Western Digital WD1500ADFD: King Raptor

Final Words

The performance of the third-generation Raptor is truly impressive from several different angles. While, at this time, we did not test the unit against the SCSI competitors with which it is meant to compete, we did find the drive to offer the overall highest performance in the SATA market. Like its predecessor, this is the drive to have if single-user performance matters over absolute storage capability. In fact, having this drive as the primary OS and game unit with a larger capacity drive for general storage would be an ideal combination.

Western Digital has addressed the shortcomings of its previous models with the addition of a 16 MB buffer, NCQ, and native SATA implementation wrapped in two different packages depending upon your tastes and budget. With the upcoming transition from the parallel SCSI Ultra320 interface to the new Serial Attached SCSI interface, the drive stands a very good chance at competing successfully in the entry-level enterprise market. The SAS standard offers interoperability with the current SATA standards. In fact, both standards utilize the same physical connectors, while SAS host adapters can control SATA drives. This also offers the opportunity for the drive to become a standard in the workstation market where, historically, SCSI has competed well against SATA based upon performance to price ratios.

In our thermal and acoustic testing, the drive offered average scores, but considering the performance and design of the drive, we could live with these minor annoyances in our main system. However, if you plan on building a silent system or using this drive in a SFF case, please understand that the thermals and acoustics will be noticeable.

We did witness performance decreases of up to 9% in certain benchmarks with NCQ activated. We will further investigate the performance penalty of NCQ in the near future with our revised benchmark suite. At this time we recommend turning off NCQ if this drive will be utilized in a single-user environment.

With a $300 price tag, 150GB capacity, and enterprise market heritage, this drive is targeted to a different market. While Western Digital desperately wants the drive to succeed in the server arena, they are acutely aware of the fact that the computer enthusiast will likely be one of the main purchasers of this drive. The Raptor X looks like the drive to have for the serious case modder, but we feel the additional $50 in cost is better applied toward buying a large storage drive for your system.

What is our recommendation? If storage space is not of prime concern and your budget allows it, then buy this drive. It offers the best single-user performance of any drives that we have tested to date along with the safety of owning a drive designed for 24/7 operation.

It took a few years, but Western Digital brought true excellence to a now mature product.