Cobalt May 4, 2006 Share Cobalt Member May 4, 2006 (edited) A customer came in to the store today and mentioned the words "high end system build" so I was summoned to the Communications department. He is building two identical high end systems for his office and wants RAID1 arrays with Raptor X drives. The components for system alpha are on my bench currently being assembled which brings me to this review. I would like to say that this hard drive begins its like on my bench as nonchalantly as any other but that is simply not the case. This drive has the most artistically beautiful and eye-catching box design outside of an Apple. It is a dark black with white and red text to offset the important features of the drive. Not saying that it was a delight to behold would be lying on my part. With that being said, venturing to the interior was a bit of a disappointment. On the inside of the box you find the hard drive ensconsed in the standard black plastic stands. Included with the drive is a minimal amount of accessories which include 4 screws, the standard WD sata cable, and presumably an instruction book (which I of course never opened). Removing the almost non-existant stands you discover the hard drive which is encased in the standard shiny silver static bag. This is the end of the humdrum with this drive as moving on I find something quite shocking. After tediously removing the static bag from the drive I find a black piece of cloth encompassing the drive. Upon further inspection I notice that it is actually a bag which is holding the hard drive. I am talking a bag that, in a lineup with a standard D&D dice bag, would probably be mistaken for the aforementioned dice bag. I was at this point absolutely amazed at the level Western Digital has gone to with their newest flagship drive. Inside the drive was a prize I never imagined would exist. Carefully stretching the strings and elastic of my new $350 dice collection I began my own odyssey into the realm of translucence. The drive was now removed from all of its extraneous packaging so that I could gaze upon it in all of its glory. The drive looks like any run of the mill raptor drive except for the top of the drive which is anything but normal. The top of the is in parts constructed with some type of plexiglass that allows you to actually view the platters as the drive operates. The entire top of the drive is not visible, only the platter and needle of the drive. The shape actually quite closely resembles what the Half-Life 2 logo would look like if it was opaque. From the outer edges of this visible awesomeness to the inner edges of the drive casing itself is some sort of "shiny black tape." I use that phrase simply because I cannot quite put words to the elements that compose it. That element of the drive is the only thing that I do not like about the composition. The reason being that it seems relatively cheesy to me given the rest of the construction. With that being said, it is not anything I think seriously detracts from the quality of this drive. This hard drive is one of the most amazing marvels of computer technology I have ever gazed upon. The interior packaging is somewhat lax in places but amazing in others and the "shiny black tape" does not detract from it too much. Everything considered I would say that the hard drive market has just had a new "bar" set. Probably should have put a disclaimer in here about how I intend to continue this once I actually install the drive. Edited May 4, 2006 by Cobalt Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bubblegum Bandit May 4, 2006 Share Bubblegum Bandit Member May 4, 2006 Probably should have put a disclaimer in here about how I intend to continue this once I actually install the drive. LOL....I'm glad you added this. I read all of that and was like, ok, how does it run? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
whudats May 4, 2006 Share whudats Member May 4, 2006 Probably should have put a disclaimer in here about how I intend to continue this once I actually install the drive. LOL....I'm glad you added this. I read all of that and was like, ok, how does it run? Me too! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cobalt May 4, 2006 Author Share Cobalt Member May 4, 2006 (edited) Probably should have put a disclaimer in here about how I intend to continue this once I actually install the drive. LOL....I'm glad you added this. I read all of that and was like, ok, how does it run? Me too! I spent all this time writing this and then I got home and I was like ZOMG I wrote a review about the packaging! I'm working on it right now so should have update by the end of the day. In regards to the packaging though its PRETTY AWESOME! hehehe. Edited May 4, 2006 by Cobalt Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cujo May 4, 2006 Share Cujo Member May 4, 2006 i can tell you that two raptors in raid 0 is insanely fast. extraction, load times, everything is just faster. now when i hear hard drive access i no longer cringe and think "stupid hard drives". Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cobalt May 4, 2006 Author Share Cobalt Member May 4, 2006 i can tell you that two raptors in raid 0 is insanely fast. extraction, load times, everything is just faster. now when i hear hard drive access i no longer cringe and think "stupid hard drives". Hehehe...you and your crazy 300gb of drive space. This particular customer was like "I want speed, reliability, and redundancy." To which I responded "You are going to pay out the *expletive* for that." "Yeah I know, money is no object," was his reply. I swear to God I think dollar signs probably lit up in my eyes. