Western Digital WD1500AHFDRTL Raptor X 150GB SATA/150 Hard Drive

by Western Digital

Product Details

• Product Dimensions: 9 x 4 x 8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.6 pounds
• Shipping: Currently, item can be shipped only within the U.S.
• ASIN: B000FBS01K
• Item model number: WD1500AHFDRTL
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (21 customer reviews)
• Date first available at Amazon.com: July 7, 2004

Product Description

From the manufacturer

From the secret performance labs at WD comes the revolutionary WD Raptor X SATA hard drive, the first ever drive with a view. Offspring of the immensely popular WD Raptor, fastest SATA drive on the planet, WD Raptor X focuses a large, crystal-clear lens on the drive to let you see into the inner workings and witness the drive in action.

Sounds simple? It's not. With over two years of research and development behind it, the WD Raptor X is engineered to compromise nothing. At 10,000 RPM spin speed it delivers the killer speed of its illustrious parent, doubles the capacity to 150 GB, and provides enterprise-class reliability. This is the ultimate hard drive for PC performance enthusiasts everywhere.

Domination is in the Details

Crystalline polycarbonate lens - Provides clarity, structural integrity, electrostatic discharge (ESD) protection, durability and chemical neutrality necessary for the highest performance and reliability.

Native Command Queuing (NCQ) - Increases data transfer in high-performance multi-processor, multi-threaded environments.

Rotary Acceleration Feed Forward (RAFF) - Optimizes operation and performance when drives are used in vibration-prone multi-drive systems. Patent pending.

5-year Warranty - Nothing has been compromised in quality and reliability to manufacture these unique hard drives. WD is proud to back them with our enterprise-class 5-year warranty.

Product Description

Some hard drive companies design desktop-class drives with the SATA interface. To meet the demands of enterprise storage, WD is going one better. WD is the only company combining a 10,000 RPM enterprise-class mechanical platform with the SATA interface to meet all the demands of the enterprise environment reliability, performance, and reduced cost. Rotational Speed 10,000 RPM (nominal) / Buffer Size 16 MB / Average Latency 2.99 ms (nominal) Contact Start/Stop Cycles 20,000 minimum Seek Times - Read Seek Time 4.6 ms Write Seek Time 5.2 ms (average) Track-To-Track Seek Time 0.4 ms (average) Full Stroke Seek 10.2 ms (average) Transfer Rates - Buffer To Host (Serial ATA) 1.5 Gb/s (Max) Buffer To Disk 84 MB/s (Sustained) What it Holds - - Up to 42,000 digital photos - Up to 37,000 songs (MP3) - Up to 3,700 songs (uncompressed CD quality) - Up to 11 hours of Digital Video (DV) - Up to 66 hours of DVD quality video - Up to 18 hours of HD video System Requirements - Windows XP or Windows 2000 operating systems / SATA interface connector on motherboard, or SATA controller card (sold separately) installed in available 32-bit PCI expansion slot (2.1- or 2.2-compliant) / 3.5-inch internal drive bay Manufacturer's 5 year Limited Warranty

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

22 of 24 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Wonderful drive with one big flaw, May 13, 2007

By 

Anthony L. Weber (Rancho Cucamonga, Ca United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Western Digital WD1500AHFDRTL Raptor X 150GB SATA/150 Hard Drive (Personal Computers)

Let's start with the only big flaw of this drive. The clear glass that allows you to see the drive. Great in theory, but not in practicality. To see the hard drive work you either need to mount it outside of the computer or to the glass on the side of your tower. Problem with that is that both methods void the warranty!!! There is really no way to view it working without voiding the warranty (read the manual) so minus 1 star for that. Of course they would only know this if you told them or sent the drive in an exterior case for repair!

I disagree with the review below about it being quiet. It is loud (in comparison to other drives)

Onto the positives. Fastest serial drive there is. 10,000 RPM with a 16 cache is the icing on the cake. I upgraded from the 74gig with 8 cache and what a difference. The price is high and raiding 2 of these together is only for the rich! But as far as hard drives go, this is the king of them all. I am a gamer and have been very please with the results. If you can afford it, it is the way to go. But consider the model without the window. You will save a few bucks and get the same performance

6 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Buy it now., July 24, 2007

By 

Amazonist (Miami, Florida United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Western Digital WD1500AHFDRTL Raptor X 150GB SATA/150 Hard Drive (Personal Computers)

This drive (clear drive window) edition is a louder than the non-transparent one so you might want to take note of that. Also it it duhhh. more expensive. and like a previous reviewer said its not practical, even with the mounting technique to the side of the window, how often are you going to watch that platter spin @ 10,000 rpm and the actuator go bezerk? Its just a fancy thing but you shouldn't buy this one. I have two of the regular WD Raptors in a RAID0 config, and while its no where as noisy as a SCSI disc, you do hear the random accesses taking place. But it idle's like a regular 7,200 rpm quiet drive however. My previous SCSI was a Cheetah X15.1 which idle's louder than this accesses and also when its accessing it sounds like a needle scraping the platter @ 15,000 rpm! Not sure about the modern cheetah x15.5's in comparison with that, but this is good enough and you can build a faster array with these than the cheetahs for much less the price! With two of these i get 168 MB/s linear read on a Intel CH7-R chipset on the asus p5w dh dlx. Some might argue you might get the same linear read with other cheapter cavier drives or so, but this is much faster for random accesses so it seems more responsive, and because of that overall faster! Get it and tell WD thanks.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars GOOD!!!, June 14, 2008

By 

Fernando Ferreira (Rio de Janeiro) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Western Digital WD1500AHFDRTL Raptor X 150GB SATA/150 Hard Drive (Personal Computers)

Pros:It works, it's fast and SATA is a plus.
Cons: Not much faster than a Seagate (7200, 32MB cache).It runs really hot!!