WD VelociRaptor 600GB: Fastest Hard Drive Ever


Introduction and Specifications

 

With all of the press solid state drives have received over the last year or so, it would be easy to think that few advancements have been made in the hard drive space. After all, hard drive capacities have seemingly hit a plateau at 2TB, performance can't come close to even a mid-range SSD in most scenarios, and it's hard to imagine prices falling any lower, when some drives can be had for about 7.5 cents per gigabyte.  However, Western Digital, despite releasing their very own line of SSDs recently, continues to push the performance envelope with traditional spinning hard drives. Need evidence? Then feast your eyes on the brand new WD VelociRaptor 600GB...


WD's VelociRaptor 600GB, Model WD6000HLHX

Like the first-Gen VelociRaptor, the new 600GB variant you see pictured here employs a 2.5" form factor, with a 10K RPM spindle speed. This new offering, however, sports denser platters, more cache, a SATA 6Gb/s interface, and a dual-core processor; all features designed to crank performance up a notch or three. Will the new VelociRaptor hit the same speeds as an SSD? No. But it is the fastest HD we have ever tested. Read on and see for youself.

WD VelociRaptor (BLHX / HLHX Models)
Specifications and Features

Product Description
  • WD VelociRaptor
  • 2.5-inch bare drive
  • 3.5-inch w/IcePack configurations
  • 10,000 RPM
  • 32 MB buffer
  • Data X-fer Rate (Buffer to Disk) 145MB/s
  • 15mm z-height
  • 3-platter design, 200 GB/platter
  • Capacities of: 450 GB and 600 GB

Data path protection

  • Manufactured to Enterprise Reliability Standards
  • 1.4 million hours MTBF
  • 24x7 Power on (8760 annual POH)
  • Error Recovery
  • RAID-specific time-limited error recovery (TLER)
  • Vibration Tolerance
  • Rotary Acceleration Feed Forward (Enhanced RAFF)
  • 600k Head Load / Unload Cycles
  • Data LifeGuard 3
  • 5-year Warranty

 

Product Features

  • Halogen free
  • Full dual core processor
  • SATA 6 Gb/s

 


Looking at its specifications and features, one could easily confuse the WD VelociRaptor 600GB drive with a less advanced offering. It has "only" 32MB of cache, whereas many other current high-end hard drives feature 64MB, and its capacity its capacity is only 600GB. The WD VelociRaptor 600GB drive's 10K RPM spindle speed, SATA 6Gb/s support, and dual-core processor / controller, however, hint at the ultra high-performance this drive is capable of, relatively speaking of course.

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