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Review of First 10K IDE Drive
Sivar writes "StorageReview has a review of the first 10,000 RPM IDE hard drive. Despite the speed that other technologies are improving, this is the first rotational speed increase in almost six years for standard IDE drives." The review is pretty thorough, but also warns to keep in mind that the reviewed unit is only beta hardware.
And that's gonna be schweeeeet. Of course, those 15K SCSI drives are super schweeeeeet.
Nice to know they are finally starting to speed up the slowest part of the computer again.
My 5400 rpm drive got me first post. 10K RPM will get me -3rd post?
At these speeds, would you hardware be more likely to 'burnout'?
If they can make these beauties with a serial-ATA interface, I AM SOLD!
Although, somewhere, I read that the RPMs are not directly related to the speed of the drive (I'm assuming seek rates/access times). Is this true? Obviously faster drives are louder and run hotter, but do they "by definition" outperform slower RPM drives?
Don't think that a small group of dedicated individuals can't change the world. It's the only thing that ever has.
Until new drives seem reliable and we don't hear of any issues with them there is nothing wrong with what I've currentlty got. Hardware also is hideously expensive when it first hits the shelves.
Analytic & algebraic topology of locally Euclidean meterization of infinitely differentiable Riemmanian manifold
To start shipping faster drives with their machines. Or, at the least. maybe the prices/demand will go down on that 7200 ive been craving.
If you get an error, type "OVERRIDE" or "SECURITY OVERRIDE" and then try the optimize command again.
7200 RPM should be fast enough for anybody.
They sure can- and they do. I have been playing around with a 10k RPM SATA drive from Western Digital at work this week.
About your other question- there are a lot of factors that contribute to drive performance, but rotational speed is one of the biggest.
"The defense of freedom requires the advance of freedom" - George W Bush
if the manufacturers of these 10K SATA drives would offer two different sets of firmware - one optimized for locality access for desktops and another for the more scatter/gather usage patterns seen on servers. How WD et.al. will position this drive for production remains to be seen.
heh heh- thats what I get for not RTFA first. We are talking about the same drive!
"The defense of freedom requires the advance of freedom" - George W Bush
You mean exactly like the one they reviewed?
Did you even read the article?
I would think that for most apps that need this, a SCSI or RAID (or both) solution would be better.
Oh well, faster is pretty marketable, I guess.
"A language that doesn't affect the way you think about programming, is not worth knowing" - Alan Perlis
Did we go back in time to 1975?!
But hasn't there been several articles around that show hard drive RPM to be a minimal factor in the performance of HDDs?
5400 -> 7200 wasn't that advantagous, but will 7200 -> 10000 be that much better?
Don't we get better performance improvements from tweaks to the file system and how it writes and spaces out its blocks and cylinders?? Or are we at those limits already?
When Western Digital raised the bar nearly 1.5 years ago, we repeatedly pointed out that the Special Edition (JB series) Caviar was what readers really wanted when they speculated over 10,000 RPM ATA drives.
Equipped with an 8-megabyte buffer and accompanying firmware aggressively tuned for single-user scenarios, the WD1000JB easily matched and even exceeded the performance that the best 10k RPM SCSI drives of the era delivered when it came to desktop performance.
While SCSI drives feature superior mechanics, their server orientation forces them to trade away firmware optimized for highly-localized patterns in favor of strategies that maximize returns in random access scenarios. In the Raptor, WD faces much of the same quandary.
--
est modus in rebus
Two of my friends purchased Seagate's 40GB 7200RPM Barracuda drives. In the space of eight weeks, both began sprouting bad sectors all over the place. This is totally unacceptable, especially when you consider that the standard HDD warranty is now 1 year [from 3.]
Focus on improving reliability, not increasing rotation speeds. Or just bring on those cool holographic drives - that should fix things up
Cheers,
CD
Use ISO 8601 dates [YYYY-MM-DD]
Review of First 10K IDE Drive!!! more like celda
Hah! And you thought 7200RPM drives died fast...
The perfomance (read/write/seek) is nowhere near todays SCSI drives, and with a new product like this, reliability is also in question.
Perhaps it needs to be targeted at the high performance desktop market.
I have a Maxtor 14 GB IDE-HD that is 10,000 RPM. Sure it sounds like a jet engine... but I've had it almost three years now, with no problems.
March 5, 2003 Author: Eugene Ra
Western Digital Raptor Available Capacities
Model Number
Capacity
WD360GD
36 GB
Estimated Price: $160 (36 GB)
Manufacturer Specifications
Beta unit provided by Hypermicro.com
Remember, mention StorageReview in your HyperMicro.com order and receive free UPS ground shipping!
Introduction
StorageReview.com readers have been speculating for the better part of three years on when the industry would ratchet up the spindle speed of ATA hard drives. When would it happen? Which company would start the trend? Speculation finally gave way to a real announcement on February 10th when Western Digital officially announced its Raptor Serial ATA drive.
Western Digital is in many ways the perfect company to lead ATA to a next-generation spindle speed. Ever since it introduced the Caviar WD400BB, WD has consistently led the field when it came to ATA performance. That's a 2.5-year run at the top- very impressive in the competitive computer hardware field. More importantly, however, the firm has no SCSI business to protect. The last thing that established SCSI powerhouses such as Seagate, IBM, and Maxtor want to see is the erosion of the relatively cushy margins associated with SCSI drives. Now that WD has opened this veritable Pandora's Box, the competition is sure to follow.
