10,000 RPM hardrives are here!

[Thunderdog]

PC911/pricegrabber
Ive heard there was 15,000 RPM's out there...?


Hot hot hot



Fixed Link, pat

[query]

10K and 15K SCSI drives have been on the market for years.  

WD has been selling a 10K SATA drive for about nine months or so now.  It recently released the second-generation Raptor SATA drive (at 37 and 74 GBytes, vs. 36 only for the first generation Raptor).

[Thunderdog]

Will these make games run faster, or just load faster. I never hear my H/D running, just on load up....?

I know so much...

[query]

The Raptor is faster than a 7200 rpm drive, certainly.  How much faster is open to question - it's a relatively expensive driver ($130 or so for a 36G model), and it requires a SATA controller.  

The Raptor really shines when you pair two of them on a SATA RAID controller - and stripe them.  

The current Raptor has a reputation as a relatively noisy drive - the second-generation units use fluid bearings rather than ball bearings and preliminary reports are they are much quieter as a result.  If you've ever spent any time around a server with 10 or 15K SCSI drives, you may know about the high-pitched whine they produce - in a datacenter, it's not bad -- but in your home, you may find it irritating.