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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.

15 of 314 comments (clear)

  1. Stand back and watch for now.. by SystematicPsycho · · Score: 3, Insightful

    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
    1. Re:Stand back and watch for now.. by grimt007 · · Score: 4, Insightful
      Luckily new tech unveilings have a wonderful habit of driving current prices down, maybe we'll see 7200 RPM's at consistently less than $1 a gig!

      then look out cause RAID here i come.

  2. Big deal. by jericho4.0 · · Score: 2, Insightful
    So what? An increase in heat and wear and tear on components, for what theroy says is ~25% speed increase. This drive doesn't even come close to that.
    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
    1. Re:Big deal. by smallpaul · · Score: 4, Insightful

      So what? An increase in heat and wear and tear on components, for what theroy says is ~25% speed increase. This drive doesn't even come close to that. I would think that for most apps that need this, a SCSI or RAID (or both) solution would be better.

      Why would SCSI be less prone to heat and wear than IDE?

    2. Re:Big deal. by dhovis · · Score: 4, Insightful
      hy would SCSI be less prone to heat and wear than IDE?

      I think the point was just that SCSI provides better performance, even with 7200RPM. Much of that comes from the fact that SCSI drives are "smart" and require almost no CPU time, whereas IDE drives are "dumb", and require the CPU to handle much of the work.

      The price differential, OTOH, is substantial.

      --

      --
      The internet is the greatest source of biased information in the history of mankind.

  3. Re:Finally... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Insightful

    Yeah, but how long till it fries itself?

    I'd rather have something slow that I can trust, rather than something that goes out in a brillant ball of fire--even though it was really fast.

    You can already use a nice IDE RAID card--or even software RAID and get very good performance, at a decent price.

    Besides, PC architecture really can't even use as much bandwith as a good RAID card can put out... Even with a 64bit/66Mhz PCI interface.

    The only thing that spinning the bastard faster helps in is access times. Big whoop.

  4. Re:Finally... by Jeff+DeMaagd · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Maybe a tie between the user and the floppy drive.

    But seriously, ATA hard drives have still been increasing in speed even when "stuck" at 7200 RPM because the data density skyrocketed.

  5. Re:Reliability is more important to me by BrookHarty · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Ive seen almost every HD, Motherboard or hardware go bad. Other than IBM and the bad batch of drives awhile ago, most seem pretty good. Just save your money and buy the cheapest oem you can get. (IMHO).

    BTW, I waw a good deal on pricewatch, 200gig 7200RPM 8M WD's for 240 at newegg.

  6. Re:Finally... by sweetooth · · Score: 3, Insightful

    While the user may be the slowest part I will be damn happy when the current incarnation of the PCI bus goes away.

  7. Re:Finally... by ehiris · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Nice to know they are finally starting to speed up the slowest part of the computer again.

    I wish I'd have network card speed close to the speed of my hard drive.

  8. Fast but Noisy by zeekiorage · · Score: 2, Insightful
    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.

    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.
  9. Re:It would be nice by Fulcrum+of+Evil · · Score: 3, Insightful

    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 about making it configurable with a jumper or a utility. They already do this for a speed/noise tradeoff.

    --
    "We returned the General to El Salvador, or maybe Guatemala, it's difficult to tell from 10,000 feet"
  10. My SCSI Drives by UserChrisCanter4 · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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.

  11. Re:hot-swappable IDE drives - what's the fuss abou by ocelotbob · · Score: 3, Insightful
    You've merely managed to get lucky, as hot swapping IDE drives is potentially a very bad thing. As it's not designed to be done, protections aren't in place to keep transient voltage, such as static shocks, from wiping out your controller and/or drive. Yes it may work for you most of the time, but I would not trust doing such a procedure on a computer which I'd put important information on.

    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

  12. Re:An important paragraph... by edmudama · · Score: 2, Insightful

    "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."

    There is no cache optimization for random access scenario, since you're guaranteed to almost never get a read cache hit.

    Maximizing random performance = mechanics.
    Maximizing local performance = scheduling.

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    More data, damnit!