WD1500 Raptor Drive Review

Your sequential rates are slightly up with this drive when compared against the WD740GD, but your access times are also slower 8 vs 7.7ms read and 9 vs 8.4 write when compared against the WD740GD.

Sequential: Max. 88.3/Min. 60.2 WD1500
Sequential: Max. 71.8/Min. 53.9 WD740GD

But then you have 6 SCSI drives winning over the WD1500 in sequential rates, including a Maxtor Atlas 10K and on random access you have the WD1500 in last place against all other sata and scsi drives. Ok, it does fine on game loading times, because I think of the increased Sata-II I/O?

But then, que. depths--they turn on TCQ/NCQ and the 740DG wipes the floor at que. depth > 14 with the WD1500. Then they both suck at the file server pattern (but eventually the 740GD wins out). The noise numbers look a bit fishy, considering both are exactly the same for both drives in both tests.

$300 for what? This thing is market extreme, soon enough we will have an 'U1tra Bl1ng 3dit1on' or something to further the confusion on how fast it really is. But I'm glad, that means for a short-time we will have the 740GD for a lower price, woot!

lol @ $300 though. Maybe this means the old Raptor models will FINALLY approach reasonable pricing? Nothing like spending $100 for a great performing, very quiet, and cool running Samsung Spinpoint P SP2004C 200GB drive when you would have to spend $50 MORE for a 74GB Raptor - less than a THIRD of the storage space for a hotter running drive that excels in some performance tests.

There are three primary factors there: storage space, price/GB, and performance. The Raptor loses on two of them yet is the one that costs MORE. That's unreasonable and totally not worth it for most people, including most gamers.

Competitive pricing would be a Raptor that outperforms but also offers equal storage space as competing drives. Then it can still cost more and yet be reasonable.

Another alternative is to come down in price, so while it lacks storage space it performs better and the price is equal. Thus the storage space loss is offset by the performance yet the price is no longer objectionable.

When this 150GB Raptor is sold for $200 it'll be reasonable. Then again, by the time that happens everything else in the market will be at better prices or imcreased performance so it'll still lose out. In the meantime if the old Raptor 74GB is sold for $100 it'll be a competitively reasonable purchase.

Dumb questions:

1. Why can't Seagate slap an SATA controller board onto a 10K Cheetah and have a nice competitor with an established reliability legacy? Prices would be about the same. Is it not possible, or not feasible because this market is not economically viable?

2. Why isn't WD pitching the Raptor 740GD at value rackmount servers (the ones that use SATA hard drives instead of SCSI SCA-connector or SAS)?

More importantly, how loud is it?

no doubt its about time... Iv had my 40gb raptors for a very long time now... and I still love em.

About goddamn time.

$300!?!

Fucking awesome. I've been holding off on upgrading my boot drive from this old ATA133 seagate 80gb forever because i wanted both fast AND >120gb...THIS'LL DO JUST FINE KTHX :D :D

I love storage reviews reviews. There are always so well written and informative.

This sounds like a great drive. I think I'll put one in my work pc. :)

As shown in this review, building upon its predecessor's impressive legacy permits the WD1500 to vie with and arguably top the fastest 15,000 RPM SCSI drives to stake its claim as the world's fastest when it comes to non-server performance.

My that is tasty news.

I love my Raptor, I might to have treat myself to one of these next year. $300 is a bit pricey but after seeing such low load times I can't go back.

Whoa.. it's about time.