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When Western Digital (WDC) released the original Raptor SATA drive last year, it saw it as an Enterprise drive, competing against SCSI drives that are a well established part of that market.
However, WDC was taken by surprise by the response of the owners of desktop PCs, in particular games players, who bought as many Raptors as their budgets allowed, reflecting its outstanding performance.
About the only complaint with the original Raptor was its capacity, a rather miserly 36GB, so with the WD740GD this has been rectified with an expansion to a capacity of 74GB.
Using two 37GB platters to achieve its 74GB capacity, the WD740GD has a 10,000rpm spindle speed and an 8MB buffer. With a claimed seek time of 4.5ms, it's reckoned to be the fastest 10,000rpm drive available, and should even give 15,000rpm SCSI drives something to think about.
The drive is a little noisy when under load, similar to the level of a SCSI drive, so it may not be suitable if you are building a silent machine, but people seeking performance above everything else won't be bothered about it.
However, it does need some thought as to location in the case as it gets rather warm. Again, though, this drive is aimed at server applications and enthusiasts, who shouldn't have a problem keeping it cool.
Contact: Perfex (0870) 141 7161
www.overclock.co.uk
See also:
All Hard Drive
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