Western Digital Working On a 20,000 RPM Drive

[PhysX]

http://www.bit-tech.net/news/2008/06/06/western-digital-working-on-20-000-rpm-raptor/1

Put me down for 5! :)

[Madwand]

I hope they're also working on SSD's. The small & fast market is likely to be dominated by SSD before long. There'll still be room for large and inexpensive discs for some time though.

[Amtrak]

I wonder how much the 20k drives will be when/if they get released.

[BossBorot]

by the time this is out solid state drives should be cheap enough to be better then this for all but those who want only one drive that is both fast and has decent size but not the best at either.

[deathman20]

Too little too late I have a feeling. While it might get decent speeds it will be small, loud and power hungry. SSD will continue its price decline thats been happening and will really rip this a new one in terms of performance. Only true reason to even consider a drive like this IMO, is its a harddrive, platters, motor and all. Its proven tech that we know works and lasts for long time, and SSD is new to the market, new in general and not sure how well it will work in the long term.

[Xenocide]

Bad idea, just more power and heat.

This is just a desperate attempt by them to capture a server market moving towards products they don't make. They make crappy products to begin with, and a 20,000 rpm version of a crappy product won't make it any better.

[>HyperlogiK<]

I wonder why they haven't launched an SSD line. It's not like all these startups making SSD based drives have or need much manufacturing knowhow, they are mostly buying slighly modified or totally off the shelf flash chips and controllers.

[tuskenraider]

Opinions and speculations before the product is even offered and evaluated...........worthless.

[BossBorot]

Opinions and speculations before the product is even offered and evaluated...........worthless.

that is the whole basis of this thread. If you dont like speculation go post in some other thread. This is a news thread on a product just initially being anounced which quite obviously wont have anything other then speculation contained within other then a very basic intro link. If they are working on the drive currently and this is the first we have heard of it there is no way the product would be offered and evaluated.

[boris_37]

can you freaking imagine the heat, power and noise this thing would make/need.

omg just buy an SSD they are like $500 for a 32gb... for 0.1ms response time that's a fricken good deal.

I am waiting for them to hit 300ish then hopefully get one in the classifieds.



I agree with most though. Too little too late. SSD is the way of the future. Can't just make something louder and using probably a lot more power and expect people to buy it. I wouldn't touch it with a 10 foot pole. Even new SAS drives are not the most quiet and they are only 15k rpm... imagine how much louder 20k would be... yipes.

[BossBorot]

more like $164 for 32gb at the first place I looked although this particular model is more like 0.4ms responce time

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820227343

[Shiggity]

Horrible business plan from WD, not sure what they are thinking or who is calling the shots.

+1 to the fact that they SHOULD be working on bigger storage drives @ cheaper prices

Or they should be working on some sort of Hybrid HDD / SSD drive. Throw your OS onto the flash / SSD section of the drive then have the regular disk for storage.

Intel will be unveiling their first generation SSD's which are already said to be posting 240MB/S read and 170MB/S writes, and that's the first generation. Granted those will probably be outrageously expensive and for Enterprise use, but still.

[Stilletto]

This is encouraging. All people want is SSD's....they pay no attention that they are somewhat unreliable at the present time. The technology is still too young. 99% of the people I know regretted getting rid of their raptors and going with SSD. The other 1% just enjoying rebuilding their drive every day or two.

I, for one, would love to own a 20,000rpm raptor....and, I would spend more time enjoying it and less time fixing it.:attn:

[Stilletto]

Bad idea, just more power and heat.

This is just a desperate attempt by them to capture a server market moving towards products they don't make. They make crappy products to begin with, and a 20,000 rpm version of a crappy product won't make it any better.

?????

[>HyperlogiK<]

I was under the impression that current gen SSDs had significantly longer lifetimes than conventional HDDs.

Wasn't the big problem with prototype hybrid drives supposed to be mechanical wear from spinning up and spinning down all the time?

[deathman20]

I was under the impression that current gen SSDs had significantly longer lifetimes than conventional HDDs.

Wasn't the big problem with prototype hybrid drives supposed to be mechanical wear from spinning up and spinning down all the time?

Well SSD drive life has supposedly increased some. They are still kinda wierd. Defiantly the newer gen ones, which ever you want to call a newer gen since they keep releasing newer models left and right, are defiantly getting better.


As well if someone has a SSD and has to keep rebuilding it every few days, there is something wrong other than the SSD unless its faulty.

