Western Digital Working On a 20,000 RPM Drive

MrKaos writes "Western Digital seems to be preparing for the onslaught of solid-state drives set to impact its market by developing a 20,000 rpm hard drive. Similar to the VelociRaptor line of drives, the new drives are speculated to be offering lower capacity as a tradeoff for faster seek and write times." This report out of Taipei is the only word on the rumored WD 20K drive. It's said to be a 2.5" drive in a 3.5" enclosure, for efficiency of cooling — the arrangement the Register enjoyed poking fun at when the 10K drive was upgraded last month.

Comments

They should work on a 20,001 RPM drive

[Anonymous Coward]

The equivalent of going to 11

Re:They should work on a 20,001 RPM drive

[MostAwesomeDude]

20001: A Speed Odyssey.

Sorry, couldn't resist.

Seagate responds

[Leuf]

We've taken the next step by mounting our 15,000 rpm drives in an external enclosure which then spins the drive at a further 10,000 rpms, for a total system speed of 25,000 rpms. Initial benchmarks are very promising!

Re:Seagate responds

[sunami]

We've taken the next step by mounting our 15,000 rpm drives in an external enclosure which then spins the drive at a further 10,000 rpms, for a total system speed of 25,000 rpms. Initial benchmarks are very promising!
Pretty sure this is a general relativity question, so it would be less than 25,000. Come on get your science right.

Re:Seagate responds

[Firehed]

Before now, nobody understood why I have all of my computers sitting on top of turntables. Now I'll just point them to your post, since they couldn't fathom what I meant when I said it makes it run faster.

I had also tried mounting them in a paint can shaker to get at least another 15Hz out of the CPU, but I couldn't stand the noise.

Re:Seagate responds

[davester666]

I find putting my computers on a treadmill makes them run even faster than on a turntable. As a bonus, treadmills are much sturdier than turntables, so they last much longer before they need repair.

I also have stopped getting dizzy trying to look at the pulsing light on my MacBook Pro to see if it's sleeping or not since switching to a treadmill.

Don't go into the bathroom!

[Anonymous Coward]

The last person forgot to flush! Now the toilet is full of Ubuntu!

Re:Don't go into the bathroom!

[Anonymous Coward]

I went and some water splashed up onto my debian. Eww! And it looked like somebody was stroking their redhat and gentood all over the seat. Gross!

Western Digital? Oh good!

[ThatsNotFunny]

Now it can lose my data twice as fast the last one I bought.

Re:immovable object?

[Anonymous Coward]

Considering that these are top o' the line enterprise drives for servers, I don't think the stationary requirement would be a detriment to its usage. Management frowns on horseplay near the hardware. Were not allowed to duplicate the nerf basketball court that google has set up in their cages.

We at Gnome Rotary Disks have a better solution

[iminplaya]

The disk is stationary and we spin the case for better cooling.

Re:Solid State

[Anonymous Coward]

Reaganomics!

Re:immovable object?

[pushing-robot]

Yes, well, giant fighting robots need enterprise-grade hardware too.

Re:Is there a point to this?

[gardyloo]

In other words, this speed increase could enable the drive to do 10% more random I/Os per second.

We at the NSA are interested in things which are more random, and would like to subscribe to your newsletter.

Re:Only 20K?

[dfsmith]

The moment you can show me an F1 engine that runs at 20kRPM for 5 years and costs less than $500 I'll get back to you.

Re:Is there a point to this?

[Anonymous Coward]

The higher speed drives aren't so much for their sequential transfer rates by themselves, but their random seek rates.

The secret goal is to use the drive as a flywheel, and power a laptop.

Re:Is there a point to this?

[Anonymous Coward]

i'm sad because i don't know if that's true or not

Re:immovable object?

[audunr]

Once you hit 20K RPM, the platters stay put while the universe is spinning.