Western Digital Raptor Preview: 10,000RPM & Serial ATA

Final Words

As impressive and respectable as bringing a 10,000 RPM drive to the Serial ATA market is, the Western Digital Raptor, in its current state, does not cut it. The drive exhibits all of the characteristics of a 10,000 RPM SCSI drive, including the high pitched whine (arguably more annoying than either of the SCSI drives in this roundup) and very low access times, but without the overall performance of the 10,000 RPM SCSI drives we're used to.

According to Western Digital's initial press release, the Raptor is supposed to already be shipping, indicating that there's not much room left for serious design changes; this obviously limits the amount we can expect performance to improve with the Raptor by the time it hits retail.

Even with significantly improved performance, we'd say that for those looking for a new desktop hard drive, the Raptor will most likely not be the best option; Western Digital's Caviar line equipped with 8MB buffers will continue to be the highest performing solutions for desktop users. For the enterprise world, we'll have to wait and see what the final version of the Raptor can deliver, but if Western Digital is serious about offering a cheap alternative to the server market, then performance must improve.