04/21/2008, 9:35am, EDT
Monday, April 21stWD intros "fastest" hard drive at 300GB
Western Digital says it has blurred the lines between drive classes with the release of the VelociRaptor, the latest generation of its Raptor high-speed hard disks. The 300GB drive is targeted as much at enthusiasts as professionals and holds twice as much as the most recent Raptor while outperforming it: while spinning at the same 10,000RPM, the VelociRaptor benchmarks about 35 percent faster, the company claims.
Unusually, the new drive also abandons the normal preference towards full-size, 3.5-inch hard drives by switching to a 2.5-inch disk; the switch lets Western Digital surround the VelociRaptor with a passive heatsink that safely cools the drive inside a hot computer case. The disk also modernizes the Raptor with a Serial ATA II connection and 16MB of cache to cut down on unnecessary hard drive access.
The hard drive ships as an add-in for Macs, Windows PCs, and most other SATA-capable computers in mid-May for $300. Alienware is slated as the first PC maker to offer the drive and will give buyers the option of equipping the Area-51 ALX with the VelociRaptor in late April. Up to two drives will be available in a RAID 0 stripe for even faster performance.
Filed under: gadgets, upgrades/storage
Other story tags: Western Digital, VelociRaptor
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Well, why not take a look at all 10,000RPM/15,000RPM drives and see what's inside. 2.5" of course.
Without taking the drive apart, just cut a piece of index card into half the size and you will notice that the smaller card has relatively more strength than the larger card. By the same token, hold a 12" PowerBook and then hold a 15.4" or 17" MacBook Pro and feel the chassis flex.
I have the Raptor 150 in my Mac Pro it is just as quite as my Seagate 500GB ST3500641AS. Actually a very quite drive.
It may not even be that the software isn't ready. It could be that the OS isn't ready. Or you still need to spend time to test all your apps used throughout your setup. Or you've standardized on 10.4 and want to stay that way for a good year because it's just easier to do that (why spend time and money just to upgrade an OS that currently works for you?).
They do this on machines for an unspecified period after an upgrade but then stop without telling you.
They don't, really. What happens during the crossover is that they just throw an upgrade disk into the boxes so they don't have to re-image the computer disks. But new computers coming off the line will be with the new OS.
However, the problem is that Apple makes no effort (and cares not to) in providing any updates needed to support newer hardware with the old OS. So even if you've settled on 10.4, you're stuck going to 10.5 if you make a hardware purchase that includes any new models (older models should still be able to run 10.4, but most likely aren't supported, since it isn't the OS that came with it).
Reason 108,591 why Apple will never succeed in the Enterprise.