Western Digital Raptor WD1500ADFD - Bigger, Faster, Stronger

The four HD Tach metrics that we sampled for each drive are Random Access, which is largely dependent on spindle speed of the drive, Read Average, Write Average and Burst Read throughput.  Again Read and Write Average scores are what we would consider the most meaningful to the end user.  Whereas Burst Read is typically tied the drives on-board caching and SATA interface speed.

Single / RAID 0 Performance Performance with HD Tach

Simply put, the new Raptor WD1500 once again "kicks it up a notch" on its little brother WD740 and pretty much out-classes the DiamondMax 10, as far as Average Read/Write performance goes.  Burst Read performance did fall slightly in favor of the Maxtor drive but only by a hair.  Perhaps a firmware tweak or two down the road will bring even better burst performance for the Raptor WD1500, but then again slightly higher burst throughput typically doesn't equate to higher tangible end user performance.