Product Face-Offs
Western Digital VelociRaptor 300 GB
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| Capacity | 300 GB | ||
| Cache | 16 MB | ||
| Rotation Speed | 10 000 rpm | ||
| Taille | 3.5'' | ||
| Norme | SATA II | ||
Régis Jehl
Test date: July 15, 2008
Test date: July 15, 2008
2.5'' or 3.5''?
When we unpacked it, we were surprised to learn that the VelociRaptor is actually a 2.5'' hard drive (more commonly found on laptop hard drives) fitted inside a 3.5'' heat sink which allows it to be fitted in the drive bay of a desktop computer.
You can't remove this frame, though, so allow the hard drive is actually 2.5", it can't fit into your laptop because the 3.5'' drive bay specification is slightly taller than the 2.5'' standard, and the drive itself fills the whole height of the frame.
To make sure you're not tempted, Western Digital has put a 'void if removed' sticker over the seal, meaning you won't be covered by your guarantee if you do try it.
You can't remove this frame, though, so allow the hard drive is actually 2.5", it can't fit into your laptop because the 3.5'' drive bay specification is slightly taller than the 2.5'' standard, and the drive itself fills the whole height of the frame.
To make sure you're not tempted, Western Digital has put a 'void if removed' sticker over the seal, meaning you won't be covered by your guarantee if you do try it.
The VelociRaptor 300 GB delivered excellent results in our test of reading large files, averaging speeds of 111.8 MB/s and reaching 132 MB/s at one point.
Things are equally impressive when it comes to writing data, with an average speed of 111 MB/s.
Its response time of just 7 ms is around half the average for hard drives in this class.
Predictably, this model's only real fault is the amount of noise that it makes.
Even when the drive is idle, you can hear a very gentle hum, which soon gets very loud as the platters spin up.
When it's busy, the disk heads moving across the platters can definitely be heard to scratch, and sometimes the whole drive begins to vibrate.
Noise Management
These noise problems can be reduced by activating Automatic Acoustic Management (AAM), which creates an improvement of around 4.4 dB(A); while this is an improvement, the VelociRaptor is still far from silent.
Given that AAM controls the movement of the disk heads across the surface of the platters, rather than the speed at which the platters rotate, the gentle hum is not reduced, although it's difficult to be entirely silent when you have components turning at 10 000 rpm.
Fortunately, read and write speeds aren't altered by the noise management system, but the response time does slow down to 11 ms.
Performance of the Western Digital VelociRaptor 300 GB compared to the Western Digital Caviar SE 16 500 GB
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Excellent reading and writing speeds: 110 MB/s
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Sharp response time
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Very little overheating
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Gentle hum from spinning platters
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Loud when active
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Expensive
If you're looking for a super-fast hard drive, you need look no further: this is the model you need. You might want to be careful with your wallet though, as it doesn't come cheap ...
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