Home > Computers > Components > Storage Devices > Hard Drives

Super Raptor

WD360GD - Internal hard drive - 3.5" x 1/3H - 10000 rpm - 150 MBps - Serial ATA-150 more

The exploding growth of enterprise data storage puts tremendous pressure on IT managers, who must accommodate ever-greater volume with ever-tighter budgets. This increased need for...
more...enterprise storage, coupled with the decline in IT budgets, creates a need for reliable, low-cost solutions. Enter Serial ATA (SATA), a new interface developed with enterprise storage in mind. Some hard drive companies design desktop-class hard drives with the SATA interface, but WD is going one better. To meet the demands of enterprise storage, Western Digital is the only company to combine an enterprise-class hard drive with the SATA interface to meet all the demands of the enterprise environment - reliability, performance, and reduced cost. Serial ATA is poised to replace Parallel SCSI in the mid-range, but only if there's a drive that can meet the performance and reliability requirements of that market. That drive is the WD Raptor! The WD Raptor is a new class of hard drive that matches SCSI performance and reliability and provides simplified connectivity, all at 30 percent less cost than Parallel SCSI drives.

Please wait ....

Rate this product:

All Western Digital Raptor WD360GD 36.7 GB reviews

Next review

Super Raptor

A review by bigdavep on Western Digital Raptor WD360GD 36.7 GB
September 30th, 2004

Author's product rating: Western Digital Raptor WD360GD 36.7 GB - rated by bigdavep

Memory / capacity	Good
Reliability	Good
Ease of Installation	Satisfactory
Speed	Very fast
Value For Money	Excellent

Advantages:	10,000 RPM, SATA
Disadvantages:	Size

Recommend to potential buyers:

yes

Full review

This hard drive is nothing short of fantastic. Right, straight to the tech details.

Its a 36gb hard drive. Now i first thought that its too small, but lets face it, this hard drive has been designed for being a main system drive and not a data drive so its only going to really have MS Windows, Office, A load of applications and games.

Its Serial ATA so it talks to the motherboard and processor at 150MHz which is 50MHz faster than most standard hard drives.

It spins at 10,000rpm. This means programs load quicker, it is also incredably useful for people who do video editing due to the quicker access times that the fast spin provides although those sorts of people may want to consider its bigger brother which has 74gb capacity.

The physical design of the product is outstanging, its designed to reduce noise and vibration, it also helps with dissapating heat as it has a kind of heatsink design to it.

Installation of the device is simple enough, standard 4 large thread screws, power cable in and SATA data cable in. Some motherboards or raid controllers require you to physically set an array up although most will auto detect it.

Beware though. All SATA hard drives will only work with Windows 2000 and XP because only Windows 2000 and XP have to ability to load SCSI/SATA drivers from a floppy disk during setup. Windows 95/98 will be unable to see SATA drives at all. Linux is unknown as I haven't tried it.

The raptor I played around with was from GladiatorComputers.com and is currently £79.99, Delivery on this item is £4.69 for City Link next day couriers.

I would recommend this hard drive to any serious gamer as speed is essential and this is amazing (although I'm looking forward to the next generation on that spins at 15,000 rpm).

I don't however recommend this HDD or any SATA hdd to computer novices or people who aren't comfortable with computers as SATA can be a pain to setup if you've never done anything remotely like this before.

Quick Note: my totally unhelpful selection on Instruction manual was due to the drive being an OEM product so its just the drive by itself in a antistatic bag, no cables, screws or instructions, but thats how most hard drives come.