Western Digital VelociRaptor

Verdict:

[+] RAPTOR
Extremely fast data throughput in theoretical tests; interesting design and looks

[-] TURKEY

1TB Samsung F1 is equally fast, costs half the price and stores three times as much data

'Raptor' is the clever term for a bird of prey, and it's also the name Western Digital gave to its iconic 10,000rpm series of super-fast hard disks. However, the Raptor range of hard disks has been looking a little long in the tooth recently. The Raptor X and its non-windowed sibling, the Raptor 150, were once the fastest hard disks on the planet, but in our recent Labs test the 1TB Samsung SpinPoint F1 had them beaten in some tests.

Considering that the 1TB SpinPoint F1 has dropped in price to only £78.67 (see www.aria.co.uk), and offers almost seven times as much storage as the £116 Raptor X and the £113 Raptor 150 (see www.adavancetec.co.uk), Western Digital needed to produce something new. Fortunately, the company has a ferocious beast up its sleeve in the shape of the 300GB VelociRaptor, which looks even stranger than the Raptor X.

ODD LOOKING

The VelociRaptor is a 2.5in disk embedded in a huge IcePack heatsink. This doubles as a 3.5in caddy so that you can fit the VelociRaptor in a normal hard disk bay. Considering the diminutive size of the disk, this could be a little dig at 'Jurassic Park'. After all, the real velociraptor was only 50cm tall and weighed 15kg - it was hardly the 8ft monster that could kill a man single-handedly (or possibly single-toed), or have a chance of beating a T-Rex.

You can remove the VelociRaptor disk from its heatsink caddy using the appropriate screwdriver head but, as the data platters of the VelociRaptor spin at 10,000rpm, the heatsink is there for a reason. We've heard that companies can obtain the drive without the caddy, although we're fairly sure that a custom case or third-party heatsink caddy would need to be used with a desktop PC.

Using a bare VelociRaptor in a laptop is tricky, as the disk is 15mm thick - much more than a regular mobile hard disk - and the disk consumes 4.5W when idle, and 6.1W when active. A specially designed laptop chassis would be needed.

DISK MAKEUP

Despite its small size, the VelociRaptor still packs 300GB of data storage across two platters (this becomes 279GB after formatting). Although this makes for a fairly modest 150GB per platter, the actual areal density (the amount of data that can be stored on a given area of platter surface, usually expressed in gigabits per square inch) is fairly state-of-the-art, as the platters are considerably smaller than with conventional 3.5in hard disk platters.

PERFORMANCE

Western Digital claims that the VelociRaptor is the fastest S-ATA hard disk in the world, and our tests reinforce this claim. Using Simpli Software's HD Tach 3.0.1.0 RW (www.simplisoftware.com), we recorded an average sustained reading speed of 106.2MB/sec; this is 31.1MB/sec faster than the Raptor X, and 9.3MB/sec faster than Samsung's 1TB SpinPoint F1.

Writing was similarly quick at 97.8MB/sec, 31.8MB/sec faster than the Raptor X and 19.8MB/sec faster than the 1TB SpinPoint F1. Most revealing was the VelociRaptor's average access time of 7.1ms - 1.1ms quicker than the Raptor X, which is more than 4ms quicker than any other disk we've tested.

However, in our real-world tests, the VelociRaptor managed 979 in our Gimp image editing test - only a few negligible points faster than the Raptor X and 1TB SpinPoint F1. Loading the Relic level of Crysis took just 34 seconds with the VelociRaptor, which is on a par with the SpinPoint F1 and three seconds faster than the Raptor X.

CONCLUSION

The theoretical HD Tach tests show that the VelociRaptor is indeed the fastest hard disk available. An average sustained reading speed of 106.2MB/sec and writing speed of 97.8MB/sec is excellent, and a noticeable step up from all the other hard disks we've tested.

The design of the VelociRaptor is also interesting. Western Digital's choice of a 2.5in disk could be regarded as a statement on the success of large desktop replacement laptops, while using the disk with its 3.5in heatsink caddy should help its longevity and reliability.

That said, in everyday use - image editing and loading games - the VelociRaptor is no faster than the 1TB Samsung SpinPoint F1. Considering that the VelociRaptor costs almost twice as much as the Samsung disk and holds less than a third of the data, the VelociRaptor is extremely poor value for money.

You can buy the Western Digital VelociRaptor from Scan Computers for £189.86 inc VAT

For more information about the VelociRaptor, see Western Digital's website

Western Digital VelociRaptor 300GB / SATA II / 10

SATA II, 300 GB, 10000 rpm, 3.5"

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