Introduction and Specifications
Western Digital’s Raptor line of SATA hard drives has been the darling of the enthusiast storage community for quite some time. Their latest iteration brings twice the storage capacity and faster transfer speeds — what else do you want?
In the world of enthusiast PCs, no other hard drive captured the hearts of users quite like the Raptor. Starting with its first iteration at 36 GB and followed later by the 74 GB model, Raptors have clearly had the performance lead since their introduction. Any computer user that wanted the fastest storage in their system knew they needed at least one Raptor hard drive. The industry knew it too, as every system we received in for reviews from AMD, NVIDIA and others featured the Raptor to showcase the best possible user experience.
Unfortunately, many users think that the 74 GB model has sat on top of that throne for too long, and we all eagerly await an update from Western Digital. That update is finally here as the Raptor X is widely available offering added capacity, higher platter density and a special twist for modders.
Specifications (from wdc.com)
| Performance Specifications | ||
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Rotational Speed | 10,000 RPM (nominal) |
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Buffer Size | 16 MB |
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Average Latency | 2.99 ms (nominal) |
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Contact Start/Stop Cycles | 20,000 minimum |
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| Seek Times | ||
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Read Seek Time | 4.6 ms |
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Write Seek Time | 5.2 ms (average) |
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Track-To-Track Seek Time | 0.4 ms (average) |
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Full Stroke Seek | 10.2 ms (average) |
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| Transfer Rates | ||
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Buffer To Host (Serial ATA) | 1.5 Gb/s (Max) |
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Buffer To Disk | 84 MB/s (Sustained) |
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 | ||
| Recommended Configuration Parameters | ||
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Number of Heads (Physical) | 4 |
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| Physical Specifications | ||
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Formatted Capacity | 150,039 MB |
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Capacity | 150 GB |
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Interface | SATA 150 MB/s |
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Actuator Type | Rotary Voice Coil |
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Number of Platters | 2 |
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Bytes Per Sector | 512 |
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User Sectors Per Drive | 293,046,768 |
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Servo Type | Embedded |
