Western Digital VelociRaptor 600GB Reviewed

Value
The WD VelociRaptor provides value by filling a segment that SSDs cannot quite fill while at the same time giving performance levels that can only be beaten by RAID arrays that increase the vulnerability and cost of the storage solution. The VelociRaptor retails for $279 while two Seagate Barracuda XTs run at $398. As such, the Velociraptor is more bang for your buck if you want a single drive solution. When you also take into consideration the overall improvements that Western Digital has made over the previous version, you can see that these drives are a great value even if you've already purchased the old one and want to know if it is worth the upgrade.

Conclusion
The Western Digital Velociraptor is the fastest hard drive we have currently reviewed and it still proves that in many cases, hard drives are still faster than SSDs and the ever increasing size of SSDs still has not matched that capabilities and capacities of traditional hard disk drives. The Velociraptor is definitely a drive we would recommend if you want the best hard drive for almost any purpose, but would stop short of recommending it over an SSD for an OS/Boot drive. The great thing about these drives, though, is that Western Digital has not simply created a simple refresh of their old drives. It would be more of an overhaul considering the performance increases and the overall speed of the drive. Western Digital has spent quite a bit of R&D improving these drives and that's why they've been growing so fast in the past few years. Western Digital is on a roll and appears to understand how to keep their products constantly improving at intervals that are worth upgrading to.