74GB and 150GB VelociRaptor on the way?

[Kobalt]

It seems like there's a 150GB and 74GB VelociRaptor in the works. See the VelociRaptor support page, which mentions the 74GB and 150GB flavors.

"Specifications for the 150 GB Serial ATA II VelociRaptor drive (model WD1500GLFS)."

"Specifications for the 74 GB Serial ATA II VelociRaptor drive (model WD740GLFS)"

Let's keep the discussion away from the usual "Raptors are overpriced because you pay more per GB than normal drives. I'd rather get a 640GB drive." Great, wonderful, we know. Raptors aren't for holding your music and :banana::banana::banana::banana:, they're for your operating system and programs.

[generics_user]

It seems like there's a 150GB and 74GB VelociRaptor in the works. See the VelociRaptor support page, which mentions the 74GB and 150GB flavors.

"Specifications for the 150 GB Serial ATA II VelociRaptor drive (model WD1500GLFS)."

"Specifications for the 74 GB Serial ATA II VelociRaptor drive (model WD740GLFS)"

Let's keep the discussion away from the usual "Raptors are overpriced because you pay more per GB than normal drives. I'd rather get a 640GB drive." Great, wonderful, we know. Raptors aren't for holding your music and :banana::banana::banana::banana:, they're for your operating system and programs.

and they're way faster!

looks interesting, i still need new hdds for my os, current double-partitioned 640gb F1s in raid 1 are no statisfying, i need some fast drives for raid 0, and 300gb have a too large capacity for an os partition...

[Kobalt]

Also another thing to keep in mind... the VelociRaptor uses 150GB platters, so a 150GB drive wouldn't be hard to make, but for a 74GB drive they'd have to design different platters. The 74GB drive would then have half the platter density of the other drives and would therefore be slower to a degree.

[Starscream]

Also another thing to keep in mind... the VelociRaptor uses 150GB platters, so a 150GB drive wouldn't be hard to make, but for a 74GB drive they'd have to design different platters. The 74GB drive would then have half the platter density of the other drives and would therefore be slower to a degree.

why not just use a normal 150GB platter and just use part of it? Like they do with smaller drives.

[XS Janus]

I bet 74gb and (God if only) 150gb will be slimmer and intended for notebooks to!
:woot

[Sly Fox]

Hope this is true, should bring down the price of the 150gb Raptor X drive.

Then I can get some Raid 0 action hehe.

[Peakr]

Bout time. Been looking to upgrade my raid array and SSD's are out of my price range. I knew WD would eventually release a smaller density velociraptor. Any news on price or availability?

[Kobalt]

why not just use a normal 150GB platter and just use part of it? Like they do with smaller drives.

There's not much of a point in doing that because they wouldn't be able to offer the 74GB drive at much of a lower price point. Then they'd also have to worry about people unlocking the extra 74GB.

I bet 74gb and (God if only) 150gb will be slimmer and intended for notebooks to!
:woot

That's a good theory. The current VelociRaptor is too thick for notebooks, but perhaps the single platter 74GB and 150GB could be made into a notebook version?

[Frank M]

There's not much of a point in doing that because they wouldn't be able to offer the 74GB drive at much of a lower price point. Then they'd also have to worry about people unlocking the extra 74GB.

Unlocking? What are you smoking?

This is what hard drive manufacturers have always been doing, if the drive
capacity is smaller than the capacity of the plate(s), then they disable parts
of it. This is the general practice, they have been doing it for years, and
they were never unlockable. Did you really think they'd go ahead and design
a new, low-density platter for a single product?

[Starscream]

There's not much of a point in doing that because they wouldn't be able to offer the 74GB drive at much of a lower price point. Then they'd also have to worry about people unlocking the extra 74GB.


That's a good theory. The current VelociRaptor is too thick for notebooks, but perhaps the single platter 74GB and 150GB could be made into a notebook version?

them designing a special 74GB version would add costs and companys usualy dont want that.
If they actualy do make a special 74GB model you can bet that they will do it as cheap as possible.

And how would you want to unlock that extra 74GB? You cant do so on current HDDs either.

[generics_user]

I bet 74gb and (God if only) 150gb will be slimmer and intended for notebooks to!
:woot

i'm sold for 3 then, i really need a usable notebook drive, current 7200rpm NB drives are NOT statisfying and 128gb SSDs cost as much as 4 300gb raptors

[cantankerous]

I hope these are released soon. I am holding off on buying the 300GB variants due to wanting raid but not 600GB worth. I currently have 2 x 150GB Raptors doing quite well. If I could just mirror an image of my current drives to the new ones and still be faster it sounds like a good deal. Price should be considerably lower than the 300GB drives too. Only thing I am wondering is this, will the 300GB variants still be faster in some areas due to the larger density or should the 150GB drives be just as fast, perhaps even faster in some regards?

