WD VelociRaptor 1TB 10K RPM SATA III Hard Drive

Name: WD Velociraptor 1TB Hard Drive
Brand: WD

by Marco Chiappetta — Monday, April 16, 2012, 08:00 AM EDT

We really like PCMark 7's Secondary Storage benchmark module for its pseudo real-world application measurement approach to testing. PCMark 7 offers a trace-based measurement of system response times under various scripted workloads of traditional client / desktop system operation. From simple application start-up performance, to data streaming from a drive in a game engine, and video editing with Windows Movie Maker, we feel more comfortable that these tests reasonably illustrate the performance profile of a hard drive in an end-user / consumer PC usage model, more so than a purely synthetic transfer test.

Futuremark's PCMark 7 Secondary Storage

http://www.futuremark.com

The WD Velociraptor 1TB led the pack in PCMark, with its 600GB counterpart trailing closely behind. The Velociraptor lines' relatively low access times and fast transfer speeds both play a role in the drives' leading performance here.

If we tunnel deeper into the PCMark results, we find that the WD Velociraptor 1TB led the pack in every one of the sub-tests. In terms of actual MB/s transferred, the numbers don't seem terribly impressive, but in term's of percentages, the WD Velociraptor 1TB is in roughly 10% - 25% faster than the other drives here, depending on the test.

Tags: Western Digital, Storage, SATA, WD, 1tb, VelociRaptor

Marco Chiappetta

Marco's interest in computing and technology dates all the way back to his early childhood. Even before being exposed to the Commodore P.E.T. and later the Commodore 64 in the early ‘80s, he was interested in electricity and electronics, and he still has the modded AFX cars and shop-worn soldering irons to prove it. Once he got his hands on his own Commodore 64, however, computing became Marco's passion. Throughout his academic and professional lives, Marco has worked with virtually every major platform from the TRS-80 and Amiga, to today's high end, multi-core servers. Over the years, he has worked in many fields related to technology and computing, including system design, assembly and sales, professional quality assurance testing, and technical writing. In addition to being the Managing Editor here at HotHardware for close to 15 years, Marco is also a freelance writer whose work has been published in a number of PC and technology related print publications and he is a regular fixture on HotHardware’s own Two and a Half Geeks webcast. - Contact: marco(at)hothardware(dot)com