SATA/150 - 10000 rpm - 8 MB Buffer - 3.5" - MPN: WD360GD
Strengths: Very quick and surprisingly quiet. Stable despite high temperatures.
Weakness: Gets hot in a hurry.
Overall this drive is awesome. I don't have any real complaints. I can't believe these drives are being compaired to SCSI though. SATA hasn't even scratched the surface of it's potential and as of this writing (12/23/2004) current drives aren't even full SATA spec. That isn't supposed to happen until 2006.
An all aluminum case has been sufficient to disperse the heat generated by these drives (8 total in RAID 10), though a fan could help. These drives run and store my business. I have trusted Western Digital with both business and pleasure for about 6 years and they have yet to let me down so I no longer question reliability. Just do your research. Every manufacturer makes less-than-desirable products, but you won't get stuck with those as long as you sift through your options.
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TopStrengths: Extremely fast Quiet
Weakness: SATA connector somewhat weak-use the new WD SATA cable only
I have two Raptors in a RAID 0 array (with a drive image on a third data drive for safekeeping). The system is blazingly fast. "Thrilled" is an understatement.
The only problem to report is that with one of my original Raptors, the SATA cable must have put too much torque on the connector at the drive and it snapped off the plastic "siding", ruining it. It appears that Western Digital has recognized this weakness and is now providing a redesigned SATA cable that is wider and more secure than a regular SATA cable. For this reason, I would not recommend using a regular SATA cable...use the one provided by WD and save yourself some grief.
These drives are a MUST BUY! The only ones that are better than these are the 74gb Raptors.
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TopStrengths: Fast
Weakness: None
I bought two of these babies for raid 0 configuration. These things smoke when loading Unreal Tournament 2003 or any other game for that matter. I have two fans blowing on them so hopely they will stay cool cuz they spin at 10,000 rpm.
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TopStrengths: Fast, SATA Cable is nice and thin.
Weakness: Absolutely none!
Since no one else has done a review about running the Raptor not in RAID0, I will. Even running the single drive is noticeably faster than a regular 7200 RPM Drive. Windows XP Pro/SP1 loads in less than 10 seconds after POST. Total boot time is about 19 seconds. I highly recommend this drive even for just a regular single drive.
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TopStrengths: Suprisingly quiet, mass fast in RAID 0 mode on Asus A7V8X. Striping process easy - RAPTOR DOES NOT REQUIRE SATA POWER CABLE!!!!
Weakness: Gets hot. Raied my system temp from 101F to 112F
Intro:
Bought from mwave.com. These SATA beasts don't require SATA power cable, and fit into a standard 3.5 inch bay. I bought two for Mode 0 striping. The heatsink-like sides of the drives probably won't do squat unless air is blasted from the side.
Appearance:
Sleek-looking with the black ribbed sides and multiple power inputs (SATA and standard). Underside doesn't have anything cool like the Seagate-bra or anything lelse worth writing home about.
Installation:
These drives install into any 3.5 inch port. Plugging in the SATA cables was no issue, provided you notice the notch preventing the installer from plugging the drives improperly. RAID Striping setup process took less than two minutes, on the AV8X-Promise SATA RAID chip. Formatting to NTFS was swift in XP Pro.
Noticable performance results:
With RAID 0, booting into XP Pro takes around 5 seconds after POST. Games load almost instantly.
Heat and Noise:
The temp of these drives is startling at first....For ATA drives, they get hot. The temp increase stabilizes after five minutes. I placed an intake fan (80MM) behind the drives. Now they're lukewarm to the touch. I would be wary of placing these drives in a SFF without cooling mods.
The Raptors are suprisingly quiet! The drives have a high-RPM whine that isn't significant in terms of decibels. The motor spin-up is quieter than WD's 80-200GB caviars.
Conclusion: Striping the drives results in 68 useable GBs. Could be enough
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TopStrengths: Vary Fast, Not to load.
Weakness: Small Size
Put two of these in Raid 0 and your Computer Will Fly. Recomend Using Raid to increase size of drive and speed.
Ordered from Newegg arived in 3 days vary fast and nice to work with. Just wish the price didn't drop 2 days after ordering.
