We’ve updated the Leaderboard with an entry for the 150 GB Raptor, a drive that seems to have hit availability a bit sooner than anticipated. It’s interesting to note that while the 36 GB and 74 GB Raptors were leading performers in their day, neither unit managed the right combination of performance, capacity, and price

The rumors are true. Today Western Digital formally announces the successor to its beloved (but rather small) Raptor WD740GD. The new WD1500 doubles capacity to 150 gigabytes and features a host of improvements aimed at elevating the family’s performance and reliability to a new level. Here’s a link to WD’s press release and one to

Today Seagate announced its intentions to acquire Maxtor Corp. for $1.9 billion in stock, once again consolidating an industry where razor thin margins brutally penalize any missteps. Here, though Maxtor’s enterprise division has done relatively well, the firm’s desktop/consumer division has struggled to regain its footing after some quality-control issues centering around the DiamondMax 8/9

Now that we’ve taken our first look at notebook drives, the SR Leaderboard has been expanded with a new category. In addition, as a reminder, the 7 drives covered in the roundup may now be rated in the Drive Reliability Survey. Remember that disks become eligible for entry after SR’s product review has been formally

A while back we noticed that Seagate’s web page buried the Barracuda family’s seek time several links deep. Consider, for example, that Seagate no longer lists the Barracuda’s claimed seek time on its model detail page or on the product’s spec sheet. While the firm’s motive may be somewhat questionable (Seagate’s ATA drives traditionally do

Which do you prefer? SATA-IO’s revised spec as well as SAS seem to be standardizing on the former more than the latter when describing maximum transfer rates. Personally, we’ve preferred 300 MB/sec as it’s directly comparable to the headroom specs of other interfaces. Manufacturers, however, seem to be standardizing on the first… either to emphasize

Also known less formally as the Caviar RE2 and Caviar SE16 respectively, this pair of 400-gigabyte offerings from Western Digital has generated quite a few questions across the SR Discussion Community. Both drives share a similar set of features yet one seems to be oriented for enterprise use whereas the other seems to target the

The StorageReview Leaderboard has once again shuffled around a bit to reflect the new spate of SATA drives to hit our new test machine. With Seagate, Maxtor, and WD all getting serious about nearline-class storage, we’ve also created a new category to cover the emerging sector. Check out the changes!

This week Maxtor formally threw its hat into the 500 GB arena with the announcement of a trio of related offerings. The traditional DiamondMax 11 extends upon the firm’s long-standing consumer offering by upping platter density from the DM10’s 100 GB/platter to 125 GB/platter and by returning to a four-disc design. The drive features a