Hard drives remain the last great bottleneck in performance computing. Processors and RAM constantly get faster and more complex, due to being solid state electronics. Since hard drives consist of moving parts, they have been left behind in this race. Sure solid state drives have become available in the past year, but they are extremely cost prohibitive. So over the years companies have had to find creative ways of squeezing more and more performance out of the 50 year old hard drive. Western Digital is one of those companies.


We decided to see if the VelociRaptor could reduce the length of the dreaded Windows boot time. The stop watch was run from the pressing of the power button, to when Windows was loaded and the hard drive light was off. This boot up includes drivers for all the hardware, and a couple utilities used in test. Even with all that, our test bed with the VelociRaptor installed managed to boot into Windows Vista in under 1 minute. The exact numbers translate into a 22% performance boost in favour of the Western Digital VelociRaptor 300GB hard drive.


The rear connectors make this drive very difficult to install in a 3.5″ hotswap bay, or on a backplane in a decent server chassis. It’s really unfortunate that Western Digital is targeting most of their marketing for these drives to the Enterprise sector, because these drives are much more suited to the enthusiast market. Those enthusiasts may be paying what appears to be a high premium for this level of performance, but when one considers all the factors pointed out here it’s still worth it.

So where does that leave us? Well we have a longer version of the answer to the question I first posed. The Western Digital VelociRaptor 300GB is the fastest drive you can have for a desktop system, without having to win the lottery. I’d recommend this drive to any enthusiast looking for the drive that will load their system faster then it drains their bank account.

http://www.futurelooks.com/western-d...-drive-review/