Conclusion:
The Western Digital VelociRaptor offers a single drive with the speed of two RAID0 drives. There are many pros and cons of RAID, including the fact that standard RAID0 is less stable than a single drive. With 300GB of storage, it’s much larger than your standard 10K drive. Our tests have shown an approximate 100MB/sec for read and write, and we’re very impressed.
On the downside, we had a lot of trouble with the first two drives sent to us. Our deductions tell us that the first drive was a prototype and didn’t have the kinks worked out yet. The second drive was a victim of overclocking. Because of these issues, I cannot give it the Approved hardware award. The speeds and performance of this drive are amazing, but I’m just not confident in the stability of the drive quite yet. The Western Digital Velociraptor drive can be purchased for $229.99 from Newegg.com.
lol, be my guest.
…You have the only new model…
🙂
Yes Dan(s). You’ll even notice this uses the old IcePak. They are great drives though!
I wonder if the new ice pack, firmware, etc provide any substantial improvements in performance. Any chance we could compare this one to the new model?
I am suprised about the timing of this review. These drives have been out for quite some time. I have been running a pair of them in RAID 0 for about 6 months with the Win 7 Beta and now the Win 7 RC. The performance and stability is amazing!
This was more of a transfer of the review from our old site. It was actually the old model. We wanted to move it over so that we could reference it in an upcoming review.