According to WD, the key factor holding back higher spindle speeds was parallel ATA's lack of specification-level hot swap functionality. To be successful (initially, at least), any 10k RPM ATA drive must gun for the enterprise market. And in the enterprise, a sector that views outages as unacceptable, the ability to swap out a failed drive for another unit with minimal downtime is crucial. Serial ATA provides for such hot-swap functionality. Now that SATA is trickling into the channel, WD believes 10k RPM ATA's time has come.
The Raptor comes in just a single configuration- a single 36-gigabyte platter. WD specifies the drive's seek time at just 5.2 milliseconds, solidly within SCSI territory. An 8-megabyte buffer accompanies the drive. Some folks may be disappointed with the drive's relatively paltry capacity- after all, today's SCSI drives deliver 147 GB of storage in a low-profile chassis. Much like its namesake made popular by 1993's Jurassic Park, however, WD envisions Raptors in multiple-drive configurations running off of relatively inexpensive SATA RAID controllers. Reflecting its enterprise orientation, the Raptor claims a 1.2 million hour MTBF spec and features a five-year warranty.
It is important to note that the market for the Raptor is primarily the entry- and mid-level server markets and not the enthusiast desktop sector. When Western Digital raised the bar nearly 1.5 years ago, we repeatedly pointed out that the Special Edition (JB series) Caviar was what readers really wanted when they speculated over 10,000 RPM ATA drives. Equipped with an 8-megabyte buffer and accompanying firmware aggressively tuned for single-user scenarios, the WD1000JB easily matched and even exceeded the performance that the best 10k RPM SCSI drives of the era delivered when it came to desktop performance. While SCSI drives feature superior mechanics, their server orientation forces them to trade away firmware optimized for highly-localized patterns in favor of strategies that maximize returns in random access scenarios. In the Raptor, WD faces much of the same quandary. With its enterprise-class warranty and seek time, however, its clear that server performance is WD's first priority for the Raptor.
The drive tested for this review is a beta unit provided by longtime SR sponsor HyperMicro.com rather than Western Digital itself. With a handful of exceptions, SR generally has not published performance figures for products this early in the development cycle. Please remember the final Raptor product may deliver results substantially different from those that follow.
Keeping that in mind, let's see what kind of performance this beta sample delivers!
ow-Level Results
IPEAK SPT's AnalyzeDisk assesses many low-level characteristics of hard drives. Two tests, Read Service Time and Write Service Time, each respectively conduct 25,000 random single-sector reads and writes across the entire breadth of the drive. The result is perfectly equivalent to an access time test. Results come both as an average and as a graphic that plots the percentage of accesses across the amount of time they each take to complete. For more information, please click here.
Note: Scores on top are better.
Service Time Graphs (in milliseconds)
Average Read Service Time
Maxtor Atlas 10k IV (147 GB Ultra320 SCSI) - 7.6 |
|
Seagate Cheetah 10K.6 (146 GB Ultra320 SCSI) - 8.0 |
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Western Digital Raptor WD360GD BETA (36 GB SATA) - 8.7 |
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IBM Deskstar 180GXP 8 MB (180 GB ATA-100) - 12.9 |
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Maxtor DiamondMax Plus 9 [8MB, 80GB/plat] (160 GB ATA-133) - 13.8 |
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Western Digital Caviar WD2000JB (200 GB ATA-100) - 14.8 |
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WD360GD (BETA) Average Read Service Time
The beta Raptor delivers a measured average access time of 8.7 milliseconds. Subtracting 3.0 ms to account for the rotational latency of a 10k RPM spindle speed yields a measured seek time of 5.7 ms. While excellent for an ATA drive, the score is a bit off of the manufacturer's 5.2 ms claim as well as a bit higher than what we've come to expect from 10k SCSI drives.
The use of an external controller (the Promise SATA150 TX4) and its associated driver unfortunately makes it more difficult to consistently disable write caching which unfortunately precludes us from presenting average write access times.
eTesting Lab's WinBench 99 v2.0 features a test that measures a drive's read sequential transfer rates across the entire drive. The benchmark reports results both in quantitative numbers as well as in a graphic that plots the transfer rate across the capacity of the drive.
Note: Scores on top are better.
Transfer Rate Graphs (in megabytes per second)
Transfer Rate - Begin
Maxtor Atlas 10k IV (147 GB Ultra320 SCSI) - 70.9 |
|
Seagate Cheetah 10K.6 (146 GB Ultra320 SCSI) - 69.0 |
|
Maxtor DiamondMax Plus 9 [8MB, 80GB/plat] (160 GB ATA-133) - 59.2 |
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Western Digital Raptor WD360GD BETA (36 GB SATA) - 57.6 |
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Western Digital Caviar WD2000JB (200 GB ATA-100) - 56.5 |
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IBM Deskstar 180GXP 8 MB (180 GB ATA-100) - 56.2 |
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Transfer Rate - End
Maxtor Atlas 10k IV (147 GB Ultra320 SCSI) - 44.1 |
|
Seagate Cheetah 10K.6 (146 GB Ultra320 SCSI) - 40.4 |
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Western Digital Raptor WD360GD BETA (36 GB SATA) - 37.6 |
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Maxtor DiamondMax Plus 9 [8MB, 80GB/plat] (160 GB ATA-133) - 33.7 |
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Western Digital Caviar WD2000JB (200 GB ATA-100) - 32.8 |
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IBM Deskstar 180GXP 8 MB (180 GB ATA-100) - 30.7 |
|
WD360GD (BETA) Transfer Rate
Despite its higher spindle speed, the Raptor's outer-zone transfer rates aren't much better than today's top 7200 RPM units. Its score of 57.6 MB/sec narrowly beats the Caviar WD2000JB and slightly trails the DiamondMax Plus 9. Thanks to its smaller platter diameter, the Raptor exhibits a bit less decay as it moves towards its inner zones. Its minimum score of 37.6 MB/sec tops other ATA drives yet still fails to reach the levels of a Cheetah or Atlas.
