Western Digital Raptor Preview: 10,000RPM & Serial ATA

A Quick Look at Serial ATA

For whatever reason, expectations were unusually high for the performance Serial ATA would bring to the desktop. The higher peak transfer rate offered by Serial ATA 150 (150MB/s vs. 133MB/s for Ultra ATA 133) is a performance advantage on paper, but with the fastest drives in this comparison barely exceeding 70MB/s, the advantage has no use for a single drive in a real-world scenario.

The Serial ATA connectors on the WD Raptor

This power adapter will be used until power supplies start coming with a 3.3V/5V/12V power plug for SATA hard drives

WD also equips the Raptor with a standard 5V/12V power connector

Here we have the Serial ATA cable in action

By far the biggest attraction to Serial ATA is the form factor of the cabling, but there are a number of ways to get the benefits of Serial ATA's cables - the question is, do they all perform the same?