Western Digital VelociRaptor 1TB review - fast AND reliable

The VelociRaptor has been a favourite amongst the enthusiast market since its initial release in 2007; of course it was known, back then, as just  the “Raptor”. The latest VelociRaptor comes in an all new 1TB maximum capacity, with a denser 333GB platter. For anyone who can use basic multiplication, you’d be correct in assuming the 1TB drive is in fact comprised of three, 333GB platers.

For anyone unfamiliar with the Raptor series, it initially released on a 3.5in platter, with a density of 32GB. The VelociRaptor then moved over to a 2.5in platter to reduce the distance the read head had to move when working on the platter. For Desktop users, you can simply mount the VelociRaptor into a 3.5in drive bay, using the Western Digital ‘heatsink’, though if you want, there is no problem with removing this heatsink and installing the drive in a 2.5in bay, as the heatsink is only for show, and has no practical purpose other than bay expansion. Such, as you know, actually being a sink for heat.

No we know what most of you will be thinking, and it’s something along the lines of “SSDs are faster than a VelociRaptor, so why bother?” And in some situations, yes you are correct; an SSD may be better suited to your particular needs. There are, however, still many professional applications that can make use of the VelociRaptor’s superior writing speeds, and also its superior reliability.

So what makes the VelociRaptor so fast? Well a combination of technologies, really, the first and most simply is the 10,000 RPM platter speed. While many external drives spin at 5,400RPM and nearly all internal drives spin at 7,200 RPM, the VelociRaptor is one of the only readily available hard drives with a 10,000 RPM platter speed.

The next tool employed by Western Digital is the platter density. Using both high data density and a 2.5in platter helps reduce the amount of mechanical (and therefore slow) movement needed by the read and write head on the hard drive. Another benefit of the smaller platter size is the ability to ‘spin up’ faster; that is going from idle to full spinning speed. Along with these is the ability to locate and retrieve data faster (known as seek times).

Of course, SSDs have faster seek times than a HDD could ever hope to achieve (almost instant, basically), and they don’t suffer from the problems mechanical parts bring, and therefore have no spin or spool time. Yet, while the SSD is faster in those regards, the Western Digital VelociRaptor is about as good as it gets for a platter drive.

If you do a lot of work with movies and or photography, you will need a hard drive with a good write speed, and you’ll also want stability. Western Digital offers competitive read, write and seek speeds, along with a full five year warranty, and the peace of mind that every hard drive is hand tested before shipping. These are ‘enterprise’ classed hard drives after all, so data stability is one of the strongest selling points of the VelociRaptor series.