WD VelociRaptor Hard Drive

Considering the state of the global economy, along with local recession and unemployment, performance computer builders have had to make some difficult decisions. It's not easy to convince enthusiasts that they should invest their money in mechanical hard disk products in the age of Solid State Drives, especially when performance favors SSD's almost two-fold. But the cost of high-performance HDDs has remained very affordable, and the capacity is ever-expanding. In this article, Benchmark Reviews tests the 300GB Western Digital VelociRaptor WD3000HLFS 10,000 RPM SATA Hard Disk Drive against a large field of high-performance storage solutions.

Anyone familiar with articles published here at Benchmark Reviews should be very well-aware of our obsession with Solid State Drive technology. They're complex, and every SSD is different than the next. SSDs are nothing like Hard Disk Drive (HDD) technology, which improves as spindle speed and cache buffer are increased. The battle between SSD and HDD technology teeters between performance, price, and capacity. This is why we offer so much coverage on the topic: it's interesting and exciting.

Western Digital has enjoyed a long history of successful hard disk product lines, and the two most popular desktop products have come from the WD Raptor and WD VelociRaptor series. For the past six years, the Raptor series has stood strong as the go-to hard drive for performance enthusiasts and impatient gamers. In 2008 the Raptor product line was replaced with the VelociRaptor series, which doubled the capacity and improved cooling with an attached "IcePack" 3.5" heatsink tray.

Nevertheless, gamers and performance enthusiasts have been keeping notes on SSD technology for a while now, and until recently the price and performance of Solid State Drives were not within reach for casual consumers. SSD products have quickly moved into the mainstream, and former marketing points like power consumption is now the least impressive of all benefits a Solid State Drive delivers. The real payoff is in the practically instant response time and high-performance throughput. Capacity and price were once the major hurdles keeping SSDs from replacing HDDs, but now it's just capacity.

While SSDs have a decent speed advantage over HDDs, cost and capacity still favor products like the WD VelociRaptor. The WD VelociRaptor still packs an impressive punch for just over $1/GB, but as of August 2009 there are now Solid State Drive storage devices selling online for nearly $2 per gigabyte. Data storage capacity is the tallest obstacle for SSDs, but not in the high-performance sector where the WD VelociRaptor offers 300GB of storage space and most mainstream SSD models offer 256GB. So it seems that the age of the hard drive may soon be relegated to high-capacity applications, unless products like the VelociRaptor can put up a good fight. In this article Benchmark Reviews discovers what life is like for the Western Digital VeliciRaptor, in the age of the Solid State Drive.

About WD: Western Digital Corporation

WD is the brand name for Western Digital Corporation. WD, one of the storage industry's pioneers and long-time leaders, provides products and services for people and organizations that collect, manage and use digital information. The company produces reliable, high-performance drives that keep users' data accessible and secure from loss. WD applies its storage expertise to consumer products for external, portable and shared storage applications.

WD was founded in 1970. The company's storage products are marketed to leading systems manufacturers, selected resellers and retailers under the Western Digital and WD brand names. Visit the Investor section of the company's Web site (www.westerndigital.com) to access a variety of financial and investor information.

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