Recomend having a fand close by to keep cool.
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TopStrengths: Fast compared to ide drives,and preety good price to.
Weakness: I put 4 of these ona raid0 and still cant out perform 1 15k scsi cheeta.
Put 4 of these drives on a raid0 to see how fast they would be compared to a 15k rpm scsi cheeta.YA RIGHT onley in my dreams.Sata just doesnt have the transfer speed that scsi has. But o well I did the homework for you. If you have the money and need for speed go scsi. But if you want some improvement over ide go sata, you cant beat the price!
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TopStrengths: Fast as hell!!!
Weakness: none yet
I waited and saved for a long time to get two of these drives and I did not wait in vain. These drives rock. I also have them on Raid 0 and I have yet to see a computer run as fast as mine. I can load games and levels so fast it is unbelievable. I just hope that they last as long as other drives I have had in the past. I have installed an extra fan to keep them cool.
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TopStrengths: 10,000 RPM, quiet, F.A.S.T.!!!
Weakness: None whatsoever!!!
This is probably the best drive that I have ever had. I'm running a A7N8X-E Deluxe with Athlon 2600+ and 1024 ram and XP loads in about 1 Second after POST. In games I barely have time to start reading the level preview, and this thing is all done. In short my PC is a speed deamon because of this drive and the best thing is: it is so quiet you don't hear the stupid cracking sound a computer usually used to make when reading. Make sure, however, that you have an adequate cooling on it though. Installation is a fingersnap. Defragmentation and/or file transfers take seconds. In short, buy this drive!!!!!
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TopStrengths: Striped Raid 0 on the Asus A7V8X is stunning. Benchmarks faster than a 15K Scsi drive in same machine. Win XP loads in about 10 seconds with Athlon 2800+ CPU
Weakness: Raid 0 is inherently risky.
I used an Antec case which has removeable drive carrier bins for 3 drives and a mounting for an 80mm fan in the front of the bin. There was never a heat problem, but even with the long mtbf of these drives, I added a WD special edition 200GB drive to keep everything automatically backed up, using CopyCat software from Hahntech.com. As you may know, if you lose data on either drive of a Raid 0 array, you lose everything, so while the speed is great, you want to do something for the risk. When the sizes and prices improve, I'll probably get 4 of these type of drives and a 3ware Raid controller and set up Raid 10 to avoid the risk, but keep the speed.
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TopStrengths: Speed, 5 year warrany, Price.
Weakness: Somewhat noisy.
Been running two in a RAID 0 array off a Prominse S150 TX4 card for over 3 months flawlessly. Array is used for my main system C: drive. Since they can be had for just over $100.00, been thinking of adding two more. I didn't purchase these caus they were known to be quiet. Could care less about that. It's about raw speed and this is it! A a slightly faster 74GB version is out for $250.00, give or take. I would still rather have two 36's than 1 74 though.
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TopStrengths: 10k RPM + Serial ATA makes for a screaming fast drive!
Weakness: None that I've found so far.
I have my operating system installed on a pair of these drives in a RAID 0 configuration (striped)--which effectively doubles their read/write speed. However, such a configuration doubles the risk of losing important files in the event of a drive failure. So to keep on the safe side, I keep all of my important files such as word processing, spreadsheet, email, and multimedia files on another pair of drives in a RAID 1 configuration (mirrored). Nevertheless, in four months of hard, non-stop usage, I haven't had a single hiccup. I highly recommend these drives to anyone that can use them.
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TopStrengths: OS boots up quickly, games load up faster, thats about it sorry
Weakness: Doesn't increase video rendering time even in RAID 0, for the price of two of these to put into a RAID config you'd be better off buying 1 Diamond 10 drive for the same performance.
