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Hardware

Western Digital working on 20,000rpm HDD to rival SSD?

By Jose Vilches, TechSpot.com
Published: June 6, 2008, 12:05 PM EST

Solid state drives may have their benefits when it comes to reliability, speed, low power consumption, and small dimensions. But the storage market is mainly driven by cost-per-gigabyte, and in that regard, SSDs still can’t compete with traditional spinning hard disk drives.

In light of this, Western Digital is reportedly developing a 20,000rpm Raptor hard drive – twice the speed of its current Raptor lineup – to counter the increasing popularity of SSDs. The drive is apparently a 2.5-inch model with a custom 3.5-inch ‘caddy’ similar to that of the recently announced VelociRaptor, which will act as both a heatsink for cooling and provide a stiff frame to counter vibration and to help with noise-reduction as well.

One particular drawback in today’s energy-conscious times, however, is that a 20K drive would need more electricity to spin it. But I can imagine enthusiasts who demand nothing but the best when it comes to performance would gladly buy one of these beasts.

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User Comments (6)

Post a comment
fullmetalvegan
on June 6, 2008
12:53 PM
Hell yes. =D

gamerguy53
on June 6, 2008
1:09 PM
gimmie nao

Obi-Wan Jerkobi
on June 6, 2008
3:58 PM
I bet that if they made the 20,000 dollars with one disc platter, that it could be possible to let the drive run at that speed without shredding stuff up. :P They do only have to platters on the WD Caviar SE 640GB so if they put a 320GB Platter on this drive...

TimeParadoX
on June 6, 2008
7:57 PM
Wouldn't it be impossible to have such speeds without it shredding the materials inside the HDD? I tried spinning a CD drive faster than standard speeds and it shattered the CD I had inside.

emrandsl08
on June 7, 2008
4:42 PM
I dont think this drive will have 1TB version.Maybe, 150GB or max of 250GB. i am not an expert,but as far as i have seen the 10,000 RPM hard disk are of that size.

fullmetalvegan
on June 9, 2008
2:27 PM
Except for the new VelociRaptor will is 10kRPM and 300GB, pushing the boundaries. XD

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