Western Digital VelociRaptor: A Drive with a Bite

HD Tune Pro 3.00

In our read tests, the VelociRaptor just runs (flies) away from the Raptor in the sustained transfer rate tests. The average transfer rate of 98.4 MB/s is about 36% faster than the 150GB drive, while burst rates improve 61% and access time by 18%. However, all is not well with our drive. Thanks to early firmware, the servo algorithms are not optimized, resulting in drastic slowdowns on the outer diameter of the platter area.

This resulted in several problems with our benchmark test suite. The consistency and validity of benchmark results did not meet our variation requirements during testing. The synthetic benchmarks typically generated results close to what WD is estimating with the final firmware results. However, our application benchmarks tell another story, especially those that have a high rate of sustained transfer activity.

In our write speed tests, we see a familiar pattern. The VelociRaptor offers a maximum write speed that is 26% faster, average write speed is 42% quicker, and burst rates are once again about 61% better. We consistently had a drop off at the beginning of the drive (the outer tracks on the platter) and it will be corrected with the final firmware revision before the drives ship.

We will expand the results of our file benchmarks in the full review. For the time being, we are showing how the two drives compare to each other with a file length of 32KB.