Western Digital 36.7GB Raptor Review

Product: Western Digital 36.7GB Raptor
Author: Weiye Zhou
Date Published: 01/18/04
Price: $125 + Free S/H
Purchased at: Newegg.com

The Hard Drive
The first thing I noticed about the Western Digital 36.7 GB Rapter hard drive after I received it was its weight, so I weighed it with my kitchen scale. Compared to my old hard drive (WD300BB) it was not that much heavier, although it sure seemed like it.

Now, here's some pictures for your view pleasure,

The surface of the hard drive

Heatsink fins on the side to help dissipate heat

The Marvel ATA/SATA converter chip

Legacy power, jumper block, and SATA interface

Some facts before we proceed to the benchmarks. The first thing you should notice is that this hard drive runs at 10,000RPM which previously could only be found in SCSI hard drives. Western Digital released the Raptor last year; it was meant for low-mid end servers. Gamers/enthusiasts started picking them up due to it's low pricetag (around $125 currently) and it became the perfect solution to relieve the hard drive bottleneck. This hard drive actually outperforms SCSI drives on some benchmarks and with a raid 0 configuration it's blazing fast!

Testbed
P4 2.6C/ Abit IS7
Radeon 9500Pro
1GB Corsair XMS RAM
16x DVD-ROM Drive
WD300BB and WD360 Hard Drives
Windows XP SP1

Benchmarks and Conclusion