[tuskenraider]

that is the whole basis of this thread. If you dont like speculation go post in some other thread. This is a news thread on a product just initially being anounced which quite obviously wont have anything other then speculation contained within other then a very basic intro link. If they are working on the drive currently and this is the first we have heard of it there is no way the product would be offered and evaluated.I stand by what I said, but I was responding directly to the poster above me, just forgot to quote. No figures on power or heat and a blind statement is made as well as one that is absurd(WD, crappy products? Their products and market share prove otherwise).

[Stilletto]

Well SSD drive life has supposedly increased some. They are still kinda wierd. Defiantly the newer gen ones, which ever you want to call a newer gen since they keep releasing newer models left and right, are defiantly getting better.


As well if someone has a SSD and has to keep rebuilding it every few days, there is something wrong other than the SSD unless its faulty.

No, the SSD's are self corrupting and flaky...it is in their nature at the present time. UNLESS, of course, you forget about RAID or AHCI. You can only run one drive solo, and only in IDE mode (This has been confirmed by companies like OCZ regarding their Core series drives) for reliablility...truly limiting you to small capacities.

[Xenocide]

It's not like all these startups making SSD based drives have or need much manufacturing knowhow, they are mostly buying slighly modified or totally off the shelf flash chips and controllers.

:eh?: yea ok.........

Western Digital doesn't make their own controllers, they buy off the shelf controller chips too...You make it sound like its easy to engineer a SSD drive, but not easy to engineer a legacy HDD. Engineering a product usually doesn't mean actually designing all the parts, its far from that, its more often than not just interfacing "off the shelf components"

[flopper]

Horrible business plan from WD, not sure what they are thinking or who is calling the shots.

+1 to the fact that they SHOULD be working on bigger storage drives @ cheaper prices

Or they should be working on some sort of Hybrid HDD / SSD drive. Throw your OS onto the flash / SSD section of the drive then have the regular disk for storage.

Intel will be unveiling their first generation SSD's which are already said to be posting 240MB/S read and 170MB/S writes, and that's the first generation. Granted those will probably be outrageously expensive and for Enterprise use, but still.

if they get a good drive out, then it has speed enough to match up for a bit.

ssd when they hit 240mb r/w will be pretty neat as systemdisks.
but slc as it is today seems to be the way to go for better writes.

[Thermodynamic]

http://www.bit-tech.net/news/2008/06/06/western-digital-working-on-20-000-rpm-raptor/1

Put me down for 5! :)

I love how they say SSDs will be affordable in 12~18 months. How many write cycles can these things endure? More than 100,000 I'd hope! granted, SSDs look nice in theory... but WD's Velociraptor won me over... especially price per gig; $300 for 300GB w/5 year warranty or $400 for 64GB...

[Thermodynamic]

This is encouraging. All people want is SSD's....they pay no attention that they are somewhat unreliable at the present time. The technology is still too young. 99% of the people I know regretted getting rid of their raptors and going with SSD. The other 1% just enjoying rebuilding their drive every day or two.

I, for one, would love to own a 20,000rpm raptor....and, I would spend more time enjoying it and less time fixing it.:attn:

As suspected. SSDs are overglorified flash drives that are a tad faster; the usual problems of re-writing causing premature failures. I'm happy with my Velociraptor...

[chawks2]

This is encouraging. All people want is SSD's....they pay no attention that they are somewhat unreliable at the present time.

Tis my opinion as well. However, my issues were just a specific chipset. DOH.:bang head

[>HyperlogiK<]

:eh?: yea ok.........

Western Digital doesn't make their own controllers, they buy off the shelf controller chips too...You make it sound like its easy to engineer a SSD drive, but not easy to engineer a legacy HDD. Engineering a product usually doesn't mean actually designing all the parts, its far from that, its more often than not just interfacing "off the shelf components"

Sorry I didn't mean to imply that, simply that if a company had been making traditional HDDs for so long, that it would be fairly trivial for them to put out a competitive SSD.

[mjw21a]

Who cares. I'll continue with 7200rpm drives untill SSD's reach the critical pricepoint. While they cost more for less storage I'll never touch them. A few seconds difference load time between levels doesnt bother me.

Mind you, they would be nice and quiet which makes them attractive to me, its not enough to justify the cost. My Samsung HDD's are the loudest things in my computer these days.... :p

[>HyperlogiK<]

For my upcoming build I would ideally like an SSD for the OS and something like this (or more likely just a Velociraptor) for installed programs.

