Western Digital working on a 20,000 RPM Raptor

[Swatrecon_]

My 10K Raptor is loud enough. We don't need this. It's a waste of engineering, they should focus on making 7.2K RPM drives as fast as possible before they get phased out by SSD's altogether.

[iddqd]

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

But it's nice to have both, isn't it?

[WRC]

they are spinning a little faster than Formula 1 engines

[GripS]

My 10K Raptor is loud enough. We don't need this. It's a waste of engineering, they should focus on making 7.2K RPM drives as fast as possible before they get phased out by SSD's altogether.

Totally agree with this. The point I was trying to make with my last post is that i'm already on my 3rd RMA for my Raptor. I have no doubt running @ 10,000 rpm's is a significant factor in the failure rate i have experienced. This time i didn't catch it before it went down and I lost a bunch of data i can't get back. I got lazy and didn't backup. Lesson learned.

Bottom line. 20,000 rpm's will be a nightmare for reliability.

Oddly enough the ol IDE 7200 rpm drives in the family rig keep pluggin away just fine. (knocks on wood)

[[XC] leviathan18]

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.

you totally forgot about mobile right?

laptops will drive the ssd market faster than you think lower power consuption no heat (my 5400 rpm laptop driver burns) no noise and even smaller package.

have you seen, any flash device how fast they became larger and cheaper in 2 o 3 years give the market for ssd another 2 or 3 years and you will see more capacity more speed and cheaper prices

[Levish]

My 10K Raptor is loud enough. We don't need this. It's a waste of engineering, they should focus on making 7.2K RPM drives as fast as possible before they get phased out by SSD's altogether.

2.5" VR 10k Drives are very quiet. In fact I can barely hear them unless they are seeking.

And their Access times are head and shoulders better than any 7200rpm drive i've tried.

The 2.5" SAS 15k rpm drives I use (at work) are not extremely loud either, if you ask me WD should have started by slapping a SATAII / NCQ interface on a 15k RPM 2.5" mechanicals and sold that as a stop gap instead of the VR.

6ms access times would have dropped to about 4ms and you'd probably be doing burst reads @ the capped bandwidth of SATAII and sustained not too far behind.

[SamHughe]

2.5" VR 10k Drives are very quiet. In fact I can barely hear them unless they are seeking.

I agree. They are queter and running cooler.

[H2omg]

you totally forgot about mobile right?

laptops will drive the ssd market faster than you think lower power consuption no heat (my 5400 rpm laptop driver burns) no noise and even smaller package.

have you seen, any flash device how fast they became larger and cheaper in 2 o 3 years give the market for ssd another 2 or 3 years and you will see more capacity more speed and cheaper prices

I agree that SSD's will be be adopted in the mobile sector faster than in desktop sector. However, capacity typically isn't as much of an issue here. Additionally, as far as power consumption is concerned, as far as I know SSD's aren't as economical as people seem to think. The few articles I've read about it actually state that SSD's are using more power right now than their HDD couterparts. This may change in the future, but it seems right now the only advantage for mobile users is reliability from being more robust physically.

[XS2K]

Also they do generate heat and from this point of view they are quite close to their HDD counterparts (5-8 C less than a Velociraptor if I remember correctly)

[Levish]

the THG article was debunked, most SSD's will run with < 2w

where's the heat coming from?

[XS2K]

the THG article was debunked, most SSD's will run with < 2w

where's the heat coming from?

Yeah sure there's no heat coming from them in fact they run sub-zero
http://www.anandtech.com/storage/sho...spx?i=3311&p=4

[HempHog]

Totally agree with this. The point I was trying to make with my last post is that i'm already on my 3rd RMA for my Raptor. I have no doubt running @ 10,000 rpm's is a significant factor in the failure rate i have experienced. This time i didn't catch it before it went down and I lost a bunch of data i can't get back. I got lazy and didn't backup. Lesson learned.

Bottom line. 20,000 rpm's will be a nightmare for reliability.

Oddly enough the ol IDE 7200 rpm drives in the family rig keep pluggin away just fine. (knocks on wood)

I've had my 74GB raptor for at least 4 years and my 150 for at least two, ive moved them through 3 different systems, each system being on 24/7. no issues here.

[iddqd]

I've had my 74GB raptor for at least 4 years and my 150 for at least two, ive moved them through 3 different systems, each system being on 24/7. no issues here.

Yep, raptors are actually more reliable than most slower drives. If you managed to kill three of them, then it's obviously user error - the failure rates for them are very low and they have 1,000,000 MTBF (which makes 3 failures under normal conditions extremely unlikely).

[dengyong]

Also they do generate heat and from this point of view they are quite close to their HDD counterparts (5-8 C less than a Velociraptor if I remember correctly)

I'm using two ocz core v2's and there is no heat.
I don't have them mounted and the entire drive feels like room temp at all times.

[@@@@]

hard drives have generally become more reliable and cheaper

but 20,000 RPM needs a lot of R&D for that spindle speed then you have to take in to account reliability then accuracy it is gonna be expensive, with SSD getting cheaper the market is limited for this kind of drives

[[XC] Lead Head]

you totally forgot about mobile right?

laptops will drive the ssd market faster than you think lower power consuption no heat (my 5400 rpm laptop driver burns) no noise and even smaller package.

have you seen, any flash device how fast they became larger and cheaper in 2 o 3 years give the market for ssd another 2 or 3 years and you will see more capacity more speed and cheaper prices

If your laptop's harddrive is burning hot through the laptop, then your laptop has some serious cooling problems. 2.5" HDDs usually peak at 2.5 watts of power usage, so you can't get more then 2.5 watts of heat out.