[One_Hertz]

And how would you want to unlock that extra 74GB? You cant do so on current HDDs either.

Well you can, but it requires some very expensive tools

What they do is not exactly "lock" a section of the platter but actually just change the number of sectors per track. This effectively makes the platter lower density. This gives a drive better reliability btw. With certain tools you can reformat the drive with a new number of sectors per track. This is dealing with vendor specific commands, which are the commands that manufacturers use when they first create the drives. These commands are different for every single family of drives and there are some folks that reverse engineer this for data recovery purposes (having extremely low level access is very beneficial and a good deal of failures are firmware related; firmware is accessed by vendor specific commands as well).

Just an FYI...

[Kobalt]

Only thing I am wondering is this, will the 300GB variants still be faster in some areas due to the larger density or should the 150GB drives be just as fast, perhaps even faster in some regards?

The 300GB drive uses 2 150GB platters, so the 150GB drive should be very similar in speed to the 300GB one.

[Eniqmah]

Why on earth would they be making 75GB drives any more? Even notebooks are exceeding the 200GB capacity normally. I think WD should get off its lazy ass and realize that the time for HDDs are closing in rapidly and stop ripping people off with this kinda crap. Sure, make raptors, but do that in higher capacities AND charge less for them.

[irev210]

um...

300GB = 2 platters/4 heads
150GB = 1 platter/2 heads
74GB = 1 platter/1 head

makes sense to me.

[Jaivan]

Why on earth would they be making 75GB drives any more? Even notebooks are exceeding the 200GB capacity normally. I think WD should get off its lazy ass and realize that the time for HDDs are closing in rapidly and stop ripping people off with this kinda crap. Sure, make raptors, but do that in higher capacities AND charge less for them.

So you can raid0 3 of them together and get 200gb of space and crazy performance.

[Helmore]

um...

300GB = 2 platters/4 heads
150GB = 1 platter/2 heads
74GB = 1 platter/1 head

makes sense to me.

I was just about to say that, it's quite easy and drive manufacturers do it all the time. This way there is no "disabling of storage sectors" and such. The speed would be the same for all 3 of them and they would all have their own manufacturing cost so margins will still be the same on all 3 of them. WD is still ripping us off though .

[Kobalt]

Can anyone explain to me how going from 2 heads to 1 head on the same platter halves the capacity?

[Helmore]

Can anyone explain to me how going from 2 heads to 1 head on the same platter halves the capacity?

Well a platter has 2 sides and each side is normally used to read and write from and thus each side has its own drive head. If you make a platter that's only to be used on 1 side than you can save some on the extra work that platter would normally need on one side and you can decrease complexity by removing 1 drive head. This will result in a platter with just one side being used and thus cutting the capacity in halve without sacrificing performance and still lowering cost. Disk density will be the same on all 3 models, they could even do a 225GB version with 2 disks and 3 heads.
This removing of 1 drive head also is used to decrease thickness of a HDD on some laptop drives, although I'm not completely sure of it.

EDIT: Has anyone got any idea when these will appear, I am in serious need of a new harddrive. I just ruined my PC and will have to buy Vista + something (to get the OEM version). Sounds stupid, but this is because I don't have an installation disk for XP and I don't really have much contact with the person whom installed XP on it. So I could just as well buy a new HDD with it and a VelociRaptor would be perfect, it's just that the 300GB version is a little expensive and too big for my needs. I will basically be without my main PC until I fix it and I don't plan on waiting to long to do so.
BTW I did try to install Ubuntu but I'm afraid to do something wrong and ruin my data, so that was a no go (I have no experience with Linux, but I do like the live cd).

[XS2K]

Why would you put in your notebook a Raptor?They are noisy and hot...
It's enought that I get charcoal marks on my knees with my current X2300/T2250/5400RPM drive already...

[WeStSiDePLaYa]

Also another thing to keep in mind... the VelociRaptor uses 150GB platters, so a 150GB drive wouldn't be hard to make, but for a 74GB drive they'd have to design different platters. The 74GB drive would then have half the platter density of the other drives and would therefore be slower to a degree.

They could easily do it, just use one half the platter. Arms on both side, only install one.

EDIT: seems I was beaten to it.

[vladimir]

I have my fingers crossed that the 150GB VelociRaptor sees the light of day! I don't need anything larger for a boot drive. Then I'll pick-up the 300GB drive to install the games on.

[nullface]

Im in for a WD VR 74GB!

[DarkDisciple]

I have my fingers crossed that the 150GB VelociRaptor sees the light of day! I don't need anything larger for a boot drive. Then I'll pick-up the 300GB drive to install the games on.

OS + Games shouldn't use up more than 150gig. Or do you really just like to have your OS all alone on a drive?