Were they the 10,000rpm ones? I remember that. Were they noisier than a regular (a regular is what, 7200? 5400? something like that)
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Yes they were the 10,000 ROM ones. And they were normally in odd smaller sizes suxh as 74GB. They had extra heatsink fins on the outside of the HD case because they got hotter at the faster speed. I never owned one but don't think they were any louder. I used to use Maxtor and then Seagate 7200 drive and they were not that loud either.

I recently dug out my now very old P2 PC that I returned is original spec a few years ago. It has a 5 25" Quatum Bigfoot 12GB HDD in it. That ribby is physically huge (as large as a DVD drive) and I had forgotten just how load it was. And the read access sounds. Not sure how I used to put up with it.
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"On February 10, 2003, Western Digital announced the first consumer 10,000 RPM hard drive, sold in 36 GB and 74 GB versions.[1]

On April 21, 2008, Western Digital announced the next generation of its 10,000 RPM SATA Raptor hard drive series. The new drives, called WD VelociRaptor, feature 300 GB capacity and 2.5-inch platters enclosed in the IcePack, a 3.5-inch mounting frame with a built-in heat sink. Western Digital claimed that the new drives were 35 percent faster than the previous generation Raptors.[2]

On April 6, 2010, Western Digital updated the VelociRaptor series. The drives contain up to three platters and a 600 GB total capacity, upgraded from the dual-platter 300 GB design of the prior flagship model. Western Digital claims the new models are 15 percent faster than the previous generation of VelociRaptors.[3]

On April 16, 2012, Western Digital updated the VelociRaptor series for the second time. The new drives contain up to three platters and a 1000 GB total capacity, upgraded from the triple-platter 600 GB design of the prior flagship model. It was the last generation of Raptor hard drives to be manufactured; Western Digital removed it from its product catalog in mid-2016, without any direct successor."

From here:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Western_Digital_Raptor

You can still buy them on Amazon....

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Western-Dig.../dp/B007VPGJIY

Be quick, ....only 9 left in stock!
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Meaning that 10 years ago we only had a max of 1TB drives?? Crazy.
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No 2TB drivers were common in 2012. Just the Rapter drives were smaller due to their speed meaning more air needed to move within the mechanism reducing capacity.

I had loads of Samsung and Seagate 2TB drives then and some are still in use now I think 3TB drives were just appearing then too and a few server level enterprise 4TB drives, but they were silly prices like £2k.
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Tbh guys, SSD & NVMe should be a lot cheaper than they are. The manufacturing costs are considerably smaller than a mechanical hard drive.

But they charge you because they can get away with it & still whack you for silly money on large Spinning hard drives.
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That is true. Mechanical drive need to be assembled in clean rooms. Curcuit boards and chips don't and no moving parts. They are still playing off the pandemic chip shortages though.

The cost of a 2TB is still over £270. And a 4TB is currently silly money. But that's for the Gen 4. Gen3 are starting to drop off you don't need such fast storage.
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