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cheeta x15

yes, what marty said. but i'd put it in a different order 🙂 fast, relatively quiet, relatively cool, and then finally, expensive, but not too bad for the speed.
 
Are they ever going to increase the size of them and is there a second generation yet? I hate getting the first generations, they always seem to iron the bugs out in the second.
 
FDOP (Fastest drive on planet).

Don't have one, would love one to run W2K.

Asked at SR forum, heard heat + noise weren't bad. Longest MTBF spec of any (1.2 mil hrs), supposed to indicate reliability.

I asked, 'is it as fast as it sounds?' - they said, 'dude, it's fast.' 🙂
 
18GB is the only size the drive will come in. First generation hard drives are not like first generation software, they don't have "bugs" in them. With an MBTF rating of 1.2 million hours(4x longer than IDE), you don't have to worry about the drive going bad on you. The drive runs pretty cool. It isn't noisy, but it is clearly noisier than any other current hard drives. It doesn't bother me, but other people who have heard it have commented that they thought it was a bit annoying to listen to.
 
I guess what I meant by bugs is the noise factor. When the first Cheetahs came out they were noisy and hot. The second gen got better. Was wondering if the x15 had the same problem and it seems they don't. Humm...wish I had the money.
 
I don't think its that noisy, and I have two of them. Definately quieter than my fans. The only time I really notice it is when there is heavy i/o going on. You're not going to have a silent system using these drives, but then you won't have a silent system using anything offering even remotely similar performance.

Marty
 
I've taken both sides off my case and I have no fans in my case to drown out the noise. If I closed my case and then added fans the drive would be quite a bit quieter I'm sure. I have a Quantum Atlas 10K II as well, and I can barely hear it at all. If you are noise sensitive, I would definitely recommend the Atlas over the X15, it isn't perceivably slower.
 
The price has really come down since they first came out. $900 was a bit steep but $600 is looking better. Still alot for a hard drive but for ~6ms access time some people would sell their soul. 2X quicker than the 75GXP's so if it gets under $500 I might pick one up.
 
The X15 was never $900US. I bought it the week it came out for $460 after coupons and rebates from Onvia. They have it now for $454.99 with free shipping.
 
The MSRP was $899 I think but retail was probably $800 initially. I really wanted one when the press release came out but I decided I would be crazy to spend that much. I figured the price would level out around $500. But I'm not sure 18GB is enough for me.

I've been upgrading my sub-system performance to complete my multimedia/gaming rig. Right now I have a 50GB Win98 partition and a 7GB Win2K partition on a 60GB IDE RAID. I have 15.5GB used for Win98 and 1.5GB in Win2K. But I edit video in Win98 so the amount of free space gets used for temp files.

I want to use my RAID array for storage and editing and move my OS's to a faster SCSI drive. I figure the lower CPU utilization and super quick access time will really boost performance. But since I'm using 17GB I really wouldn't have much headroom with a 18GB drive. I was also looking at the Cheetah 36LP for my main drive. There's a extra 1ms half-rotation latency with a 10K drive and a extra 1.3ms seek time but I would have the extra capacity and not so much noise.

What other drives should I consider? Also I recall someone having a problem with Norton Ghost not working from IDE to SCSI. If it doesnt work then I'm stuck with my RAID array.

 
Well, the second-fastest drive right now is the Quantum Atlas 10K II, which can be gotten in sizes larger than 18GB. That's probably your best bet.

Marty
 
Hey guys, havent your heard about the ATLAS 10K III...its going to be real fast.

Also, i think that i already read a review in wich they compared X15 and 10KII and there was no real winner. In fact, 10KII was slightly faster some times and some times it was the X15...

I know its cool to say u have a 15K rpm but the fact that the RPM is bigger doesnt means it is really the fastest drive..

 
Good review! But its a match up between the 10K II and the 36LP. The 10K II wins in my book with the .5ms quicker seek time and 8MB buffer.

 
Just read the X15 review at SR here. Not sure why they didn't include any drives from Quantum in the comparison, as that would be the X15's closest competitor, right? Couldn't help but notice the Quantum advertising. Maybe that has something to do with it? 😉

Quotes from the conclusion:

"The drive features a tell-tale high-spindle-speed whine. We must admit we've grown a bit spoiled in this age of third and fourth-generation 10k drives, where high-pitch squeals have pretty much faded away. The X15 features idle noise that we haven't heard of since the likes of the Cheetah 9LP."

"In conclusion, the Cheetah X15 is a groundbreaking product that allows industry-giant Seagate to show the market who's truly in charge. The drive will deliver performance that's light-years ahead of the competition."
 
I have two 9LP's and they definitely are noisy, and hot.

I agree with Pariah - the Atlas II is vastly quieter than the X15. My workstation at work has two Atlas II's and I can't really ever hear them unless I try to. I've used a computer with an X15 and it's not as noisy as my two 9LP's but it's louder than the Atlas's by a fair amount.
 
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