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Western Digital Working On a 20,000 RPM Drive

Posted by kdawson on from the positively-supersonic dept.

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.

7 of 194 comments (clear)

  1. Seagate responds by Leuf · · Score: 5, Funny

    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!

  2. immovable object? by seeker_1us · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I wonder if these really fast hard disks will have to be kept stationary. More specifically: I wonder if conservation of angular momentum (manifested, for example, in gyroscopic precession) becomes a real issue if any torques were put on a spinning disk.

  3. Re:Solid State by jay-be-em · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Economics.

    --
    "Orthodoxy means not thinking--not needing to think. Orthodoxy is unconsciousness." --Eric Blair
  4. Add heads? by macemoneta · · Score: 5, Interesting

    It seems strange to continuously up the rotation speed, adding noise, vibration, heat and shortening the life of the drive. Why not just add another set of heads on the opposite side of the drive? You get many of the same benefits - increased sustained transfer rate, but also reduce the seek and latency. To maintain the form factor, reduce the size of the platters (use 2.5" drive platters in a 3.5" drive).

    --

    Can You Say Linux? I Knew That You Could.

  5. Re:Is there a point to this? by hedwards · · Score: 5, Insightful

    No, not right, that's assuming that the writes are being done sequentially. Hard disks are random access devices, and while they can definitely do sequential reads and writes, and quite a bit faster, as soon as the files are not next to each other or are fragmented you're going to lose that advantage.

  6. Western Digital? Oh good! by ThatsNotFunny · · Score: 5, Funny

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

    --
    "Was it a millionaire who said 'Imagine No Posessions?'" -- Elvis Costello
  7. Re:They should work on a 20,001 RPM drive by MostAwesomeDude · · Score: 5, Funny

    20001: A Speed Odyssey.

    Sorry, couldn't resist.

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    ~ C.