Western Digital's Raptor X

Earlier this week Western Digital announced the availability of their latest Raptor drive, with a capacity of 150GB thanks to its two 74GB platters. The 150GB Raptor is available today with a MSRP of $299.

At CES, Western Digital announced a second version of the 150GB drive called the Raptor X. Mechanically the Raptor X is identical to the first 150GB drive, the only difference is that the Raptor X features a window letting you see the spinning platters, read/write heads and actuator arm in action.

Other than the window, the rest of the specs of the drive are identical to its non-flashy brother. You get a 16MB buffer, 5 year warranty and of course, a 10,000RPM spindle speed. The Raptor X should be available in about 2 weeks for $349 while the normal 150GB version is available now for $299.

You can see a picture of the drive in action above, although for better pictures and more information on the new Raptor X you should head over to WD's site dedicated to the drive - www.wdraptorx.com.

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  • quanta - Friday, January 13, 2006 - link

    From page 8:

    quote:

    Like LCD and DLP technologies, SED displays are fixed pixel displays and there are three electron emitters per pixel. The downside to a fixed pixel display of course is that you end up sacrificing quality if you display content isn't at the same resolution as the native resolution of your display.


    Actually, that only exist if at least 1 dimension of display content dimensions isn't integer divisor of display's native resolution. Secondly, DLP can overcome this by shining at only the biggest subset of mirror in the DMDs that do not cause distortions, then use adjustable sets of lenses to perform zooming, with each set zooming at only 1 axis.
  • Kensei - Monday, January 9, 2006 - link

    Please do a review of this thing when it becomes available. I'd love to see how its output compares to Blu-ray and HD-DVD. I'm sure it's not as good... but just how much worse is what I'd like to know.
  • highlandsun - Thursday, January 12, 2006 - link

    Samsung has pretty good scaling technology, but it seems to me this is something you only need in your display. (And Samsung TVs do pretty good upconversion already.) So, kind of silly.
  • VooDooAddict - Monday, January 9, 2006 - link

    Raptor X.

    I feel so guilty. I'm drooling over a hard drive that costs more then a 7800GT.

    I've wanted a windowed Hard drive for ages though... but don't have the dremmel skills nessesary to add a window to an existing drive.
  • Questar - Monday, January 9, 2006 - link

    Nobody has the dremel skills. Drives are assembled in clean rooms. Beaking the seal will be the end of a drive.
  • Clauzii - Monday, January 9, 2006 - link

    I´ve seen a drive approx. a year ago on the net - modded with blue light - woring - 20Gig. Damn where was it....?
  • Clauzii - Monday, January 9, 2006 - link

    But also found this .. it´s nothing new .......
  • Clauzii - Monday, January 9, 2006 - link

    This: http://www.halfbakery.com/idea/Transparent_20disk_...">http://www.halfbakery.com/idea/Transparent_20disk_...
  • Clauzii - Monday, January 9, 2006 - link

    woring = working...
  • Eris23007 - Monday, January 9, 2006 - link


    I've noticed lately that article text seems to disappear a few seconds after page load, frequently when one of the sidebar ads appears. Can't be retrieved except by highlighting it, moving the page back and forth (so it redraws), etc. Happened on a number of articles over the past week or so...

    IE6/XP-SP2

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