Western Digital working on 20,000 RPM Raptor

[awdrifter]

SSDs are still too expensive, and with games getting bigger and bigger, it's still not a viable solution yet. But why do they have to go 20k rpm? Just make one of their existing 15k rpm server drives in SATA and sell it now. I would definitely get one for my main drive.

[DeltZ]

don't wanna move around any of those buggers while running- Gyroscopic effects at 20k rpm would make a rip in space time 0.o

[Richard Dower]

If it dosen't take too long to come to market i'd love 20,000 RPM.

[Strafe]

This has got to be a joke. Mechanical drives are old technology. By the time they bring this to market, SSDs will be commonplace.

[Zaskar]

Outta curiosity whats the max RPM a hard drive can spin before the edges start to break the sound barrier?
Using the smaller diameter platters should allow for a higher maximum speed before reaching that limit.

[Helmore]

Outta curiosity whats the max RPM a hard drive can spin before the edges start to break the sound barrier?
Using the smaller diameter platters should allow for a higher maximum speed before reaching that limit.

Well a 3,5 inch drive would have to spin at around 74 000 rpm to make the edges move faster than the speed of sound...
Imagine what it would take a 2,5 inch drive to do that.

[Afterburner]

All we need now is a Single Platter 20,000 rpm Raptor....

[[XC] gomeler]

Very interesting.. wonder if we'll see something like 180-200mb/s reads and 180mb/s writes out of this.. Need SATAIII then

[Zaskar]

Very interesting.. wonder if we'll see something like 180-200mb/s reads and 180mb/s writes out of this.. Need SATAIII then

Or they can ditch SATA and start providing onboard SAS :P

[clonez]

@ zasker

so lets do the math (in metric)

the platters of a 3.5 inch hard drive is 3.5in in diameter (the casing 4inch)
3.5 inch = 8,89 cm

the speed of sound varies in height, ill pick 1200 km/h (~on sea level)
1200 km/h = 333.33 m/s

the platters have a circumfence of 27.93 cm =0.2793 m
333.33/0.2793 = 1193 rps
1193rps*60 = 71.580rpm

so the platters have to spin with app. 71.580rpm, which were not even near yet
(actually, dentist drills can reach up to !!!500.000 rpm!!!, usually 250.000)

[GAR]

Sounds good, if these are cheap and are close to the access times of the SSD drives it will be an amazing drive, hopefully its not $1,000, SSD's are not even coming down in price, its crazy.

[DeltZ]

is it even a problem if they break the sound barrier? Sure you get a super sonic boom everytime it loads up but....that shouldn't be a problem...right...

[junkun13]

20k rpm 0_0

[Helmore]

is it even a problem if they break the sound barrier? Sure you get a super sonic boom everytime it loads up but....that shouldn't be a problem...right...

I think turbulence might start to pose a problem for the drive head, there is always a little layer of air in between the drive head and the platter and this layer of air move at close to the platter speed. I think you could get some serious turbulence problems if that the platter moved at the speed of sound as this creates some weird effects and the drive head could start to shake to much as to touch the platter.
Just my little theory, I've got no knowledge on aerodynamics.

[DeltZ]

yeah i guess- that delicate layer of air which makes it work. Shame they can't balance the drive head without the cushion of air i.e. evacuated chamber...Well not really a shame- since making super sonic hard drives is highly pointless and impractical.

[oohms]

I would be very surprised if SSD'd became better value for money than regular hard drives, even within 2-3 years.

[gojirasan]

Exciting news indeed. I don't know what it is with you people and your flash drives. Flash memory is good for a keychain drive or for snapping photos. It is NOT worthy of a next gen storage medium. SSD is a fine idea. Just lose the flash memory. It is ridiculously slow and has limited writes. I have to concur with the idea for a regular hard drive (and 20k rpm is fine by me) with a very large DDR2 cache (8GB+). Definitely the way to go. The 8 gig ramdrive would blow by the flash drives like they were standing still and yet the drive could have 1TB of storage. It could even automatically maintain an (incremental) backup of the ramdrive before shutdown. In addition to having a rechargeable battery backup system.

[ripken204]

RPM doesn't really generate noise. My old 36 Raptor is only loud on seeks .. not spindle noise.

are you serious?
i got rid of my 150GB raptor raid setup because it was way too loud.
they were constantly grinding away even if i leave the computer alone for 5 hours.

i just cant imagine a 20k RPM hdd, thats just ridiculous.
i also cant imagine the price that this thing will be.

WD needs to realize the hdds will be gone within the next 10 years, they need to focus on SSDs instead of trying to compete against them with inferior technology.

[Think]

Well they better hurry up and start releasing this beast.

[Scubar]

Bit pointless wasting all this money on R&D when SSD > 20K Raptor they might aswell just concentrate on either large storage like Seagate is with its 2TB drive being developed or start looking into their own SSD

[Natalia]

Given the price of the Veloci-Raptor, I imagine a SSD will be cheaper

[p2501]

are you serious?

+1 on that man. My Raptor really is near inaudible, it's the quitest drive I've ever bought. When it's seeking it's another story though..

So if they get it to work without doubling the noise it might make sense.

[aMp]

Great, a hard drive you can't buy if you own a dog.

[Scubar]

$/Gb

HDD will be a round for a long time yet. I dont see the price dropping enough over the next 5 years.

Yea but the point of Raptors is performance not size. People who buy raptors dont care about the lack of HDD space. They care about fast access times. Something which SSD cant be beaten on. The Velocoraptors are already way overpriced for what your getting.

[Jowy Atreides]

does the power consumption rise non-linearly with rpm increases?

because I imagine a 20k rpm disk using a lot