Western Digital working on a 20,000 RPM Raptor

[NeedMoMegaHurtZ]

Only thing is SSDs have lost traction in data centers. Their failure rates are astonishing--especially compared to HDDs. You simply can't rely on them--and replacing a drive twice or more a year becomes quite a burden on human resources. For the price of a decent SSD, you can buy a high-grade SCSI drive of equal capacity, though that SCSI drive has an advantage in reliability and they're about equal in read/write speeds. Only thing is SSDs have nearly no access time, though that doesn't help them once they start dying.

You mean NAND SSD's.

DRAM based SSD's (like Ramsans) are very common in banks, financial centers, military. That's all they use. The only place for hard drives is backup. Their technology is proven, much faster than NAND, much more reliable, but also $$$$$$$$. Most enterprise usage patterns don't even look at STR - it's a useless metric. IOPS with representative usage patterns is far more important, and DRAM based SSD's are 100's of times faster.

[Vinas]

HDD will still be around for heavy write infrastructures. Most SSD drives available today are rated for 1 - 5 million Write cycles before failure would normally occur. So bring on the 20K raptors, if they're faster than 15K SAS drives I'll buy a bunch.

[Vinas]

You mean NAND SSD's.

DRAM based SSD's (like Ramsans) are very common in banks, financial centers, military. That's all they use.

False

[H2omg]

Well, it looks like I've entered the "I can see into the future thread". So, while I'm here, allow me to share my vision of the future. It's a little more realistic than some of the things I've read in here.

HDD's will be around for another 10-15 years, if not longer. As some have mentioned in here, it is not WE who make up the market. We tend to drive the industry forward, sure. But we certainly do not maintain the industry from a financial standpoint. It's Joe-average and Bob-normal that are keeping companies in business. Joe and Bob don't really need what SSD's have to offer until the price/capacity points are identical or better than HDD's.

Additionally, those who think SSD's will "catch up" to HDD's in terms of capacity within the next 3 years are just plain fooling themselves. It's taken years for them to reach the 64, 128, 256GB marks that they're at now, and those capacities are quite expensive. Let's not forget HDD's are now @ 1.5TB for 3.5'' and 500GB for 2.5''. HDD's will continue to increase in data density just like SSD's will.

[dengyong]

SSD's run so cool, there's no need for a fan or even mounting, you can put them almost anywhere which is great for a cramped build.

[One_Hertz]

I have a feeling that in 5 years. WD, Seagate etc will be some unknown names.

Most ridiculous thing I have ever heard. Even from you.

[JohnZS]

I have a feeling that in 5 years. WD, Seagate etc will be some unknown names.

Is that because they will be part of the Intel or nVidia collective?
Or perhaps we would have had Armageddon?

No, seriously I don't think Seagate and WD are sitting back on their laurels they will be researching and evolving their technology, the talk of this 20K RPM raptor might be the last "super fast traditional HDD" from WD as they could move to a more hybrid approach or go down a more mature and perfected SSD route.
With the advent of Perpendicular recording, NCQ and other innovations HDD have started to move forward these past 2 years....I feel they will have 1 or 2 more tricks up their sleeves before they change media(or would the term be medium?)

John

[krille]

I have a feeling that in 5 years. WD, Seagate etc will be some unknown names.

Will sig this for five years.

[GripS]

I'm on my second RMA for my 150gb raptor that was originally purchased 2 years ago. Just died again on me yesterday.

[praesto]

noise of that new drive might be deafening.

"IS THAT THE NEW 20K RAPTOR IN YOUR RIG?"

"WHAT?"

HAHA!

I think it's more like:

''IS THAT THE NEW 20K RAPTOR IN YOUR RIG?''

''HAVE YOU NOTICED THE NEW 20K RAPTOR IN MY RIG?''

[krille]

Lightning fast. (Thunder included.)

[NapalmV5]

die hdd die u mofo!!!!!

well at least thats how i feel..

[krille]

HAHA!

I think it's more like:

''IS THAT THE NEW 20K RAPTOR IN YOUR RIG?''

''HAVE YOU NOTICED THE NEW 20K RAPTOR IN MY RIG?''

die hdd die u mofo!!!!!

well at least thats how i feel..

in you SSD, you !

That's how I feel. And magnetic storage is great. A couple of 640GB WD GPs for storage, can't beat that!