Desktop Performance...
Formulated utilizing IPEAK SPT's WinTrace32 and RankDisk, the StorageReview.com Desktop DriveMarks exactingly reproduce pre-recorded, contemporary access patterns on tested hard drives. For more information, please click here.
Note: Scores on top are better.
Desktop Performance Graphs (in I/Os per second)
SR Office DriveMark 2002
Maxtor Atlas 10k IV (147 GB Ultra320 SCSI) - 503 |
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Seagate Cheetah 10K.6 (146 GB Ultra320 SCSI) - 450 |
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Western Digital Caviar WD2000JB (200 GB ATA-100) - 431 |
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IBM Deskstar 180GXP 8 MB (180 GB ATA-100) - 418 |
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Western Digital Raptor WD360GD BETA (36 GB SATA) - 418 |
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Maxtor DiamondMax Plus 9 [8MB, 80GB/plat] (160 GB ATA-133) - 391 |
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SR High-End DriveMark 2002
Maxtor Atlas 10k IV (147 GB Ultra320 SCSI) - 444 |
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Western Digital Caviar WD2000JB (200 GB ATA-100) - 427 |
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Seagate Cheetah 10K.6 (146 GB Ultra320 SCSI) - 415 |
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Maxtor DiamondMax Plus 9 [8MB, 80GB/plat] (160 GB ATA-133) - 388 |
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IBM Deskstar 180GXP 8 MB (180 GB ATA-100) - 382 |
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Western Digital Raptor WD360GD BETA (36 GB SATA) - 300 |
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SR Bootup DriveMark 2002
Western Digital Raptor WD360GD BETA (36 GB SATA) - 455 |
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Maxtor Atlas 10k IV (147 GB Ultra320 SCSI) - 422 |
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Western Digital Caviar WD2000JB (200 GB ATA-100) - 391 |
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Seagate Cheetah 10K.6 (146 GB Ultra320 SCSI) - 386 |
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Maxtor DiamondMax Plus 9 [8MB, 80GB/plat] (160 GB ATA-133) - 348 |
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IBM Deskstar 180GXP 8 MB (180 GB ATA-100) - 307 |
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SR Gaming DriveMark 2002
Maxtor Atlas 10k IV (147 GB Ultra320 SCSI) - 649 |
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Seagate Cheetah 10K.6 (146 GB Ultra320 SCSI) - 548 |
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Western Digital Caviar WD2000JB (200 GB ATA-100) - 546 |
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Western Digital Raptor WD360GD BETA (36 GB SATA) - 531 |
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IBM Deskstar 180GXP 8 MB (180 GB ATA-100) - 528 |
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Maxtor DiamondMax Plus 9 [8MB, 80GB/plat] (160 GB ATA-133) - 508 |
|
The beta Raptor turns in a StorageReview.com Office DriveMark 2002 of 418 I/Os per second. While such a score places it among the top ATA drives, the Raptor fails to match WD's own Caviar WD2000JB. A top-level 10k SCSI unit such as Maxtor's Atlas 10k IV substantially outpaces the Raptor.
Differences become more glaring in the High-End DriveMark. At just 300 I/Os per second, the Raptor places in the middle of a pack of 7200 RPM drives equipped with 2-megabyte buffers. Here the WD2000JB outscores the WD360GD by a substantial 43% margin.
The Windows XP bootup process recorded in the SR Bootup DriveMark 2002 features an unusually high average queue depth for a desktop scenario. In this test, the Raptor stretches its legs, easily besting all comparable ATA and SCSI disks.
Finally, in the SR Gaming DriveMark 2002, the Raptor delivers 531 I/Os per second, a figure comparable to a top-end ATA drive yet trailing the Atlas 10k IV by a significant margin.
To be fair, we should point out that the 36-gigabyte Raptor faces flagship drives of much greater capacity in our tests. The margins between the Raptor and smaller ATA or SCSI drives would likely not be as pronounced since the competition would then be forced to work across a greater percentage of its platter zones.
Server Performance...
Server Performance
The StorageReview.com Server DriveMarks consist of IOMeter trials using predefined patterns supplied by Intel across varying load depths. The reported scores represent a normalized average of results from 1 to 64 outstanding IO/s. For more information click here.
Note: Scores on top are better.
Server Performance Graphs (in I/Os per second)
SR File Server DriveMark 2002
Maxtor Atlas 10k IV (147 GB Ultra320 SCSI) - 271 |
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Seagate Cheetah 10K.6 (146 GB Ultra320 SCSI) - 258 |
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Western Digital Raptor WD360GD BETA (36 GB SATA) - 177 |
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IBM Deskstar 180GXP 8 MB (180 GB ATA-100) - 131 |
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Western Digital Caviar WD2000JB (200 GB ATA-100) - 129 |
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Maxtor DiamondMax Plus 9 [8MB, 80GB/plat] (160 GB ATA-133) - 116 |
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SR Web Server DriveMark 2002
Maxtor Atlas 10k IV (147 GB Ultra320 SCSI) - 261 |
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Seagate Cheetah 10K.6 (146 GB Ultra320 SCSI) - 255 |
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Western Digital Raptor WD360GD BETA (36 GB SATA) - 181 |
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IBM Deskstar 180GXP 8 MB (180 GB ATA-100) - 134 |
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Maxtor DiamondMax Plus 9 [8MB, 80GB/plat] (160 GB ATA-133) - 119 |
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Western Digital Caviar WD2000JB (200 GB ATA-100) - 115 |
|
In the SCSI-stronghold of random, server-oriented performance, the Raptor, while delivering scores significantly better than traditional ATA drives, nonetheless falls behind contemporary SCSI drives by a significant margin. Even older drives such as the Seagate Cheetah 36ES (not represented; see the performance database to create custom comparisons) unquestionably trounce the WD360GD. The beta Raptor delivers the server performance that one would expect from a good 7200 RPM SCSI drive- definitely a cut above standard ATA, but not up to 10k RPM levels.
