Customer Reviews:
 Loud, Hot, and FAST! March 25, 2008
4 out of 6 found this review helpful
It was hard for me to fork out almost $200 for a 150GB drive, but I really wanted to see if the speed was significantly faster than my standard drive. I bought this to put in my quad-core G5. Before I put it in the tower I put it in an external hard drive case (NewerTech MiniStack V3) to initialize it and install OS X on it. Stacked on top of the external case is my Airport Extreme 802.11n Base Station. When I turned on the drive I got this repeating ticking sound, like a little toy machine gun. I opened up the top of my external case and could see the hard drive (the clear case really came in handy here!) - I could see the arm of the drive ticking to the side when I moved my base station close to it. When I pulled it away, the ticking stopped. This really concerned me so I called Western Digital and explained the problem. It's like the radio frequencies from the Airport station were screwing with the mechanics of this drive. He said that it is NOT to be used in an external case, and is only suited for internal use. He also pointed out that it didn't make any sense to buy such a fast hard drive and put it in a external case connected via firewire 800 - I agreed, but explained that it was only to set it up.
Anyway, I took it out and put it in my G5 and the ticking stopped. I also took out the drive that the Raptor replaced and put it in the NewerTech V3 external case, and again stacked my Airport on top of it. But now with this hard drive, I don't get any ticking! It's not sensitive to the RF signals. So point being, this Raptor X can act screwy to WiFi signals that are close to it, but it doesn't seem to be a problem now that it's in my tower.
Another point to make, while the hard drive is fast and improves boot time, application loading, etc, it's also noticeably louder than my other drives. The hard drive reading/writing sound is definitely more noticeable now - it kind of reminds me of an old pc drive I had 10 years ago. It also runs hotter. I've noticed that my macs fans are always running now, even when my system is idle and I'm not doing anything (and nothing is being cataloged and there's no disk activity).
So if you're okay with more fan noise, more hard drive noise, and a nice speed improvement, then this drive is great!
 FACT: The undisputed best HDD for your Boot Drive January 30, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
Be honest, there isn't a single reputable review or computer labeled as "High End" or "Gaming" that doesn't have one (or two in raid) of these running as the bootable drive with the OS installed on it.
If you don't know why, it's because it is simply the fastest HDD on the consumer market. Don't need a 1TB drive for your most accessed drive, save it for your storage. The high speed these run at just make that much of an impact on routine, everyday tasks as well as the demanding, hungry programs and games.
The only thing I don't like about these drives?? It is the constant price instability that irks me. I can buy these all day for $150 (Raptor-X 150mb) each and then all the sudden no one is selling them for under $225.....then 6-7 weeks later back down, etc. etc..
If you are here trying to research drives, just make a note to add one of these and mark this component off your "to find" list.
Greased Lightning Best On The Market January 28, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
In my opinion there is only one downfall to the Raptor, it is louder than a regular Hard Drive, I don't mind at all, but it is worth noting. Oh and unless you have a clear Hard Drive cage in your tower with a window, you are not going to be able to see through the nifty little plexiglass window on the Raptor X.
When I refer to best Hard Drive on the market I am directing this to those of you who have a lot of data that needs to be loaded; the Raptor will do this fast and with ease. I have two of these running in a raid 0 array, wow are they fast.
I am a Flight Simmer and for those of you who are not aware Flight Simulator has lots of data to load, I mean a lot! The two Raptors load FSX in about 20 seconds and Flight Sim 2004 in about 5, and I have many, many add-ons so these programs are not just their "Stock" size.
Simply put, if you want your computer to start up, load programs and just run, FAST, than look no further you have found your new hard drive. Also, the quality and warranty (5Years), are second to none for a product of this sort. Sure you could get a drive 4 times the size for the same or less cost; but if speed, efficiency, and quality are paramount in your computing world just buy one! Or two, or three... ;)
muy, muy rapido December 4, 2007
1 out of 2 found this review helpful
buen HD. extremadamente rapido, quizaas un poco mas ruidoso que mi antiguo HD seagate barracuda.
Very Happy With This Drive November 17, 2007
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
This drive is great for a cheap price. It is very fast, 10k rpm and 16mb cache. The clear Window on the drive looks amazing through my Clear windowed case on my computer. You can see all the actions of the drive, writing, reading(If you have a see-through case window). The speeds are amazing for gaming, but not really for data transfer. It only has a 1.5 gb / sec transfer rate as to a 3gb for 7,200rpm drives(Strange) but that does not slow down gaming for even a split second. This drive is a must for Graphics hungry games like Crysis, which now loads much faster and runs much less chopy.
The ONLY flaw with this drive is the sexy drive window. Since the drive is not housed in a all metal container, the window makes for a little more noise, but if you turn up your game volume you should be just fine.
5 stars!
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