[Anemone]

SSD's have not in any way proven the durability record, it just hasn't been long enough. In XS we know all about the pains of something dying far short of it's expected life time, and we work under that pressure and accept it. But don't think for a minute that SSD's don't come without a price. The flame that burns twice as bright burns half as long.

I have a 1 74, 2 150's and a 300 now. I've lost one 74 way back when I had a board that didn't lock the bus correctly, so that was my lesson learned. Raptors are very durable, not just fast. If WD could manage to bring 15k or 20k to a 500gb drive I think folks would be stunned at the performance. SSD's will match that capacity eventually, but can you imagine the cost? And the more you scale up the size of SSD's, the more the reliability comes into play. Don't even dream of what a 1-2TB 7200 drive would cost when turned into a SSD version.

Physical HD's have more life in them than they are getting credit for. There will be a changeover for laptops, where cost is already high per MB. But don't overestimate how long it's going to take to get durability perfected, capacities high, and costs down and do all that as physical drives are doing all the same things, lowering cost, increasing capacity and durability and speed.

I honestly like the speed of SSD's so don't take this the wrong way, but if folks are thinking that cost is going to come down by a factor of 50-75% on SSD's in a year or two, you would be wrong on that.

[dengyong]

I honestly like the speed of SSD's so don't take this the wrong way, but if folks are thinking that cost is going to come down by a factor of 50-75% on SSD's in a year or two, you would be wrong on that.

What do you base this on ?

[NeedMoMegaHurtZ]

SSD's have not in any way proven the durability record, it just hasn't been long enough. In XS we know all about the pains of something dying far short of it's expected life time, and we work under that pressure and accept it. But don't think for a minute that SSD's don't come without a price. The flame that burns twice as bright burns half as long.

Physical HD's have more life in them than they are getting credit for. There will be a changeover for laptops, where cost is already high per MB. But don't overestimate how long it's going to take to get durability perfected, capacities high, and costs down and do all that as physical drives are doing all the same things, lowering cost, increasing capacity and durability and speed.

I honestly like the speed of SSD's so don't take this the wrong way, but if folks are thinking that cost is going to come down by a factor of 50-75% on SSD's in a year or two, you would be wrong on that.

I agree with the durability issue - the NAND based SSD's haven't been around for that long, so it's still up in the air. I suspect it might be ok for desktop usage patterns.

They have already come down 50% in 1 year (If you recall the 32GB Mtron Pros was ~$1400 now it's about ~$700). With all the new market entrants (Intel, Patriot, OCZ, Crucial, Micron, a few others) the increase supply should push down prices farther. We are gradually seeing the commoditization of NAND SSD's. It not unreasonable to see another reduction of ~50% within 2 years time.

[Zaskar]

I agree that SSD's will be be adopted in the mobile sector faster than in desktop sector. However, capacity typically isn't as much of an issue here. Additionally, as far as power consumption is concerned, as far as I know SSD's aren't as economical as people seem to think. The few articles I've read about it actually state that SSD's are using more power right now than their HDD couterparts. This may change in the future, but it seems right now the only advantage for mobile users is reliability from being more robust physically.

Capacity isnt an issue for the Desktop market is concerned either, once 120-200gb drives become the price the current 32gb ones are then it will take off. You really cant fill up 200-300gb with programs alone, people will buy the SSD's for their OS and all the games/programs then pickup a cheep 1TB normal HD for their random files.

It doesnt matter that normal HD's will be ahead in capacity for a long time, it doesnt need to catch up to them, it just needs to pass the 120-200gb mark. Most people use a separate HD for files anyways.

[[XC] Lead Head]

hard drives have generally become more reliable and cheaper

but 20,000 RPM needs a lot of R&D for that spindle speed then you have to take in to account reliability then accuracy it is gonna be expensive, with SSD getting cheaper the market is limited for this kind of drives

Not really, 15k RPM Enterprise drives have been around for ages. The first 10,000 RPM drives were in the mid 90s, and I would exactly call enterprise drives unreliable.

[cky2k6]

how would you have 3 raptors die on you? my raptor is only one of three drives that hasn't failed on me at some point... i've had it for 4 years now, though I'll probably sell it soon and pick up a velociraptor or two. i'm excited for ssd, but they're too small and expensive for now. They're good for laptops, but they've got a while before they will have enough speed and capacity for desktop usage.

[XS2K]

I'm using two ocz core v2's and there is no heat.
I don't have them mounted and the entire drive feels like room temp at all times.

There can't be no heat even my 2GB Patriot flash drive generates heat (higher than the room temp),also it means that all the review site's who tested the temperature of SSD's are lying.

[cegras]

Raptors are NOT loud.

9.8 gb SCSI Seagate Cheetahs are.

[dengyong]

There can't be no heat even my 2GB Patriot flash drive generates heat (higher than the room temp),also it means that all the review site's who tested the temperature of SSD's are lying.

I have my os and games on mine and they don't even feel warm.