Legacy Performance
eTesting Lab's WinBench 99 Disk WinMark tests are benchmarks that attempt to measure desktop performance through a rather dated recording of high-level applications. Despite their age, the Disk WinMarks are somewhat of an industry standard. The following results serve only as a reference; SR does not factor them into final judgments.
Note: Scores on top are better.
Legacy Performance Graphs (in megabytes per second)
ZD Business Disk WinMark 99
Western Digital Caviar WD2000JB (200 GB ATA-100) - 16.4 |
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Western Digital Raptor WD360GD BETA (36 GB SATA) - 16.1 |
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Maxtor DiamondMax Plus 9 [8MB, 80GB/plat] (160 GB ATA-133) - 15.9 |
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IBM Deskstar 180GXP 8 MB (180 GB ATA-100) - 15.7 |
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Maxtor Atlas 10k IV (147 GB Ultra320 SCSI) - 12.1 |
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Seagate Cheetah 10K.6 (146 GB Ultra320 SCSI) - 11.7 |
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ZD High-End Disk WinMark 99
Maxtor DiamondMax Plus 9 [8MB, 80GB/plat] (160 GB ATA-133) - 44.9 |
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IBM Deskstar 180GXP 8 MB (180 GB ATA-100) - 39.2 |
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Maxtor Atlas 10k IV (147 GB Ultra320 SCSI) - 38.0 |
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Western Digital Caviar WD2000JB (200 GB ATA-100) - 36.9 |
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Seagate Cheetah 10K.6 (146 GB Ultra320 SCSI) - 33.3 |
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Western Digital Raptor WD360GD BETA (36 GB SATA) - 25.0 |
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Heat and Noise...
A Fluke thermometer and an Extech Type II SPL meter respectively deliver objective operating temperature and sound pressure measurements. Note that objective noise measurements are gathered only after subjective impressions have been penned. For more information, please click here.
Note: Scores on top are better.
Heat and Noise
Idle Noise (in dB/A @ 18mm)
IBM Deskstar 180GXP 8 MB (180 GB ATA-100) - 40.1 |
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Western Digital Raptor WD360GD BETA (36 GB SATA) - 40.4 |
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Maxtor DiamondMax Plus 9 [8MB, 80GB/plat] (160 GB ATA-133) - 41.0 |
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Western Digital Caviar WD2000JB (200 GB ATA-100) - 45.5 |
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Maxtor Atlas 10k IV (147 GB Ultra320 SCSI) - 47.7 |
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Seagate Cheetah 10K.6 (146 GB Ultra320 SCSI) - 48.5 |
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Net Drive Temperature (in degrees celsius)
Western Digital Caviar WD2000JB (200 GB ATA-100) - 19.7 |
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Maxtor DiamondMax Plus 9 [8MB, 80GB/plat] (160 GB ATA-133) - 19.7 |
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Western Digital Raptor WD360GD BETA (36 GB SATA) - 20.6 |
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IBM Deskstar 180GXP 8 MB (180 GB ATA-100) - 22.1 |
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Seagate Cheetah 10K.6 (146 GB Ultra320 SCSI) - 24.4 |
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Maxtor Atlas 10k IV (147 GB Ultra320 SCSI) - 30.0 |
|
Objectively speaking, the beta Raptor turns in impressively low noise floors, likely due to its single-platter design. A score of 40.4 approaches the noise floor delivered by the latest Barracuda ATA drives. Subjectively speaking, however, our sample emits an irritating high-pitched squeal reminiscent of early 10k RPM SCSI disks. The whine was audible even over the testbed's relatively loud drive cooler fans.
Seek noises land somewhere between today's louder ATA disks and a typical reviewed SCSI unit. While the Raptor features random seeks similar to that of 10k RPM SCSI, it features just a single platter contrasted with the four typically found in today's flagship units. The resultant actuator noise is quite unobtrusive.
The Raptor's single-platter configuration also yields a relatively low operating drive temperature. Our measurements reached 20.6 degrees Celsius above ambient room temperature- on the high side for an ATA drive but well below the typical SCSI disk.
Conclusion...
It's very difficult to draw firm conclusions on a drive that is obviously far from its final state. Firms manufacture pre-release units not for performance demonstrations but rather for system-integration purposes- resellers need to qualify the unit in their systems for extended periods of time before the drive hits general availability.
Many readers may be disappointed with the Raptor's relatively lackluster desktop performance. For various reasons, enthusiasts view an increased spindle speed as the largest factor in single-user performance. The reality, however, is that desktop usage predominately consists of highly-localized patterns and is affected more by caching strategies than marginal mechanical improvements. Western Digital's JB series may very well continue to stand as the premiere choice for those seeking the ultimate in single-user speed.
We're more concerned with the Raptor's server performance. While it is definitely a step above standard 7200 RPM ATA drives, the beta Raptor trails today's 10k RPM SCSI drives by substantial margins. If WD and SATA are to have a chance at cracking the enterprise market, the Raptor's multi-user performance must approach the levels delivered by Cheetahs and Atlases.
