Western Digital WD1500AHFDRTL Raptor X 150GB SATA/150 Hard Drive by Western Digital
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Digital camera reviews of Western Digital WD1500AHFDRTL Raptor X 150GB SATA/150 Hard Drive
Digital camera Review: GOOD!!!
Summary: 3 Stars
Pros:It works, it's fast and SATA is a plus.
Cons: Not much faster than a Seagate (7200, 32MB cache).It runs really hot!!
Digital camera Review: Good Product
Summary: 5 Stars
I received the drive ontime. It installed with no issues and has run perfectly since then.Digital camera Review: Greased Lightning Best On The Market
Summary: 5 Stars
In my opinion there is only one downfall to the Raptor, it is louder than a regular Hard Drive, I don't mind at all, but it is worth noting. Oh and unless you have a clear Hard Drive cage in your tower with a window, you are not going to be able to see through the nifty little plexiglass window on the Raptor X.
When I refer to best Hard Drive on the market I am directing this to those of you who have a lot of data that needs to be loaded; the Raptor will do this fast and with ease. I have two of these running in a raid 0 array, wow are they fast.
I am a Flight Simmer and for those of you who are not aware Flight Simulator has lots of data to load, I mean a lot! The two Raptors load FSX in about 20 seconds and Flight Sim 2004 in about 5, and I have many, many add-ons so these programs are not just their "Stock" size.
Simply put, if you want your computer to start up, load programs and just run, FAST, than look no further you have found your new hard drive. Also, the quality and warranty (5Years), are second to none for a product of this sort. Sure you could get a drive 4 times the size for the same or less cost; but if speed, efficiency, and quality are paramount in your computing world just buy one! Or two, or three... ;)
Digital camera Review: It's Fast And Loud
Summary: 5 Stars
This drive is great, the first 10,000 rpm drive I have owned and the performance increase over 7200rpm drives is significant. I am running this as my OS drive: Vista Ultimate 32bit, 2gigs of DDR3, and an Intel E6850, and this thing boots Vista up incredibly fast. Photoshop and other resource heavy apps also load a good bit quicker than with 7200rpm drives. I highly recommend this for your primary OS drive, you will be pleased with the increase in speed.
The drive is very loud, I am guessing due to the clear window design. If speed is your primary objective, this is your best bet, but if you want an ultra quiet system, this drive will disappoint you. A hard drive silencer may help. As for me...I love this drive!
If you are a talented modder, you could build a hard drive cage that sits on its side to show the clear window thru your case, so the window is not completely useless as some folks say. But it is a feature that most folks will never be able to take advantage of.
I can't wait till we start seeing these 10,000rpm SATA drives in larger sizes.
Digital camera Review: Loud, Hot, and FAST!
Summary: 4 Stars
It was hard for me to fork out almost $200 for a 150GB drive, but I really wanted to see if the speed was significantly faster than my standard drive. I bought this to put in my quad-core G5. Before I put it in the tower I put it in an external hard drive case (NewerTech MiniStack V3) to initialize it and install OS X on it. Stacked on top of the external case is my Airport Extreme 802.11n Base Station. When I turned on the drive I got this repeating ticking sound, like a little toy machine gun. I opened up the top of my external case and could see the hard drive (the clear case really came in handy here!) - I could see the arm of the drive ticking to the side when I moved my base station close to it. When I pulled it away, the ticking stopped. This really concerned me so I called Western Digital and explained the problem. It's like the radio frequencies from the Airport station were screwing with the mechanics of this drive. He said that it is NOT to be used in an external case, and is only suited for internal use. He also pointed out that it didn't make any sense to buy such a fast hard drive and put it in a external case connected via firewire 800 - I agreed, but explained that it was only to set it up.
Anyway, I took it out and put it in my G5 and the ticking stopped. I also took out the drive that the Raptor replaced and put it in the NewerTech V3 external case, and again stacked my Airport on top of it. But now with this hard drive, I don't get any ticking! It's not sensitive to the RF signals. So point being, this Raptor X can act screwy to WiFi signals that are close to it, but it doesn't seem to be a problem now that it's in my tower.
Another point to make, while the hard drive is fast and improves boot time, application loading, etc, it's also noticeably louder than my other drives. The hard drive reading/writing sound is definitely more noticeable now - it kind of reminds me of an old pc drive I had 10 years ago. It also runs hotter. I've noticed that my macs fans are always running now, even when my system is idle and I'm not doing anything (and nothing is being cataloged and there's no disk activity).
So if you're okay with more fan noise, more hard drive noise, and a nice speed improvement, then this drive is great!