drive RAID 0 configs were all pretty evenly matched.

Comment

burmese
Registered User


Posts: 186
Joined: 2002-01-20

#25451 Posted on: 12/16/2003 09:37 PM
It would have been interesting to see how a set of slower drives would scale. Whether they also leveled out or continued to scale upwards would clue us in on whether the controller's limits were being hit with the new Raptors.

~\_/~\_O Burmese

Comment

mekboy
Registered User


Posts: 744
Joined: 2001-11-18

#25452 Posted on: 12/16/2003 09:48 PM
$300 per drive. You can get scsi at that price.

Comment

burmese
Registered User


Posts: 186
Joined: 2002-01-20

#25453 Posted on: 12/16/2003 09:52 PM
Those Raptors beat any 10k SCSI drives (see recent reviews at Storagereview.com) so you'd have to buy $500 15k SCSI drives to equal or better that performance.

~\_/~\_O Burmese

Comment

Slick_nic
Registered User


Posts: 34
Joined: 2002-08-22

#25454 Posted on: 12/16/2003 10:06 PM
Would be nice to see some other controllers in there as the reviewer seamed dissapointed by the LSI's performance.

I also thought it was a little strange to mix software and hardware to make the RAID-50 array, IMHO the small gain in write performance didnt justify the loss in space.

I remember a good roundup of IDE (P-ATA) raid controllers a while ago (was linked from 2cpu but cant remember where to), would be nice to see somthing similar with these S-ATA Raptors.

2x Opteron 270, Tyan K8WE, 2Gb Ram, ATI X1800XL, 4x 300Gb Maxtor D'max 10's (RAID 5)

Comment

mekboy
Registered User


Posts: 744
Joined: 2001-11-18

#25455 Posted on: 12/16/2003 10:18 PM
Originally posted by burmese
Those Raptors beat any 10k SCSI drives (see recent reviews at Storagereview.com) so you'd have to buy $500 15k SCSI drives to equal or better that performance.
Reliability and expandability are what im looking for. SATA is still not proven in the business i deal with. Also tough to have more than 12 drives in a subsystem with SATA.

Comment

burmese
Registered User


Posts: 186
Joined: 2002-01-20

#25456 Posted on: 12/16/2003 10:28 PM
Well then there is no point noting cost differences? The Raptors could cost $50 and outperform a set of $5,000 SCSI drives but won't be part of any buying decisions.

As an aside, note that a pair of 3-Ware 8506-12 controllers can handle 24 SAT drives.

~\_/~\_O Burmese

Comment

mekboy
Registered User


Posts: 744
Joined: 2001-11-18

#25457 Posted on: 12/16/2003 10:34 PM
Originally posted by burmese
Well then there is no point noting cost differences? The Raptors could cost $50 and outperform a set of $5,000 SCSI drives but won't be part of any buying decisions.

As an aside, note that a pair of 3-Ware 8506-12 controllers can handle 24 SAT drives.
You would be surprised how cost wary some companies are. Even when it comes to serving thousands of customers if there is a way to cut costs they will do it.

Comment

burmese
Registered User


Posts: 186
Joined: 2002-01-20

#25458 Posted on: 12/16/2003 10:52 PM
The WD drives come with a 5-yr warrantee, comparable to any SCSI drive. The basic physical drives are the same as their SCSI counterparts. With a company like Adaptec putting out SATA controllers they are willing to describe as being targeted towards 'Enterprise' solutions I'd start to consider SATA to be in the 'safe' zone now. Some subtle bugs in various vendors' driver software may yet bubble to the surface but at some point in 2004 it should be safe to consider SATA RAID in a mission-critical 365/24/7 environment.

~\_/~\_O Burmese

Comment

mekboy
Registered User


Posts: 744
Joined: 2001-11-18

#25459 Posted on: 12/16/2003 11:14 PM
Originally posted by burmese
The WD drives come with a 5-yr warrantee, comparable to any SCSI drive. The basic physical drives are the same as their SCSI counterparts. With a company like Adaptec putting out SATA controllers they are willing to describe as being targeted towards 'Enterprise' solutions I'd start to consider SATA to be in the 'safe' zone now. Some subtle bugs in various vendors' driver software may yet bubble to the surface but at some point in 2004 it should be safe to consider SATA RAID in a mission-critical 365/24/7 environment.
I agree with you but we all know how SLOW the enterprise market adopts new products. As of present i can't find to many faults with SATA.

Comment

CWJ717
Registered User


Posts: 36
Joined: 2003-08-19

#25460 Posted on: 12/17/2003 10:03 AM
burmese: Faster? Maybe for desktop performance. From storagereview.com: These two SR Server DriveMarks, a weighted average of a drive's performance under varying load levels, demonstrate that though it offers significantly superior multi-user performance when contrasted to 7200 RPM drives and though it also improves upon its predecessor, without command queuing the WD740GD can not keep pace with today's 10,000 RPM units.

Comment

cjcox
Titus 3:5



Posts: 1396
Joined: 2002-09-19

#25461 Posted on: 12/17/2003 10:37 AM
The latest raptor is impressive... however, as SATA becomes commodity, look for the warranty to drop back to 1 year (warning) again.

Also, over the next few months look to see some Serial Attached SCSI drives come out... they'll easily displace this raptor. The SATA raptor just can't match the fast access times of their older SCSI brethren, look for SAS drives to deliver better performance overall combined with long warranties and fast access times.

But... if you need to get something today, the raptor looks to be a good choice and the long warranty is nice.

HP-xw6600/2x2.83Ghz-E5440/4G/10K-160G-SATA/300G-SATA/7600GT/BluRayRW/openSUSE-11.1 HP-2530p/2.13GhzCore2/4G/1x160G/Intel4500MHD/DVD-RW/openSUSE-11.1 Custom/2xX5550/12G/2x300G-10K-Raptor/NVS295/DVDRW/ESX-4.0 Custom/2x6128HE/32G/4x2TB/onboard/Blueray/SLES11SP1-KVM

Comment

Forge
Titus 3:5



Posts: 720
Joined: 2001-05-12

#25462 Posted on: 12/17/2003 02:14 PM
Actually, I believe the SATA Caviar drives (commodity) are 1 year already, though they might be 3 year.

Only the Raptors get 5 years.

Registered Linux user 82133 (li.org has a short memory)

2CPU.com » News » December 2003 » Western Digital