Again, all figures, analyses, and conclusions have been drawn from an early pre-production sample. It is likely that the performance delivered by the final product will differ significantly from what we've seen today. We wish WD the best, and eagerly await the opportunity to officially put the Raptor through its paces.
If they can make these beauties with a serial-ATA interface, I AM SOLD!
They CAN! Here is a great article about one!
If they can make these beauties with a serial-ATA interface, I AM SOLD!
[snip]
Speculation finally gave way to a real announcement on February 10th when Western Digital officially announced its Raptor Serial ATA drive.
[/snip]
Did I miss something, the article says its SATA.
..the fact that the last three stories on slashdot were done by CowboyNeal or that IDE drives are finally at 10k rpms?!
even 10,000 rotations per minute isn't enough to keep up with the /. effect.
I think he was joking. I HOPE he was joking, otherwise, yeah.
Seek times is the one thing that faster rotational speeds improve, however in most use nowadays with intelligent disk controls and caching, it's gross throughput that matters, and for that it's the technology of the drive/drive density that matters, and it's been edging steadily upwards at a constant pace (contrary to the gist of the article that the hard drive market has been static). For example if drive A has twice the data density per roation than drive B, obviously drive A would still have a higher gross transfer rate even if it ran at 5400RPM while the other ran at 10000RPM. Without all of the data the RPMs really don't say a lot.
That needs to get a +5.
I don't know why SCSI drives have less heat than IDE drives, but they just do.
I have a web server with multiple 10k rpm SCSI drives inside it. Zero case fans. Zero drive fans. Approximately 1mm of vertical clearance between the drives.
If you try doing this with high performance IDE drives, even mere 7200 rpm drives, you could expect a quick heat death, but my SCSI drives in this server never get any hotter than warm to the touch.
SCSI has a lot more advantages over IDE than mere statistics and benchmarks can indicate.
did anyone else read that headline and think 10K as in the size of the disk? we've had those for quite some time now, right?
The One Rule Of Chess You'll Ever Need: Don't play someone who carries a kit in their bookbag.
Those said, I have a few other things I'd like to say. First of all, it's nice to see that the drive is quiet. Even many 5400 and 7200 RPM drives are quite loud today. It's nice to know that going to 10k isn't going to turn my PC into a jet engine. Also, they mention that the reason that we haven't seen 10k IDE drives before was that servers didn't want them since they couldn't be hotswapped like SCSI. SATA supports hotswap in theory, but can you hotswap today? I don't think Windows lets you, IIRC (or if it does the system is a bit unstable afterwards). Does Linux let you hotswap SATA drives? If all the drives are one one controller (say RAID 5, or something else redundant) and you swap a drive, does the OS even know it happened? I don't have any expirence with hotswapping hard drives.
Comment forecast: Bits of genius surrounded by a sea of mediocrity.
Great! Now I can get a second-rate, first generation 10KRPM hard drive with bad server performance and almost no capacity, from a company that disavowed the high end years ago by bailing on the SCSI market, all for the same price as established SCSI drives of the same size or established ATA drives four times the size.
Hrmm.
Actually you're in luck: They will be available _ONLY_ with a serial ATA interface.
Computer Science is no more about computers than astronomy is about telescopes. --E. W. Dijkstra
I bet you feel like an ass now
Estimated Price: $160 (36 GB)
Manufacturer Specifications
Beta unit provided by Hypermicro.com
Remember, mention StorageReview in your HyperMicro.com order and receive free UPS ground shipping!
Tiger Direct has 36GB Ultra160 SCSI's for only $99. Anyone know if these are some type of rejects? Google did not reveal any obvious issues with this model.
Bad boys rape our young girls but Violet gives willingly.
Why is it that whenever someone tells a joke here some moron takes it seriously?
Wow, if that's a joke (and I take it that you're the poster who realize how dumbass it is and now is rescinding it and claiming it was a joke), then it's a pathetic joke. There is absolutely nothing even remotely funny about it, and instead it just comes across as mentally challenged.
The world would be a better place without someone who is quick to anger and completely lacks a sense of humor such as yourself.
This is pretty much a dupe. Even more amusing, note who posted the first article.
http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=03/02/21/055324 9&tid=137
Enterprise-class ATA Drives Posted by CowboyNeal on Friday February 21, @05:48AM
from the fast-enough-to-make-disk-heads-spin dept.
Life moves pretty fast; if you don't stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it. -FB
Uhh, we already had 10k RPM drives years ago, when internal SCSI was standard. They weren't cheap, but they were available.
Holographic data storage!!!
Yes, in the future, we will all have quantum computers with holographic data storage devices, communicating to us through 3d monitors!
in girum imus nocte et consumimur igni
Actually it isn't nessessarily true.
2 0415/inde x.html
<THG>
http://www4.tomshardware.com/storage/200
There are basically two ways to increase the performance of hard drives: increase the rotation speed or increase the data density. Increasing the rotation speed definitely enables better sequential performance, but only if you adjust the read/write mechanism accordingly. Increasing data density is also a popular method - recently, Western Digital announced the first drive with 27 GB per platter, which is in strong contrast to the 15 or 20 GB per platter for most IDE drives and a greater contrast to the even lower densities for most fast-spinning SCSI drives. However, the catch is that high density doesn't allow top rotation speeds, and vice versa. So essentially, designing a fast hard drive involves creating the most ideal balance between rotation speed and density.
</THG>
This basically means that if your reading/writeing small files then higher speed/lower density drives are for you. But if you plan to move around large files look for larger density/ slower RPM drives.
I wonder if CmdrTaco considers this to be fun?
Life moves pretty fast; if you don't stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it. -FB
My current 7500rpm Segate drive makes noticeable amount of noise, this one is even noisier, why can't the drive manufacturers come up with some noise suppression case/jacket for the drives. For my new desktop I would rather go in for 2 low speed (4500rpm) drive in a RAID 0 configuration.
