Fourth generation Raptor?

[Fraishus]

Hi,

I'm wondering what's going on with the next-generation of Raptor drives. I loathe buying more of the WD1500 series drives, as they're really starting to get a bit long in the tooth. They're still not even SATA 2.0. Well that doesn't matter so much, except that we see EVEN the new 1TB Hitachi drive *beating* or tying the Raptor in most all benchmarks, so Western Digital is going to have to do something. The current Raptor generation is at the end of its life before obsolescence. Bad time to buy.

With a 1 terabyte drive that's just as fast as the Raptor, what's the point of even getting one? I'm waiting for the next generation of Raptors to come out which are not just "fast", but 2007-fast.

Any word on this?

-f

 

[drizzt81]

Hi,

I'm wondering what's going on with the next-generation of Raptor drives. I loathe buying more of the WD1500 series drives, as they're really starting to get a bit long in the tooth. They're still not even SATA 2.0.

Because it makes no difference whether the interface signaling speed is 3Gbps or 1.5Gbps.

except that we see EVEN the new 1TB Hitachi drive *beating* or tying the Raptor in most all benchmarks, so Western Digital is going to have to do something.

And you think that moving to a faster interface will do this? That aside where did you see the benchmarks in which the 7k1000 ties or beats the raptor?

Looking at the gaming and business application benchmarks at Anandtech it appears to me that the ADFD has a pretty nice lead in most.

Sure, DVD capture, an application that benefits from sequential read/ write speed, and some others are faster on the 7K1000. However, that merely reinforces the stance that has been widely adopted on this forum: depending on the application that is the primary use, different HDDs are preferable.

With a 1 terabyte drive that's just as fast as the Raptor, what's the point of even getting one?

Well, it isn't `just as fast', but yes, nobody is forcing you to buy a Raptor. The performance difference may be small.

edit: to answer your question, given that the ADFD raptor was released in Q106, I think that it'll be about 2-3 more years before we see the next generation. Though it may never exist, depending on the price of flash-based drives.

 

[game14]

the raptor is a good and fast drive , a little on the loud side but i guess u cant get everything . If the price on the raptor goes down because of the Hitachi ... better for us , a fast drive for low price... i guess u cant beat that

 

[Fraishus]

And you think that moving to a faster interface will do this?

I specifically noted that "Well that doesn't matter so much, " but you edited that part of my post out of your quote. I guess cause you own Raptors and sincerely want to believe they're fast, so you can protect how you feel about your investment going down the tube, like most hardware does.

Fact is, they're "fast" drives, but they're not cutting edge anymore. Just mediocre fast.
They're nowhere near as relatively fast as they were a year ago, when they were ahead of everything else.
Now they can only match a 1TB drive in speed, and lose in many cases.

What I am saying is that WD is going to have to do something-- be it new drive technology, a new interface, whatever it is, to keep up. And soon.

 

[MatDef]

Fact is, they're "fast" drives, but they're not cutting edge anymore. Just mediocre fast.
They're nowhere near as relatively fast as they were a year ago, when they were ahead of everything else.
Now they can only match a 1TB drive in speed, and lose in many cases.

Benchmarks? So far the only person who's actually backed up his statements with facts is drizzt, not you. In fact, when you look at the benchmarks he posted (by a website that really knows hd's) it seems the raptor is still the fastest sata drive for sale.

 

[tuskenraider]

What I am saying is that WD is going to have to do something-- be it new drive technology, a new interface, whatever it is, to keep up. And soon.

They don't need to do anything as the drives are filling two completely different market niches. Why wouldn't you buy the Hitachi? Because the Raptor is still the best overall performer and spending $400 for unneeded space would be foolish.

 

[drizzt81]

I specifically noted that "Well that doesn't matter so much, " but you edited that part of my post out of your quote. I guess cause you own Raptors and sincerely want to believe they're fast, so you can protect how you feel about your investment going down the tube, like most hardware does.

Yes I own a couple of Raptors. No I don't see a need to `protect' my investment. Once flash drives are available at a reasonable price featuring reasonable STR, I will no doubt be replacing my Raptors. For full disclosure: I own three Raptors, a 360GD a 740GD and a 1600ADFD. Out of these three only one is currently in use. The other is in a box and the third is for sale with my old server.
I also own an iRAM, which I got used for a really nice price. If you read my posts in this subforum, you will notice that I do not talk about it much, even less recommend someone to buy one.

Now that we are done with the character assassination attempts, let's get back to the interesting stuff:

Fact is, they're "fast" drives, but they're not cutting edge anymore. Just mediocre fast.

I still maintain that this `depends'. From what I gather from the graphs over at Anandtech, the reviewer is using iPEAK to test the drives with varying workloads. There's been a bit of discussion about whether this is an accurate tool in another thread on here. For one, the only version available is a demo and many places are not sharing their traces.

Regardless, I linked to benchmarks at Anandtech that show the Raptor besting the 7K1000 in a few tests. In addition I explained that depending on the application using a the harddisk choice will be different. There are some applications that can benefit tremendously from an intelligent two-disk or RAID-0 setup with a high STR, while others show better results with low access and seek times.

To make it more clear, since my English is apparently unintelligible:
If you are doing a lot of DVD Video encoding/ capturing, then you should get the 7K1000

If you are a BF2 fan, where access time appears to have a larger effect, then you should get a Raptor

They're nowhere near as relatively fast as they were a year ago, when they were ahead of everything else.
Now they can only match a 1TB drive in speed, and lose in many cases.

As shown above, in some applications it loses by ~10%, in others it is ahead by ~25%. But yes, a year ago the Raptor would also have been the correct single-drive solution for people seeking video encoding performance. However, even at that time it is likely that they could have achieved better performance with two disks used independently, one as source the other as destination.

What I am saying is that WD is going to have to do something-- be it new drive technology, a new interface, whatever it is, to keep up. And soon.

As I said before, I doubt that there will be another generation of the Raptor if the flash prices keep doing down more. The Raptors strength is in its low access time when compared to other harddrives. Flash drives have a factor 10 advantage in that category over the Raptor. Hybrid-harddrives with large flash-based caches may also be a serious threat.

Cliffs:
-Fast is an application dependent word
-The WD Raptor shines through its low access time when compared to other harddrives
-Flash has low access times
-I see flash drives making Raptors obsolete
-The WD740GD came out in January 2004, the WD1500ADFD in January 2006, so my best guess would be a January 2008 release date for the next generation drive.

 

[HiTech-Hate]

Benchmarks mean so very little ... to anything.


When you can produce a qualitative real time comparison of these drives ... maybe then this discussion will actually have some validity ....

 

[Teknokid]

flash drives are the way forward. i believe raptors are at an end, unless they have a 10k spinning memory card... a normal hard drive will do most people fine, in-fact, when i checked 3dmark 06 online the fastest pc on there was usiing a 40gb laptop disk...

 

[Crosshairs]

I guess cause you own Raptors and sincerely want to believe they're fast, so you can protect how you feel about your investment going down the tube, like most hardware does.

And there it is.....lets start the insults..that always helps.


He made some very valid points to your very vague post.....