[EvlUndrWareNome]

I have a feeling that in 5 years. WD, Seagate etc will be some unknown names.

Or they are meeting their current demands product wise. SSD technology is not cheap enough to go to the mainstream. There is a MUCH larger market for platter style drives right now. When the tech gets affordable, you will see much more SS-drives.

[iddqd]

There are 18k rpm drives, so why not 20? Really, they should've been working to bring faster spindle speed drives to the market all along instead of twiddling their thumbs and increasing the platter density. We could have had 40 or 50k rpm drives by now.

[KoHaN69]

So is Petrol but that doesn't stop us from designing new engines.

That use less petrol than previosu ones.

Hard-drives are dead. petrol engines are dead.
IN the sense that there's not much you can improve on.

But why isn't anyone making hybrid drives?

64gb "cache" + 750gb FTW

[Nanometer]

There are 18k rpm drives, so why not 20? Really, they should've been working to bring faster spindle speed drives to the market all along instead of twiddling their thumbs and increasing the platter density. We could have had 40 or 50k rpm drives by now.

Why is there this idea that faster spindle speed is the only good thing. Platter density is nearly as important.

[m^2]

There are 18k rpm drives

Where?

[RaZz!]

Why is there this idea that faster spindle speed is the only good thing. Platter density is nearly as important.

...and more rpm lead to more noise, more heat and more stress for mechanical parts, which also leads to higher production costs and therefore retail prices

i'd say it's not that easy to increase the rpm and sell these drives with a price that's both, worth to buy for the customer and profitable for the manufacturer.

[MaxxxRacer]

dont try movin your case while its on, the centrif. forces will be huge

lol, it wont LET you move the case due to the centrifical force.

That said, I want to see this thing in action. Should be a sweet drive.

[m^2]

That use less petrol than previosu ones.

Hard-drives are dead. petrol engines are dead.
IN the sense that there's not much you can improve on.

But why isn't anyone making hybrid drives?

64gb "cache" + 750gb FTW

There are different kinds of hybrid drives on the market today.
1. Laptop ones, with cache management meant to be done by Vista.
2. All standard HDDs have flash cache, much smaller though.
3. HDDs with big RAM cache.
4. Flash SSDs with RAM cache.

IMO the last one is the most promising and I really hope we'll be seeing some consumer ones...

Why aren't we seeing hybrids with large flash cache? I think that it would need much smarter management than drives incorporate now in order to utilize well, even VR has just 16 MB even though increasing it to like 128 would cost close to nothing.

[xlink]

Bad feeling. HDD's will always offer an order of magnitude higher capacity than SSD's for the same price. For storage in desktops (i.e. TB's of HD movies) there is nothing wrong with a HDD.

so do tape drives as compared to harddrives

[jaredpace]

Is there any particular brand of HD that is "fastest" for notebooks? SSD or HDD?

Whats the fastest desktop HD solution? Raid 0 Velociraptor?

[iboomalot]

Is there any particular brand of HD that is "fastest" for notebooks? SSD or HDD?

Whats the fastest desktop HD solution? Raid 0 Velociraptor?

YES

[bowman]

Well, it looks like I've entered the "I can see into the future thread". So, while I'm here, allow me to share my vision of the future. It's a little more realistic than some of the things I've read in here.

HDD's will be around for another 10-15 years, if not longer. As some have mentioned in here, it is not WE who make up the market. We tend to drive the industry forward, sure. But we certainly do not maintain the industry from a financial standpoint. It's Joe-average and Bob-normal that are keeping companies in business. Joe and Bob don't really need what SSD's have to offer until the price/capacity points are identical or better than HDD's.

Additionally, those who think SSD's will "catch up" to HDD's in terms of capacity within the next 3 years are just plain fooling themselves. It's taken years for them to reach the 64, 128, 256GB marks that they're at now, and those capacities are quite expensive. Let's not forget HDD's are now @ 1.5TB for 3.5'' and 500GB for 2.5''. HDD's will continue to increase in data density just like SSD's will.

Metal platters and silicon wafers are hardly similar, and now that it's possible to make affordable NAND flash drives it'll only get better for the SSD makers in perfect cadence with Moore's Law.

At some point, say 22nm and beyond, hard drives will have a hard time keeping up.