WD VelociRaptor 600GB: Fastest. HD. Ever.

by Marco Chiappetta — Tuesday, April 06, 2010, 08:00 AM EDT

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 plateaued at 2TB, performance can't come close to even a mid-range solid state drive 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. But Western Digital, despite releasing their very own line of solid state drives recently, continues to push the 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 600GB: Fastest. HD. Ever.

Tags: Raptor, HD, Storage, SATA, WD, 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