MaximumPC 2008 09

W

e’ve seen this day coming for a

long time. There was no way that

Western Digital was going to sit

back and let other manufacturers usurp

the Raptor’s place at the top of the stor-

age speed charts. Consider the rule of the

speedy terabyte drives a hiccup on the time-

line. The Raptor is back: upgraded, renamed,

and... physically smaller.

To maximize the Velociraptor’s speeds,

Western Digital has shrunk the size of the

hard drive to 2.5 inches. This seems coun-

terintuitive, given that Samsung has been

able to achieve a tremendous combination

of speed and storage with its 3.5-inch drives.

Western Digital’s smaller form allows the

Velociraptor to consume less power than its

3.5-inch counterparts, and the drive heads

don’t have to travel as far to reach the data.

The downside is that these smaller platters

will always trail in data/platter.

But consumers and OEM manufacturers

buy Raptor drives for a single reason—and it

isn’t storage capacity. Given the Velocirap-

tor’s read and write speeds, its 300GB ca-

pacity is actually a bonus. The Velociraptor

is twice as spacious as its Raptor predeces-

sor and signifi cantly faster.

We can safely crown the Velociraptor

the fastest consumer-grade hard drive on

the market. Its two 150GB platters spin at

10,000rpm, creating an 18 percent improve-

ment in our PCMark test over Samsung’s

HD103UJ terabyte drive. In our synthetic

HD Tach benchmark, the Velociraptor beat

out the HD103UJ’s read times by 11.6MB/s.

The diff erence shot up to 15.6MB/s when

comparing the drives’ write speeds.

This Velociraptor is Western Digi-

tal’s second iteration in the line, coming

a scant few months after

the initial launch of the

product. Why the refresh?

The first version of the hard

drive centered the drive

atop the device’s IcePack

mounting frame, rendering

the drive impossible to use

in a hotswap interface. Reps

at Western Digital have told

us that this first line of Ve-

lociraptor drives is scheduled for extinc-

tion. The company will phase out these

drives in favor of the revision B units

unless consumers clamor for the original

build—an unlikely scenario.

If you want the fastest consumer-grade

hard drive on the market, the Velociraptor

is it, with twice the capacity of its Rap-

tor predecessor and a 59 percent speed

advantage. If we could ding Western

Digital for shafting early adopters with

the hotswap issue, we would. But the

company’s speedy fix has ensured our

praise. You might be able to find a drive

with a better price-per-gigabyte ratio, but

certainly not one that’s faster. –D A V I D M U R P H Y

Western

Digital

Velociraptor

We crown a new storage

speed king

Don’t try to pull the drive off its

IcePack and install it in your notebook.

The Velociraptor’s power require-

ments will prevent it from running.

IN THE LAB^

REVIEWS OF THE LATEST HARDWARE AND SOFTWARE

86 | MAXIMUMPC | SEP 08 | http://www.maximumpc.com

VERDICT

$300, http://www.wdc.com

9

The fastest consumer-

grade hard drive you

can purchase, save for

SSDs.

Warranty voided if

you separate the drive

from the IcePack.

SHARPTOOTH

WESTERN DIGITAL VELOCIRAPTOR

LITTLEFOOT

Best scores are bolded. HD Tach version 3.0.1.0 used.

BENCHMARKS

WD Velociraptor WD Raptor SamsungHD103UJ

Size

HDTach Burst (MB/s)

HD Tach Rdm. Access (ms)

HDTach Avg. Read (MB/s)

HDTach Avg. Write (MB/s)

PCMark05 Overall

300GB 150GB 1TB

249.7 117.6 204.5

7.1 8.1 13.7

108.4 65.0 96.8

100.0 63.0 84.4

9,450 5,956 8,014