For your next computer, make sure it comes with this:

[Deja Q]

Bloody 'ell, it's fast! :wow:

[Chan790]

1. At the risk of self-revokation of my nerd-cred...

Is that a hard-drive? I've never heard of it before.

[Deja Q]

2. It is one heck of a hard drive.

* FAST
* Small
* Runs cooler than any 7200RPM drive I've used
* FAST
* Vista OS boots in 8 seconds; another 7 after logging in for ALL data to be running
* FAST
* Much cheaper than a SDD
* 5 year warranty
* FAST!

And, as always, partition the drive to improve performance: ~90GB for the OS/apps and the remainder for data. The constraining seems to improve search times, oddly.

[ghostsofgiants]

3. How much was it?

[Deja Q]

4. The cost of three hookers*

* If this were 1980, of course, when it was only $100/night...

[Doug.Goodall]

5. Do you have their web site with a specification sheet?

[Deja Q]

6. Here:

http://www.wdc.com/en/products/Products.asp?DriveID=459



And a decent review, though I am trying to find the other link that won me over (more mb/s benches):
http://www.trustedreviews.com/storage/review/2008/08/06/Western-Digital-VelociRaptor/p4

The only competitor to it is a SSD drive, but who'd pay $350+ for 64GB for what's little more than a new, unproven technology as it's based on thumb drive technology - which by now I'd hope would last longer than a mere 100,000 write cycles. :hurts: (it probably does; using lower density chips in SSDs probably lengthens their lifespan; I'm not an expert...) Eventually SSDs will supersede mechanical HDs, but not for about 5 years at the current rate...

:D

(Note: YMMV, on my system it takes 40 seconds to boot with the raptor; which includes post-login desktop loading.)