Western Digital VelociRaptor 300GB

Results Analysis and Final Thoughts

We’re in two minds regarding the VelociRaptor’s performance in our batch of hard disk benchmarks, with our opinion differing on how we try and classify the drive. Looking at it as a mechanical drive it’s undoubtedly a success, performing a fair amount faster than the larger 1/1.5TB mechanical drives and besting our drive of choice, the Samsung Spinpoint F1 1TB, in almost every circumstance by at least ten percent.

However, as a performance storage medium it’s clear that the latest crop of SSDs have the advantage in many respects. The VelociRaptor is slower in every read test than the majority of SSDs, especially so in real world testing like Vista boot times and isn’t too far ahead in terms of copy speed either. It’s only when it comes down to write speeds where it’s really able to shine, resoundingly thrashing all but the Intel X25-E SLC based SSD, which can’t really be considered a competitor thanks to its piddling 32GB capacity.

So while it might rule the roost as far as write speeds go, we’re still unsure about the VelociRaptor. While it’s notably faster than the chasing pack of mechanical drives, we’re unsure if the speed bump is enough to warrant the 150 percent price rise over a single 1TB drive especially considering the Raptor’s limited 300GB amount of storage. Sure it’s more than enough for a boot drive with plenty of game installs, but as we’ve always seen, you can never have too much hard disk space.


On the whole, the Raptor finds itself trapped between two increasingly impressive fields of competition, and we can’t help but think it’s starting to feel the squeeze. As mechanical hard drives become larger and faster thanks to increasing platter densities (we’ll be reviewing Western Digital’s whopping 2TB Green hard disk in the next week or so) and high performance SSDs become more and more affordable, the Raptor’s market is starting to shrink and it’s become a much less convincing option for the performance minded techie than its predecessors once were.

In comparison to a decent dual drive controller SSD it’s pretty tough to back the VelociRaptor. While it unquestionably has the faster write speed in every circumstance, the read speed advantage is so enormous when switching to SSD, even from a 10,000RPM drive like the VelociRaptor, that you’d have to really really want super speedy write speeds to justify your choice, especially as you can pick up a 128GB G.Skill Titan for £275 from Novatech – only £75 more than the Raptor, which isn’t an extortionate amount of money when we’re talking performance storage.

So in the end then, the VelociRaptor now finds itself in a situation very similar to that which its namesake encountered 65 Million years ago. The hard disk environment is changing, with increasingly large and affordable SSDs chipping away at its market and threatening high speed performance mechanical drives with obsolescence, or even extinction. While unquestionably a big step up from the previous generation of Raptors and still a worthy option for those not yet willing to enter the age of the SSD, it lacks a lot of the appeal that the Raptor brand once had and given the choice we’d likely buy a 128GB dual drive controller based SSD instead.

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• 9/10

• Value
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• 7/10

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• 8/10

Score Guide