WD Raptor

The Raptor is a high-end hard disk drive series produced by Western Digital, that managed virtually single-handedly to create its own niche: The enthusiast and smaller server market. Traditionally, servers exclusively used hard drives that featured a SCSI interface, due to these drives' advantages over IDE drives in both performance and reliability.

The WD360GD

In 2003, the first incarnation of the Raptor series was introduced to the market: The WD360GD. It featured a capacity of 36 GB on a single platter, a Serial ATA interface and was the first ATA drive to operate at a spindle speed of 10,000 rounds per minute. Like many of the early SATA drives, the Raptor was not a "real" SATA drive in a way because it was really an IDE drive that, like its successor, used an 88i8030C bridge from Marvell. But that is merely a cosmetical fact since that design didn't hamper the Raptor's performance in any way.
As it is always the case for hard drives that feature a faster spindle speed, the Raptor outperformed its fellow ATA drives and in some disciplines was able to even reach the performance of then up-to-date 10,000 rpm SCSI drives. However this was not so much the case in multi user scenarios, again emphasizing the fact that the Raptor was suited very well for high-end home computers. Because it was a drive that was also going to be used in enthuisiasts' systems, it was nice to note that the Raptor's temperature and noise level stayed relatively low.

The WD740GD

The second generation Raptor was introduced in early 2004. It featured two of the WD360GD's platters for 74 GB of storage space. Unlike its predecessor, the WD740GD didn't use a mechanical motor for spinning its spindles, but one with fluid dynamic bearing. This allowed the new Raptor to operate at the noise levels of the more silent 7,200 rpm drives.
Another advantage the WD740GD had over the 36GB model was a feature called command queueing, that similarly had been in use in SCSI drives for years, resulting in a notable increase of the WD740GD's multi-user performance -- the discipline in which its predecessor failed compared to SCSI drives. However, enabling command queueing on the WD740GD resulted in a performance decrease in single-user scenarios. It also worth noting that as of 2005, there still are only few SATA controllers that support command queueing.

External links

• WD360GD
• WD740GD