What happens when you take the already fast WD Raptor 74GB hard drive, double the capacity and cache, add NCQ support, and throw in some performance enhancing RAID specific features? You get the new Raptor X, that's what. We took a look at this drive a few weeks back and loved it. Today, T-Break gives everyone their take.
"Western Digital officially won the heart of the enthusiast with their Raptor drives- they were the first non-SCSI hard drives that could spin at 10,000RPM and thus, produce some speedy results. It started with their 36GB version which was followed by the 74GB version and today, WD doubles that storage again to 150GB. However, doubling the storage capacity isn't the only thing new on the latest Raptor. WD has also doubled the cache buffer which is now up from 8MB to 16MB and adds NCQ (Native Command Queuing) support."
Marco Chiappetta
Marco's interest in computing and technology dates all the way back to his early childhood. Even before being exposed to the Commodore P.E.T. and later the Commodore 64 in the early ‘80s, he was interested in electricity and electronics, and he still has the modded AFX cars and shop-worn soldering irons to prove it. Once he got his hands on his own Commodore 64, however, computing became Marco's passion. Throughout his academic and professional lives, Marco has worked with virtually every major platform from the TRS-80 and Amiga, to today's high end, multi-core servers. Over the years, he has worked in many fields related to technology and computing, including system design, assembly and sales, professional quality assurance testing, and technical writing. In addition to being the Managing Editor here at HotHardware for close to 15 years, Marco is also a freelance writer whose work has been published in a number of PC and technology related print publications and he is a regular fixture on HotHardware’s own Two and a Half Geeks webcast. - Contact: marco(at)hothardware(dot)com
