Smart Hard Drives: Seagate Barracuda 7200.7 and Western Digital WD740 Raptor

Western Digital WD740 Raptor

The WD360 Raptor has already made a name for itself with the reliability so prized in SCSI drives even at high power, but with a serial ATA interface to boot. That makes the Raptor the first SATA drive that can be used in power-intensive settings.

Although the Maxtor also has its iron in the fire with its MaXLine series, it "only" works with the usual 7,200 rpm rather than the considerably faster 10,000 rpm that the second Raptor, now with 74 GB, brings to the race.

It still comes with the 8 MB cache and the warranty period of five years.

Unlike Fujitsu, Hitachi, Maxtor and Seagate, Western Digital has the advantage of not having its own SCSI business to protect anymore. From this perspective, with its WD740 available soon, WD can still claim the high end of the serial ATA market for itself. Moreover, an increasing number of professional SATA controllers are crowding the market, to the point that SCSI will sooner or later have worn out its welcome in the lower server segment.