Western Digital Sports 7200-RPM 120 Gb Drive

[[shawn@localhost /home]#]

the only thing special about this is that its a 120gb EIDE drive right? check out this SCSI drive you can buy from the local comp shot (canadian dollars though)
-SEAGATE 181GB U160 SCSI BARRACUDA ST31181677LWV 7200RPM 68PIN $2,700.00
and check this one out
- SEAGATE 18.4GB CHEETAH 160/M ST318451LW 15K RPM $570.00

[AndreRIO]

7200rpm ?? it is still too slow, when are they going to make it go faster?

[piyopiyo13]

In the past ATA drives were generally under 100GB. Either they'd be over 100 GB and have only 5400 rpm or they'd be 7200 RPM but under 100 GB. It's only recently that they were able to put both features in one hard drive, and Western Digital was the first to accomplish that.

[[shawn@localhost /home]#]

uh what?

seagate has had its 7200RPG 181gb drive out for like months now and this 120gig hard drive is supposed to be a first? or are you talking about first huge and fast drive to be EIDE instead of SCSI?

[jprophet420]

yes, 1st ide and 7200 rpm and over 100gig.
i prefer maxtor

[J.A.D]

They don't have any 10k rpm IDE drives do they? Maybe WD can break that barrier 1st as well...

[[shawn@localhost /home]#]

how does SCSI work anyway? what is so special about it that allows you to run a hard drive that spins at a max of 15k instead of max 7200? why do you need SCSI to have a 181GB hard drive?

[cmagnusson]

IDE can't (afaik) do greater than 137GB because of the way that IDE addresses locations on a hard disk using the cylinder-head-sector thing. The September issue of Maximum PC had a blurb on it.

[AllGamer]

:D

Big Deal, Faster doesn't mean better, although i would enjoy the 120Gig capacity for an EIDE drive, the 7200rpm will kill them really quick.

I run my systems 24/7 - 365, and my Gaming machine is running 8 Maxtor 100 Gig 5400 rpm nicely in a EIDE RAID setup

If i did the same with the new WD 120 Gig 7200rpm drives, i bet my Game Silo wont last 3 months, right now as is, is hot already, reason apart from the 4x4 RAIDED 100 Gb Maxtors, i have additional SCSI hard drives that emits crazy amount of heat i have a total of 8 fans all in and around the case, and the heat is Nuts!

SCSI causes too much heat, so its **** and expensive.

EIDE rules.

[[shawn@localhost /home]#]

what is RAID anyway, is taht when you can connect like 4 drives on 1 cable? i mean like in your primary slot you will have connected like 4 hard drives or what? (explain RAID assuming that i know nothing because its the truth)

[cmagnusson]

RAID is _not_ bug spray in this case :D

It is an acronym for Redundant Array of Inexpensive Disks and there are several flavors of it (not that you should consume RAID :D)

Essentially, you can either have more speed or redundancy.

RAID 0 is for speed. This is where you take two identical HDs and connect them to a raid controller. The data is striped across them so that each successive chunk of data goes to a different drive as opposed to it all going to one drive.

Raid 1 is mirroring. In this case, all the data is written to both (or all, as appropriate) disks. In this case, if one disk fails, the data is still completely intact on the other(s). However, you cannot simply use the surviving drive on its own; the data would have to be receated on another drive to be used.

I believe that there are seven levels of RAID in all; these are the ones that I can remeber off the top of my head. The others are combinations of striping and mirroring.

[richdow]

Speaking of the "SEAGATE 18.4GB CHEETAH 160/M ST318451LW "... I had that on order (and imagine it's an excellent drive)... but after waiting for them to fulfill the order for over 4 weeks.... I gave up. I doubt they manufacture them anymore. Take a look at the online seagate store and you'll find most of their good drives are not in stock.

So,.... I opted for the Western Digital 100GB drive with 8MB buffer. At least they fulfilled the order within a week.

