New Raptor hard drive hits the scene

IF YOU want to get an ultimate OS+Apps hard drive, the answer for the past several years has always stayed the same: the Raptor series from Western Digital.

The company slapped SATA-I interface to a SCSI-class model, which resulted in fastest spinning consumer hard drive on the market. First available in capacities of 36 and 74GB, this was a toy for very rich folks or workstation users who want to see all the reliability of SCSI stuff without a ribboned cable with terminator inside the computer.

Indeed, the original Raptors performed above expectations, and the difference of 10,000 RPM rotation with superb seek time made a real difference even in office apps, like dealing with 2GB PST file from Outlook - instant start-up of the program, instant search... did wonders for my 30.000 e-mail inbox.

The new model, the WD1500 addresses the biggest problem everyone had with drives: capacity. In today's world, where author of this article can download eight gigs in a single night, a 36GB capacity seems laughable. Especially when you can get 250GB for the very same price as a 36GB model. So, the new Raptor comes with a capacity of 150GB, split in two models. The WD1500AH is a model "for gamers", while the enterprise version is known under the name WD1500AD and comes with TLER (Time Limited Error Recovery) marchitecture.

Also, the drives support SATA-II and NCQ marchitectures. Anyway, if you want all the latest and greatest in hard drive technology, you can always click on our complementary L'INQ and spend €319 for the server version. The gaming version isn't available. Yet.

L'INQ
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