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tek-Almighty May 5, 2006 Share Tek-Almighty Member May 5, 2006 i can tell you that two raptors in raid 0 is insanely fast. extraction, load times, everything is just faster. now when i hear hard drive access i no longer cringe and think "stupid hard drives". Hehehe...you and your crazy 300gb of drive space. This particular customer was like "I want speed, reliability, and redundancy." To which I responded "You are going to pay out the *expletive* for that." "Yeah I know, money is no object," was his reply. I swear to God I think dollar signs probably lit up in my eyes. I really wonder why he would need this setup for a business desktop!? Ok, is he doing CAD, video edit/anim, etc...? I cannot for the life of me think why you need triple digit burst reads, super-fast access times, and RAID 1 for buisness apps. Sad really. Here there are plenty of gamers out there still using crappy 80gb Parallel IDE drives from 3 years ago. That said...I run the last gen raptor 75 gb and it rocks. The difference between that an old IDE is astounding, especially when loading XP and running large apps (no to mention gaming!) To imagine...the Raptor 150 has NCQ, faster times, larger capacity, and 100% increase in buffer size (to 16mb) over the 75gb model. Aiiiieeee! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TheReverend(c) May 5, 2006 Share TheReverend(c) Member May 5, 2006 Yes they are wonderful. I picked up the one without the clear top and their just awesome. This guy is going raid0 stripped? Ought to be fun. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bubblegum Bandit May 5, 2006 Share Bubblegum Bandit Member May 5, 2006 Sad really. Here there are plenty of gamers out there still using crappy 80gb Parallel IDE drives from 3 years ago. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cobalt May 5, 2006 Author Share Cobalt Member May 5, 2006 Sad really. Here there are plenty of gamers out there still using crappy 80gb Parallel IDE drives from 3 years ago. Hahahahha...I too am currently enjoying a 74GB raptor drive and after messing around with these raptor drives I am seriously having to fend off the urge to buy one. I do have to give it up to WD for using NCQ in their new drive even though it isn't necessary in a lot of environments. I am almost done with this machine with the RAID 1 and I will finish the review. I plan on making it more from the point of one of us then pulling benchmarks from AT or HOCP. Windows installed in 11 minutes though I will tell you that. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cujo May 5, 2006 Share Cujo Member May 5, 2006 11 minutes from where to where? from the 39-0 counter i've done about 6.5 and that was with my old diamond max 9s in raid 0. i just leave ncq disabled on mine. seems to perform better and a review of the 150gig i read showed higher performance (about 10%) with it disabled. what they missed is the 3.0gb/s. that's what they should have given these cause two of them in raid 0 and you're pretty close to that limit. add a 3rd or 4th and you'd be seriously pushing the limits of 1.5gb/s. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cobalt May 5, 2006 Author Share Cobalt Member May 5, 2006 11 minutes from the point I hit enter the first time. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cujo May 6, 2006 Share Cujo Member May 6, 2006 so including format and that stupid xp thing that basically you just click next and then finish. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cobalt May 6, 2006 Author Share Cobalt Member May 6, 2006 so including format and that stupid xp thing that basically you just click next and then finish. Welcome to Windows Push enter to continue From that point. Basically the first blue screen that requires any sort of user input barring pushing F6 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cujo May 6, 2006 Share Cujo Member May 6, 2006 haha i don't remember any welcome to windows screen. i'll have to keep an eye on that next time i format. also, with raid f6 is a requirement. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cobalt May 6, 2006 Author Share Cobalt Member May 6, 2006 haha i don't remember any welcome to windows screen. i'll have to keep an eye on that next time i format. also, with raid f6 is a requirement. There are a few Abit and MSI boards that use Silicon Image controllers that do not need the f6 driver installation route. This only works if you have one of the brand new OEM cds with sp2 built in. I was absolutely amazed at a few of these installations that I did. The Asus A8N32-SLI RAID setup, if internal, can only use the Nvidia RAID so drivers are necessary. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tek-Almighty May 7, 2006 Share Tek-Almighty Member May 7, 2006 Bah...i switched to Asus from my old Abit board...that was right when SP2 came out, so I never got to experience that...I had a promise raid controller too. (back in '03 with two 37GB raptors runnin in raid 0) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cobalt May 7, 2006 Author Share Cobalt Member May 7, 2006 One of the other techs here just did an OEM SATA install with an Abit AV8 that didn't ask for floppy drivers. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cujo May 7, 2006 Share Cujo Member May 7, 2006 sata is fine on most boards. i'm talkin about raid. i've not used a board with where the raid controller is recognized by xp sp2. though i only have experience with nf3 and 4 since sp2 came out. with sp1 on my old nf2 i still needed to hit f6. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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