[corrupted]

aren't we already reaching the limit of the EIDE standard? i think it's about time we had something else come in. SCSI is great for critical data, but it leaves alot to be desired for most home users. they also tend to be noisier (in my experience) than any IDE drive i've used. as it is i think we're going to see another form of IDE which more closely resembles SCSI on the surface.

will we ever need that much storage to begin with? i'm having a little trouble filling my 20GB drive because i don't copy that many cds, but i'm sure a 40GB drive would be more than enough to never run out of space. sure the drive's there and sure people are going to buy it, but are they going to be needed?

[henry]

There's always a need for bigger hard disk space.

Take for example, a game called, Diablo 2 + its expansion pack, takes up 1.6GB.

Win2k + Office2k + IE5.5 + NS6.1, and other small software takes up close to 1.1GB.

We have not factored in an average person's drive content, 1000 mp3 @ 320kb/s, 200 p0rn @ 60MB each.

So yeah, 20GB is pretty used up that way.

In answering your question, yes, I personally believe, every technology will come to an end. But an end will most of the time starts with a new one to replace the old one.

Let's assume 1TB, 100k rpm, would you imagine such specs will be supported by IDE standard?

Your worry is unfounded, as there's always someone who will fill in the niche for users who demand harddisk with standards that's less powerful than those used in enterprises, yet affordable.

[piyopiyo13]

The marginal price for the next 20 gigs after 80GB is pretty ridiculous. Not to mention the even more ridiculous price jump from 100GB to 120GB. Don't really foresee much demand for these drives until prices settle down...

[[shawn@localhost /home]#]

i dunno about 40 gig bein hard to fill,
-like that guy said, Diablo2 and expansion is 1.6gb on my HD
-i have a game called Half-Life with the TFC, CS and DoD mods which take about 2gb total
-my parents have some sound files goin at 2.6 gigs (dl every song they can friggin think of)
-windows 98 is 800mb
-varias program files take up over 3gb

i have some games i cant even install on the HD because it only has 500mb free left =(

[corrupted]

i have 1 20GB drive, multi-partitioned to 4.31 and 14.6GB drives (C and D respectively). that's a total of 18.91GB of storage, taking into account the twin partitioning it could be a little higher. of that total space, 12.32GB is used, and that's with quite a bit of progs and a few (very few) games. the hours i work i don't get much time to play games and no-one else installs games. **** the online game fad for stuffing up windows installations.

the largest folder on the drive is the MP3 folder, at 3.5GB with 1038 files. i don't have the connection or need to d/l porn like that. perhaps you could all tell me why you feel the need to d/l porn?

[richdow]

There will always be the need for more hard drive space. The need for the space is, of course, dependent on the user. I know three people at my workplace who (as a hobby) transfer an entire hour of digitally recorded home videos, edit them in Premiere and publish them back to digital tape, dvd or vhs (for distribution to distant family members).

I seem to recall an IBM executive (many years ago) saying the public would never have a need for more than 655K of memory. Ampex sold their patent and idea of the VCR to JVC because they didn't think there was a market for it.

Still, there are several friends I know that don't need the disk space or power that their computer provides. Gaming and Entertainment drive much of the computer industry.

Wish Seagate would produce enough drives for the demand. I'm content with my Western Digital though.

I hear there are two standards for new EIDE drives coming out (ATA-133 and an Intel standard). That ought to light up hard disk sales.

[corrupted]

i can recall from somewhere mr gates himself saying we'd never need more than 640K of memory. my how times change . . .

[DanielAc]

SCSI drives are slower to boot than EIDE drives, but once up and running are a bit faster.

The new hard drives of the future should be optical, just like the DVD ROM/RAM drives of today. A double sided DVD RAM drive already has the capacity to write up to 14GB's!

This is enormous data storage folks!

So if you were to buy 20 blank DVD RAM discs at the store you would get a grand total equivalent of a 280 GB hard drive.

[Pack'nHeat]

The 160GB DiamondMax D540X retail kit incorporates Maxtor’s Big Drive technology to shatter the 137GB personal computer operating system recognition barrier. Pack'nHeat:D