This will be a key improvement in thin-client applications that scale to 10000 or more users per box. The biggest bottlenecks there are the bus and the hdd.
Please don't quote Tom's Hardware. They are widely know as being universally full of shit, and it can make you look bad. Take a look at their RAID controller articles as a fine example.
Of course, in this particular instance they are mostly correct. There are certainly more than three methods of increasing hard disk speed as well, but THG did mention two of them.
Computer Science is no more about computers than astronomy is about telescopes. --E. W. Dijkstra
WHY do we need fast hard-disks?
Have anybody ever actually thought about it? For the amount of extra money to blow, why not spend more for memory and have EVERYTHING run from there? what, 4G is not enough for your desktop system? x86 only addresses that much right now, ya know...
Sure, your's might boot faster, but I still don't understand why we can't have linux just run off memory and don't even touch the hard-drives. How much trouble is to cache (even, user selectively) some directory of common-used code into memory? ls / ifconfig / vi or emacs depending on your flavor?
Anyway, I know there are situations in which a fast harddrive is warrented, but I still think that the money is better spent on more memory; a lot more memory. or a RAID controller.
My life in the land of the rising sun.
"look for larger density..."
Don't forget to consider the number of surfaces. It's bytes/cylinder that matters, not bytes/surface.
We should be using arrays of lasers with crystal mediums with NO moving parts .
Why increase speeds instead of adding more read,write heads?
Adding more heads can produce faster results like a raid system , probably more than increasing rotation speed.
Let us not forget Harddrives are the major source of problems for computers not including windows software.
peace,out.
SCSI isn't that expensive, especially if you're willing to analyze what you're actually going to use, and not just RAID 0-ing two 80GB drives like a lot of people I know.
I picked up two Western Digital 9.1GB 10,000RPM SCSI drives for $35 each, shipped. If you don't have a controller, U-160 Cards can be had for about $70. I stick my OS on one drive, swap and applications on the second, and have a 45GB IDM Deskstar (75GXP and still running after 2 years, I like living on the edge) handling mass-storage tasks.
According to WD's site, these drives have transfer rates comparable to the 8MB Cache IDE drives, but seek times in the 5 ms range (vs. around 8.5). Oh, and they're not particularly loud either, at least not anything I've noticed.
At $160, this drive doesn't seem like a good idea. I've seen numerous 10K ~36GB SCSI drives for about $30 more. I guess you can factor in the card cost if you honestly want to, but if you're talking about RAIDing these things, you're probably talking about buying a good SATA or IDE RAID card anyway.
If you have plans to archive every friggin' CD you own in FLAC format, then SCSI isn't a cost-effective method to go. I don't. YMMV, but I've found that I can beat the hell out of the computer and I don't see the nasty drive access issues that I used to. For a site where a lot of people piss and moan about not needing this many mhz or that DX9-capable card, I'd say the logic of smaller faster drives when you probably aren't gonna fill the giant ones is pretty evident.
http://www.tomshardware.com/technews/20030210_0836 51.html
with 78 rpm. If it was good enough for Sachmo it's good enough for me.
KFG
Drives like all hardware are built to a price point.
You can built a 7200rpm drive and a 15000rpm drive to have exactly the same MTBF. However the 15k rpm drive will have much tighter tolerances, better bearings, and therefore be more expensive.
Enterprise drives have a higher MTBF than consumer drives, therefore enterprise drives cost more.
Yes, and that would make you the odd one out!
My sense of humor is my own!
You have a sense of humor? Could have fooled me...
Good thing for you most mods will dish out +1 informatives without RTFA either
I meant the grandparent, which is obviously a joke. Not the parent, which you're right, makes no sense.
I mean the great-grandparent. The post about 7200RPM.
Hmm, I'm going to have to disagree. What you're saying (that rotational speed alone doesn't matter) is true, but only if you're just interested in continuous transfers. For continuous transfers, you can bump up the density and get better rates.
In the real world, lots of transfers aren't continuous. For instance, if your computer ever starts swapping, it writes pages of data out to the disk according to how recently used they were, and it writes them wherever there's free space. And faulting those pages back in from disk is even worse. A page gets faulted in when a memory access attempt finds that it's no longer in RAM. And when that happens, it could be any page -- it's just whatever data your program decided to access at that time. So when you're faulting data in from swap space, no controller is smart enough to predict the access pattern, and you just have to rely on your disk being fast enough to get there before you die of boredom.
By the way, for the lay-person, the easy way to understand whether seek time is important for a given computer activity is to listen to the drive during the activity. The clicking or clattering noise you hear is the drive seeking, i.e. moving its head to a new position. So basically, if you hear a lot of clattering noise from your drive, it means you're experiencing a pretty random access pattern.
'but do they "by definition" outperform slower RPM drives?'
All other things being equal than yes faster rpm drives are faster, simply because more disk surface goes past the heads per second, and rotational latency (The time spent waiting for the correct part of the disk to spin past the head is reduced.)
However with anything, rarely is all things equal, rpm is not the only thing that dictates throughput, other factors that effect overal speed are:
- firmwire optimisation
- data density
You can have a 7200rpm drive and a 15k rpm drive have the same bandwidth simply by having the 7200 have a greater data density. The only thing that is always better as the rpms increase is rotational latency.
However rotational latency is more of an issue when doing a lot of random access (total latency equals seek latency plus rotational latency), such as databases, etc. (ie: the enterprise market). Random access is much harder for a controller to cache effectively, so cache hits are lower.
