Two years has now passed since the victorious coming to power of the VelociRaptor.  On its press debut it took everyone by complete and utter surprise to the raw performance it brought to the workstation and enterprise market.    It goes without saying that on the paper the stipulated announcement of a complete new set of drives from the VelociRaptor range supporting both SATA 6GB/s, SAS2 in both 3 1/2" and 2 1/2" variants including the new top of the range 600GB drive took everyone by surprise once more.   Especially as only a few weeks previous the announcement whereupon their full support to consumer SSD's.   This most certainly threw the analysts and the like with that announcement.   Clever people these are indeed at Western Digital.    So as the catch phrase of one "and the brand goes on....." yes indeed to an all time new level as we were to discover within.

Apart from the obvious bigger 450GB and 600GB drives; there are some significant upgrades from the previous generation which are interesting as we see below from the charts.

Killer speed - SATA 6 Gb/s interface and 32 MB cache enhance the next generation 10,000 RPM WD VelociRaptor making it up to 15% faster than the award-winning previous generation.

Monstrous capacity - WD VelociRaptor SATA drives are available in capacities up to 600 GB, double the capacity of the previous generation.

Rock-solid reliability - Designed and manufactured to mission-critical enterprise-class standards to provide enterprise reliability in high duty cycle environments. With 1.4 million hours MTBF, these drives have the highest available reliability rating on a high capacity SATA drive.

Ultra-cool operation - Consumes less idle power and uses similar active power as the previous generation WD VelociRaptor, while offering double the capacity and higher performance.

IcePack mounting frame - The 2.5-inch WD VelociRaptor is enclosed in a backplane-ready 3.5-inch enterprise-class mounting frame with a built-in heat sink that keeps this powerful little drive extra cool when installed in high-performance desktop chassis.

Rotary Acceleration Feed Forward (RAFF) - Optimizes operation and performance when the drives are used in vibration-prone, multi-drive chassis.

NoTouch ramp load technology - The recording head never touches the disk media ensuring significantly less wear to the recording head and media as well as better drive protection in transit.

Environmentally conscious - In addition to being ROHS compliant, this generation of WD VelociRaptor is also a halogen-free design.

Ideal For - Performance enthusiast systems, workstations, and low-end servers.

Compatibility - Windows 7/Vista/XP/2000, Windows servers, Linux, and Mac OS.

With these facts in place lets go over the page and have a look at the drive in the flesh.

Page 1 - Introduction
Page 2 - The WD VelociRaptor in the Raw
Page 3 - System Set-Up and Software Used
Page 4 - ATTO.   Crystal Mark Drive Benchmark. HD TACH 3.0.4.0
Page 5 - Everest Ultimate Version 5 (Latest Build)
Page 6 - Sandra 2010 and PCMark 2005 Advanced Hard Disc Test
Page 7 - Cinebench 10 64-Bit.   Cinebench 11.5 64-bit.   Bentley MicroStation Graphics Benchmark
Page 8 - SPECviewperf® 10.0 64-bit.   SPECapc for SolidWorks 2007™.   POV Ray 3.7 beta 35
Page 9 - Conclusions and Award
Update 1 - Raid 1 Results   Update Introduction and Test System Used
Update 2 - Raid 1 Results   ATTO.   Crystal Mark Drive Benchmark.   HD TACH 3.0.4.0
Update 3 - Raid 1 Results   Everest Ultimate.   Sandra 2010.   PCMark 2005 Advanced Hard Disc Test
Update 4 - Raid 1 Results   SPECviewperf® 10.0 64-bit.   SPECapc for SolidWorks 2007™.   Cinebench 10 and 11.5 64-bit.   POV Ray 3.7 beta