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• orenlevy - Friday, November 9, 2007 - link

  hi everybody i would like to say that i am a computer builder .
  latly i recived this hard drive 160G aajs with access time of minimum 20m\s
  i am speaking for a wile with wd support. ill write soon for now i had 4 harddrive like that.

• fendell - Friday, May 4, 2007 - link

  Any chance you could update this with the WD5000AAKS ?
  
  It is a great bargain atm :)

• DrMrLordX - Tuesday, February 6, 2007 - link

  Any chance you could include the Hitachi T7k500 in reviews like this one?

• Gary Key - Tuesday, February 6, 2007 - link

  Yes, we will have the new/old WD and Hitachi 500GB drive results up in two weeks.

• DrMrLordX - Wednesday, February 7, 2007 - link

  cool, thanks

• Rike - Monday, February 5, 2007 - link

  You might want to put up pics that are consistent. When I saw the first pic on page one, the fist thing I noticed was that the four pin was still there, which surprised me. Pics on pages 1 & 12 show a four pin power connection on the drive while the page 2 pics clearly show a big hole where the four pin would be. Of course the text on page two says . . .

  quote:
  

  ---

  The new SE family ships with the Serial ATA data and power connectors but drops support for the 4-pin Molex power connector designed for use with older ATX power supplies.

  ---

  
  You might want to clear this one up.
  

• Gary Key - Tuesday, February 6, 2007 - link

  The press photos that WD sent us had the old casing for the open drive pictures. We really did not want to use them and WD was unable to provide new pics. I thought it was important to show the new platter design but certainly was not thrilled with using the old pictures. I will change them up today.

• noxipoo - Monday, February 5, 2007 - link

  if i wanted low noise and performance similar to this drive?

• Accord99 - Tuesday, February 6, 2007 - link

  The WD5000AAKS (The AA is the important designation):
  
  http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/SearchTool...">http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications...tails.as...
  
  http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82...">http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82...

• noxipoo - Wednesday, February 7, 2007 - link

  boo, no 5 year warranty.

• semo - Monday, February 5, 2007 - link

  Gary, are you thinking of including some ssds (slc and mlc) in the mix for future comparisons. also, are you planning on doing a raid article (again with ssds too) and see if raid edition drives make a difference.

• Gary Key - Monday, February 5, 2007 - link

  Hi,
  
  We will have a ssds roundup in March if the products are released on schedule. We will concentrate on SLC first as the MLC drive I do have is just terrible for general desktop usage. It was designed for industrial use and even I would not want to be a user at that workstation. ;) I am working on RAID article for March that will cover several chipsets and drives along with some new benchmarks.

• oDii - Monday, February 5, 2007 - link

  Gary, would it be possible along side the various chipsets to see how Linux Software RAID performs (http://tldp.org/HOWTO/Software-RAID-HOWTO-5.html">http://tldp.org/HOWTO/Software-RAID-HOWTO-5.html or XFS)? It'd be great to see the results in context, as I haven't been able to find a complete and reliable source of results.

• semo - Monday, February 5, 2007 - link

  thanks!
  the only reason i wanted to see an mlc drive in a roundup is to get an idea how bad they are but i get the picture now.
  
  i wonder if the faster response of the ssds compensate for their lower transfer rates and beat hdds in general usage. i guess we'll find out in march.

• mostlyprudent - Monday, February 5, 2007 - link

  I should wait to see some numbers from the versions with 16MB cache sizes, but for me - this article reaffirms my choice of the Seagate 7200.10 320GB.

• mjz - Monday, February 5, 2007 - link

  i'm amazed that the raptor didn't do so good.. why couldn't they just combine the 160 platter with the 10000 rpm

• DrMrLordX - Tuesday, February 6, 2007 - link

  I kinda agree, though the newer 74 gig Raptor w/ 16 meg cache is supposedly faster than the 150 gig Raptor.
  
  Personally I'd rather see the 74 gig Raptor in there, but . . .

• Gary Key - Tuesday, February 6, 2007 - link

  I will have a short performance update to include the 74GB 16MB cache Raptor tomorrow, not a full article but enough results to draw a conclusion.