Western Digital's VelociRaptor 10K RPM SATA Drive

MojoKid was one of a number of people to submit about WDs new 10k RPM SATA Drive. He says "Western Digital's Raptor line of Hard Drives has been very popular with performance enthusiasts, as a desktop drive with enterprise-class performance. Today WD has launched a new line of high-performance desktop drives dubbed the VelociRaptor, and the product finally scales in capacity as well. The new SATA-based VelociRaptor weighs in at 300GB with the same 10K RPM spindle speed, but with one other major difference — it's based on 2.5" technology. Its smaller two-platter, four-head design affords the VelociRaptor random access and data transfer rates significantly faster than competing desktop SATA offerings. Areal density per platter has increased significantly as well, which contributes to solid performance gains versus the legacy WD Raptor series."

Comments

Noise Level

[MankyD]

I've always wondered - what's the noise like on a 10k drive? I would think its safe to assume that they're louder, but with smaller platters, who knows. I'm always working to make my machine quieter, and sometimes this seems to come into conflict with making it faster.