I'm getting more and more into the idea of migrating all of my bulk media to a low power home server where a couple of the cheapest 1TB discs I can lay my hands on would do the trick.

[Xenocide]

Don't go SSD yet, I work with them on a daily basis, traditional hard drives are still better. SSDs are getting there but still new a few years of maturity.

The best thing about these SSD's will be the duty cycle, most people don't realize a SATA harddrive is only spec'd for a 50% duty cycle

[Neuromancer]

As long as mechanical drives stay so much cheaper then the other alternatives, that is where I will be staying.


They really cant focus on building 0RPM drives (SSD) because it is up to the memory manufacturers to produce better ICS. The name on the package just does not matter as much right now.

[Shiggity]

Well laptop sales are getting higher and higher relative to desktop sales. SSD's for laptops are where they will really shine, in desktops, SSDs aren't so great yet.

I don't know why WD would spend a lot on developing that drive when it has no market value in the growing laptop marketplace, and SSD works in both marketplaces. Just bad business to me.

Enterprises are also switching to SSD's too, and after they switch I doubt they'll go back to normal HD's.

All I can say is WD better get that thing out fast and make it price competative ASAP. If it takes them over a year from now to release it, bad news.

[deathman20]

SSD's will be the future in one way or another. Its going to be high speed as shown already getting up to the 250MB/s range for a single drive. Thats outsanding. Reliability, and longativity will come with time for sure but faster, larger, cheaper will be coming. HDD's will be around for a long time to come no matter what way we look at it. The sizes of them are incrediable and cheap to boot but for pure performance arena, the SSD's will shape up in the next 1-2 years to be a extreme contender for us enthusiats.

[Stilletto]

SSD's will be the future in one way or another. Its going to be high speed as shown already getting up to the 250MB/s range for a single drive. Thats outsanding. Reliability, and longativity will come with time for sure but faster, larger, cheaper will be coming. HDD's will be around for a long time to come no matter what way we look at it. The sizes of them are incrediable and cheap to boot but for pure performance arena, the SSD's will shape up in the next 1-2 years to be a extreme contender for us enthusiats.

Exactly, that's the point I wuz trying to make. There is no way that a mechanical drive can keep up with the speed of electrons, as long as reliability comes along with it....but until that time comes, I would be very happy to purchase one (or two)of these 20000rpm drives:D

[mjw21a]

What are the drives being developed for? Gaming pcs, professional workstations or servers? I imagine these would be great combined with a SCSI interface for server use orSTA for professional workstations. Not really of any use to regular consumers though.

[Shiggity]

What are the drives being developed for? Gaming pcs, professional workstations or servers? I imagine these would be great combined with a SCSI interface for server use orSTA for professional workstations. Not really of any use to regular consumers though.

Enterprise servers for maximum performance and laptops. Desktop enthusiasts will buy them for performance as well.

My next build will probably not include a SSD unless they are just rediculously amazing in ~1.5 years. I'll probably stick with my 150GB 10k raptor for OS and get 3 1TB drives or something.

Hard drive performance in general won't really net you a lot of gains, better GPU / CPU is a much better investment of your money imo.

Wherearu 2 platter 1TB drives @ 10kRPM :D

[deathman20]

Hard drive performance in general won't really net you a lot of gains, better GPU / CPU is a much better investment of your money imo.

To some extent. HDD's are about the only thing well in the past that was really lacking in performance, its definatly picked up in the past years. Still though for genearl throughput, harddrives are the one in the system thats lacking performance. Now most cases probably a 250MB/s drive isn't nessisary for most people, but as well if you have a half way decent CPU, opening programs and even booting the OS will go much much quicker.

Just imagine one day having a 1Gig/s single drive. The way they are speeding up SSD's you could see it, practical, probably not unless its a server enviroment, but I surely wouldn't mind a 250-500MB/s drive eventually. Then knowing really its not the HDD that would be slowing down the system but actually the CPU in some cases.

[Kuroimaho]

Again this old rumor, nothing came up in the past nearly 3 months about this, and probably nothing will. WD might look into it but the cost benefit ratio won't worth it for them, Intel will release their monster SSDs earlier then WD might make ES 20K drives.

[shadin]

Seems to me they could spend more time improving their normal lineup. I'm still not even sold on getting a Raptor after owning one previously, but my computer is just a gaming rig so I didn't reap much benefit from having it. Having a Raptor that spins twice as fast just seems like a reason to charge even higher prices for even more marginal of a performance gain.