A consumer drive is intended less for random access, and more for throughput. This is generally much easier for a controller to cache so cache hits go up, and higher data density is possible at lower rpm.
Enterprise drives tend to be relatively conservative when it comes to data density, this is a side effect of the faster rotational speed, and due to reluctence to trust data to unproven technology. Therefore consumer drives often end up being a test bed for advances in area density.
As always it comes down to different products designed for different markets. To compare them directly is largely unfair, as the products are designed for different purposes.
How do you expect to skratch using holograms?
With IDE hard disks moving towards limited one year warranties, one would tend to wonder if this move is economically grounded in an effort to combat class action suits over these faster and faster IDE drives spontaneously bursting into flames. Any faster, and AMD will grow angry at their loss of the Heat Champion Throne. ;)
What's wrong: the average /.'er was probably born in an era dominated by compact rather than vinyl discs. Or likely isn't familiar with Mr. Armstrong.
In other words: *WHOOSH!*
(I had thought it was Satchmo.)
Seagate Marketing would like to thankyou for demonstrating that our new 10k rpm drives really are 38% faster than 7200 rpm drives in _all_ respects.
wait till one of these puppys spins up to speed would probly sound like a jet plane inside your case. Damn I want one.
Note that the high pitch whine of the early 10k rpm drives was caused by the electric motor, emiting sound from the voice (?) coils.
A lot of people here have bemoaned the apparent lack of hot-swapping abilities of the latest IDE drives, and I am scratching my head wondering what the problem is.
My main computer is over four years old and I have not had a problem swapping out an IDE disk with an IDE CD-ROM drive (and vice versa) while the computer is running.
I am running Win2k and all I had to do was unplug the drive, refresh Device Manager, plug in new drive, refresh again - and bang, it's done.
It's very similar to the way one would hot swap a SCSI HDD in Windows.
No BSOD to speak of here. Can somebody enlighten me?
"Smoking helps you lose weight - one lung at a time" -- A. E. Neumann
Vinyl? Is that some new fangled thingamajig?
Real discs are made out of lacquer. For what it's worth my parents tell me that real "discs" are actually cylinders. Go figure.
You're certainly right about the spelling though. I blame a combination of my wireless keyboard needing new batteries and my dyslexia for that glitch. The "t" kept repeating, and I backed up too far without realizing it. Preview don't do a damned bit of good if you can't see what you're looking at properly I'm afraid.
KFG
You're playing russian roulette by swapping out drives. You're probably best off getting a good case, and an extra controller card for your spare drives.
Marxism is the opiate of dumbasses
Perhaps he has been kidding(parodying stupid trolls) all this time and you've been missing the point in the same way that you are trolling him for. Maybe you are kidding and I'm missing the point, or maybe I'm parodying also and somebody will miss the point there and get flamed but actually it turns out that there were paro--- oh no, I've gone crossed eyed.
I find this drive a disapointment.
.2ms access times we will really start to see some impressive things.
This drive uses 36gb per platter.
On a 10,000 rpm drive the platters need to be somewhat smaller, due to them physically spinning faster it can cause "problems" with a full size 3.5" disk @ that speed.
Hence they physically make the disk smaller, so I can totally understand them NOT acheiving the current 7200rpm "flagship" 83gb per platter, however 36gb per platter is quite old for 10,000 rpm drives, which is quite a shame, 50 gb per platter would have been magnificent.
Unfortunately due to this, it indicates (at least to me) that this is nothing new technology wise, but a 10,000rpm disk with an SATA controller strapped on to it, they may have even licensed it from their buddies @ IBM (since they used to be chummy in the early 7200rpm days of ATA)
I'm having some guys on the SR forums claim the drive isn't that bad at all and that claiming it's a disapointment is silly because it still does X, and that's fine it's their opinion.
However MY opinion is that this drive LOGICALLY should be *THE* fastest ATA drive in existence, bar none in all benchmarks - that's what we enthusiasts want and what we will pay for - we want it to not only be faster than all 7200rpm drives (bar none) but be the fastest ATA drive period - if they can acheive this and truely blur that SCSI / ATA line - the "geeks / losers and enthusiasts" (read: myself and many others) will glady drop the same money we would normally drop to receive 2.5 and even 3x the space.
As I've said previously, most people (I feel) who initially saw the PR for this disk approx 3 weeks ago would have thought this: - "that drive will be the fastest at everything ever besides scsi" that's their expectations, and that's mine - and unfortunately it's not the case.
So some of you may like the drive, but after reading SR's review I'm not down with that drive at all - also take note the drive makes the distinct "10,000rpm whine" sound which is disapointing as well.
Big sigh from me...... these damn "hacked up" tape drives (which is all a hard disk is a "SUPER" tape drive) should be long gone by now! - magnetic spinning media has been holding the PC back for a long time, the second we have 100mb a second (slow by todays memory standards) and sub
Yeah, and that worked wonders.
Now instead of trolls and crapfloods being marked as -1 automatically, they are now 0 automatically, meaning that threshholds have to be even higher if you want to avoid them.
CLIT is dead, but trolling now is more effective than ever. Damn slashdot sucks.
-nt-
Care to make some comments on the noise of this drive, "feel" of speed (no not benchmarks - the simple stuff, loading windows, loading quake 3, loading CS - copying files from disk to disk) etc?
I'd love to hear some feedback from you, unfortunately I can't email you directly - seems the email addy is blocked somehwo?
My impressions of the drive:
-It is very heavy. It surprized me how much heavier it was than the other 7200 RPM drives.
