Western Digital Hard Drives

Western Digital hard drives have an excellent reputation in the storage industry. Western Digital was founded in April 1970 and began producing hard drives in 1988. It is now one of the leading manufacturers of hard drives. The leading Western Digital drive models on the market right now are the Standard Raptor WD1500 and the Caviar SE16. Let's look at some similarities and differences between these two.

Western Digital's largest hard drive yet to answer our increasing storage needs is the Caviar SE16 drive, featuring 750 GB of storage and a 16 MB cache.  Alternatively, the Raptor was designed to be a reliable high performance enterprise drive but it has gained great popularity among gaming enthusiasts. Early versions of Raptor drives had an 8 MB cache but the later models now also have the 16 MB cache. The Caviar holds the lead in capacity over the Raptor which has only 150 GB of space. Squeezing 750GB into the Caviar SE16 drive requires the use of a new technique called perpendicular recording technology which essentially allows more data to be stored in a smaller space.

One mark of the high performance roots of the Raptor drive is the 10,000 RPM spindle speed which allows data to be read faster.  The downside is that the drive makes more noise.  In contrast, the Caviar has a slower spindle speed of 7200 RPM.

These hard drives also sport advanced acoustic and power-conserving technologies. Another notable feature is called SecurePark which lodges the recording head off the platters when not in use, making the hard drive better able to resist shock during non use and guaranteeing a longer reliable performance period due to less wear and stress on the head. These hard drives also have features that help protect the disk from vibrations and bumping while in use.
 
In another nod to gaming enthusiasts, the latest Raptor drives have a window which enables one to see the spinning platters and moving heads.  How cool is that?

Unnecessary moving of the drive head over the platters increases wear and tear on the drive causing the drive to fail faster.  Both the Caviar and Raptor WD1500 have been designed with features to eliminate this unnecessary wear on the drive, with an optimizing feature known as Native Command Queuing (NCQ). This technique increases the performance of SATA hard disks by allowing it to choose the most efficient sequence in which it will follow write and read commands. Consequently, this eliminates many unnecessary movements of the drive head, thereby prolonging the life and increasing performance of the hard drive.

Although the Raptor line of hard disk drives has been on the market for five years now, it is such a unique product in itself that there has been no direct competition for it.

Here is a small sample of Western Digital hard drives available on the market:

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