OEM Hard Drive With Window

SJasperson writes "At last, you don't need to mess around with Dremel tools and Lexan (and destroy your valuable data) to get a clear window in your hard drive. Western Digital has released the Raptor X 150GB SATA hard drive. 10,000 RPM, 4.6ms seek time, 16MB buffer, and, yes, a clear window so you can see what's going on inside. Made out of a special polycarbonate lens with an ESD-dissipative coating, the lens is designed to let case modders and their groupies see the drive platters and heads without sacrificing data integrity."

Comments

They are just now making these?

[RickPartin]

I'm surprised something like this has never been built before purely for educational purposes. I can see someone making a good amount of money selling a hard drive like this for 5 times the price to schools. Hell I'd like to have one of these myself (for a few bucks more) since I've never had a hard drive I was willing to gut and even then I wouldn't get to see it work.

Re:Is it just me?

[RickPartin]

Case modding is all about being cool and different. Wasting money on things like this gives these guys a bigger e-penis. One practical purpose I can think of is for education. Letting students watch the drive work as it chugs along reading and writing data.

Re:Is it just me?

[javaxman]

Or is this idea just silly?

Of course it's not just you. Of course this idea is silly. So is putting a light inside your PC, or most case modding in general.

Then again, decorating your low-end Honda Civic with big mufflers, racing stripes, and spinny hubcaps is silly, too, but that doesn't stop a huge multi-million-dollar industry from springing up around providing those accessories for people who want to do something silly like that.

It's silly, sure. But it's nowhere as silly as a necktie. I mean, have you seen those things ? What sort of fool would spend money on those, much less actually wear one ?!?

Don't even get me started on women's fashions...

I mean, there are businesses that would sell you a hard drive with a window in it, or at least take your hard drive and put at window in it already, aren't there? The news here is that an OEM has decided that the market ( or at least press marketing opportunity ) is big enough to sell a windowed hard drive, right?

Just a *window*? Feh!

[pla]

I'll wait until they release the model with the entire body made of something transparent.

And if you mod this "funny", you've missed my intent. Quite serious, why go for a window rather than at least the non-board-half fully transparent? Not like these things have a lot of stress on the shell itself, that they need to use metals to protect them...

Re:Is it just me?

[timeOday]

Then again, decorating your low-end Honda Civic with big mufflers, racing stripes, and spinny hubcaps is silly, too, but that doesn't stop a huge multi-million-dollar industry from springing up around providing those accessories for people who want to do something silly like that.

Except this is no low-end Honda Civic hard drive. 150 GB, 10K RPM, NCQ. Nobody makes fun of Apple for going out of their way to make iPods look good, because they are good. The same may apply here.

Re:Why would it be silly?

[CastrTroy]

Doesn't Beings a "Modder" actually require that you modify something? I really have respect for people who do the work themselves and make their case look really good. But for those who just spend a lot of money putting together stock parts, well, I don't think they should really be called modders.