-It has what look like a built in heatsink in it's case, and I didn't notice it feeling much hotter than other drives (maybe because of the heatsink)
-It was a noisy environment, but the drive seemed almost as quiet as the other drives (again, kind of surprizing to me)
About the speed, we mostly run proprietary traffic generation programs to the drive, so I haven't really been able to use it in a real world environment yet (no Windows or games or anything). That being the case, it is hard for me to compare.
"The defense of freedom requires the advance of freedom" - George W Bush
holy crap that's a lot of storage space! 10K? Nobody is ever going to need that much!
Quid festinatio swallonis est aetherfuga inonusti?
Africus aut Europaeus?
I worked for a company designing high speed video capture units and have been using 10k and 15k laptop sized IDE drives for months now....how exactly is this new?
We've secretely replaced the Enterprise's dilithium crystals with Folgers crystals. Lets see if they notice.
I wonder when they will start designing hard drives with multiple read heads. I thought I read an article on here awhile back about that. If you have two read heads on a 5,400 RPM drive it would be faster than a 10,000 RPM drive due to the seek time being cut in half. That is, one hard drive head would be closer to the data than the other on average.
The problem with hard drives now is that the seek time is too slow. It takes too long for the disk to spin to where the head is and it takes the head to long to find tracks. There must be some way to speed those two mechanisms up other than just increasing the RPM's. HD access is still in the milliseconds whereas RAM is at nanoseconds. If HD access could even get into the microsecond range it would be a significant improvement in performance.
I'm sure they'll find better solutions someday.
it's like this:
Spindle speed and areal density have a give and take relationship, faster spindle = less areal density being the data can only be reliably read so fast by a generation of drive head and disk platter technology. Improving the head and platter designs gives you higher areal density at a given spindle speed, and sometimes a higher top spindle speed, but increasing that spindle speed will quickly reduce your areal density, sometimes to the point that the spindle speed increase can actually lower your sequential read and write speeds.
more areal density generally produces:
-faster sequential reads and writes
-higher capacities
faster spindle speed generally produces:
-faster sequential reads and writes
-less rotational latency
-lower areal density = lower drive capacities
-more noise
-more heat
Of course there are excpetions to these attributes, but generally they are cause and effect.
In general your big fast 15k SCSI drives aren't always that fast in big sequential read/write tests, at least not reletive to their spindle speed, but they generally fly in random small read/write scenarios being they're generally designed for servers and most servers require that kind of data transfer and that's where the shorter rotational latency is going to really help.
matguy(.com)
I was just (wildly) thinking, why not have a platter ontop of the magnetic platter that is just made from a matrix of heads. That way nothing would need to spin and the only thing needed would be to select the right head to read from. This should be instant! I'm kind of imagining the heads working not unlike a keyboard matrix does.
Yeah, right. For the server market.
These units will be slammed into desktop machines before you can say "hamspamandeggs". Joe sixpack will think that his video editing will go faster with this drive, the fact that the 10k rotation won't help (bulky) data transfer speeds at all will not appeal to him (or her, if it's Jane Average).
Politics and profit margins were the only thing keeping 10k drives away from the mass (read: IDE) market. Since 90% of the 7200 drives are IDE units with a TI IDE-to-SCSI convertor chipset, I expect the 10k drives to go the same route soon now. If they aren't already.
Musicians don't die. They just decompose.
Oi, no disrespecting the website that taught me how to turn my Duron into fancy fireworks....
People replying to my sig annoy me. That's why I change it all the time.
Single page link here
Their conclusion:
Single page link here
He'ld like his crack back.
;>
More seriously, I deal with a bunch of PCs on a regular basis.. it is VERY easy to tell the machines with 7200RPM from the machines with 5400RPM drives.. and don't get me started on how crap 4200RPM laptop HDDs are
This isn't even numerically fast - this is noticably fast.
I don't need faster drives.
I need big drives that run quietly and are reliable.
In the last several months, 5400RPM drives have completely disappeared from most retailers, due to an arms race between Maxtor and Seagate.
What I, and most home users need storage for, is for large media files like MP3s. You don't need fast disk access for these.
7200, and especially 10000 RPM drives will necessarily be less reliable than 5400RPM drives. The faster a mechanical system moves, the quicker it'll wear out. And fast drives are damned loud.
How about making IDE drives that are dependable and won't melt down after a year? More RPMs is fine, but IDE harddrives aren't called disposable drives for nothing.
SEO Copywriter. Just Say ON
That's way too small, man. I need at least a 40 gig drive. It'll never sell.
Oh.
Nevermind.
Tuus crepidae innexilis sunt.
Why haven't there been 10k rpm drives before? What was stopping a IDE drive from going faster than 7200? Was it a power thing or an expense thing or a bandwith thing?
Just curious.
You mean exactly like the one they reviewed?
Did you even read the article?
Uh, you're new to Slashdot, aren't you?
check out Maxtor's 250GB drive - its still 5400rpm. Samsung also still has a good number of 5400rpm drives out on the market.
You young whippersnappers with all your talk of "Serial ATA" this, and "10k RPM" that, don't know anything! Why, in my day, if you wanted a faster transfer rate, by god, you opened up the glass panel and used your hand to speed up the drum's rotation!
Mod parent up +2 Informative, this looks like a better solution than a 10k drive.
Smaller radius drives that don't spin as fast consume much less power spinning up, are much quieter, and generate less heat, further requiring less fanning and less noise. From the conclusion page of the article cited by parent:
The downside is the cost, which one would expect from drives that use more platters instead of faster spin:
Now, if someone can point to a SCSI version so I can have a Beowulf Cluster Of These, I might start to get interested.
While you're at it, find a way to power down all but one drive of a RAID while idling (a non-RAID logging partition), and I'm sold.