Yes i know, i know i'm going to catch hell for leaving a mediocre review for these raptors. If i could do it all over i again i can't see myself spending the money for two of these raptors for the "wonderful joys" of a RAID 0 array. I got these for the hopes of increasing my video editing performace amoung other minor things and it was a real let down. Especially seeing how reviews for the wonders of Raptors in RAID 0, i was hyped for it. But nope i dropped 200 bucks for two of these when i should of just dropped the same amount for 1 300gb Diamondmax 10 16mb buffer sata drive. I don't know what else to tell ya but for the price and the raid config 0 it wasn't worth having my OS boot up 30 secs quicker and some apps load up a couple of secs faster. Oh yea for all you nay sayers to my review here is my system specs ****(AMD Athlon XP 3200+, 1gig pc2700 in dual channel, Asus A78XN-E Deluxe w/ nforce2 ultra 400, 9800pro 128mb gpu, 3 120gb IDE 7200rpm HDDs, 2 Raptor 10k HDDs in RAID 0, audigy 2)
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TopStrengths: Fastest S-ATA drive on the market. Compared to the rotational speed the drive does not make a lot of noise, but more than a good 7000 RPM drive
Weakness: Small capacity. Runs hot
You will need to some kind of cooling solution for this dirve. Either a fan blowing directy at it og some kind of water cooling.
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OxyMax Systems
- Oct 23, 2005
The Side Fins are built to "Chimney the Heat Upward" so if you don't have a Vertical drive mount then try to modify your current one so they point Upward and the heat just rises off of them.
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TopStrengths: Fast access time
Weakness: expensive
This is one of the fastest drive you can own for your system drive if you are looking to boost your access time and you own a old computer. Though if you do own a old computer, then you would need to buy a SATA adaptor card. Well worth the money spent in my opinion
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TopStrengths: really fast 10k rpm. quiet. warranty.
Weakness: are you crazy
despite the high cost for the amount of storage you get, this harddrive is worth every penny if you are a high end computer user. rig two of these harddrives in raid 0 and watch how fast programs load up. very good for gaming purposes. highly recommended
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TopAlright guys, getting alittle crazy.
First off, pretty much all the RAID cards people are putting these on use the processor for the RAID 0. What does this mean? The RAID will scream when the proc is at idle, but a load above 50% will considerably slow your transfer and a load of 100% almost brings it so a halt. Go ahead, flame. I did this, and also did it with the Raptors. It's not worth it. Don't believe me? Google it. Most hardware sights will show the same. The ones that don't aren't showing real world results. These scream by them selves. No RAID needed other then stand alone servers that need bandwith.
Next up. Yes, these drives do put off some heat at almost 8 watts on read/wright cycles. Look this up. This is comparable to your motherboard's chipset. All they need is air movement. Watercooling? I want to flame for that one. I've seen 6 of these in a server and they were only at 35°C under normal operation. Yes they did have good air movement but nothing crazy.
When you get down to it, perception is reality. I've read the numbers and all the geektalk. Setting these babies up in a Raid 0 array for your OS and Applications speeds up your system without a doubt. The key becomes where you put your data. On another drive. I have a Raid 1 mirror for my data because it is a pain to lose it. With the OS and pagefile striped on the Raptors, system performance is enhanced as long as the data resides elsewhere. I have one system running an Athlon XP 2800 on an EPoX EP-8RDA3+ PRO with 1 Gig of RAM and an Intel Celeron D 315 Prescott on an ASUS P4P800-E DELUXE with 2 Gig of RAM, both with Raid 0 with these drives. I had to run the ASUS with a WD JB drive to set up the array and the difference was noticeable and not just slight. That's the real world. Then consider the fact that the warranty in these drives is 5 years aimed right at the SCSI drives. You can't find that easily elsewhere.
Western Digital's WD360 Raptor represents a real milestone in the development and delivery of SATA drives. A 10,000 RPM spindle speed, 8 MB cache, and SATA all come together for the first time in this unit. Other vendors like Hitachi, Maxtor and Seagate couldn't really bring such a drive to market without potentially hurting their more lucrative business segment offerings, long served by their...
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WD Raptor 36.70 GB Internal Hard Drive - 1 Pack
Strengths: Super fast!!! This thing just flies.
Weakness: None.
The fastest hard drive I've ever owned. This blows my 7200RPM hard drive away. This hard drive is deffinately worth the extra money compared to a 7200RPM hard drive.
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