Western Digital WD VelociRaptor WD5000HHTZ 500GB 10000 RPM 64MB Cache SATA 6.0Gb/s 3.5" Internal Hard Drive Bare Drive

Pros: Fast as expected and actually rather quiet. Compared to blacks I can't tell the difference. Run 3F cooler then RE4's in the same system, roughly 78F. Ran full wddiag scan, HDtune full media scan and other benches and everything is perfect. Ordered two for raid 1 to replace two AALS's with over 30K hours but still working 100%. They just look really cool! such tiny drives if you are used to 3.5's and the icepack with the heat fins, very neat and actually helps protect the drive too. These drives are very light, half the weight of standard drives but not due to being cheap, they are built extremely robust.

Cons: I was expecting maybe plastic trays or the drives in cardboard holders like another order arrived but no, just bubble wrap which was loose and not taped in the box with a thin layer or paper. I ordered these drives and they did not ship for 7 days! Tracking was stalled so the package was lost or something else was odd. 10 days later they arrived. Least the box was not destroyed and they were not DOA.

Overall Review: CDM 3.0 results Sequential Read : 265.658 MB/s Sequential Write : 177.267 MB/s Random Read 512KB : 254.687 MB/s Random Write 512KB : 208.845 MB/s Random Read 4KB (QD=1) : 8.395 MB/s [ 2049.6 IOPS] Random Write 4KB (QD=1) : 5.269 MB/s [ 1286.3 IOPS] Random Read 4KB (QD=32) : 4.648 MB/s [ 1134.8 IOPS] Random Write 4KB (QD=32) : 5.694 MB/s [ 1390.2 IOPS] Test : 50 MB [Q: 0.1% (0.1/185.5 GB)] (x5) Date : 2012/12/05 14:44:55 Make sure to run wd align in xp or if you have more then one partition as these are AF drives. Benches show the same reads but crippled writes until alignment was done.

Pros: Following up again, I decided to rma the drive with the broken power connector. To my surprise I got quick answers to email, and a phone call at a promised appointment. Outstanding service on a sub $100 product. Gave em my credit card and they are shipping an advance rma for me.-Prepaid!

Cons: shouldn't have broken in the first place. Now I have to swap and burn in a new boot drive. I notice there is a 600gb version of this drive..but it has half the cache.

Overall Review: five year warranty drove this sale..and future sales too. We're getting new intrface busses to handle larger storage in futuer ( where_is_pixdust?_) and five years is about right for me. I'm a long way off from upgrading all my av gear ( again). I'm skipping all 3d and waiting for holographic projection.

Pros: -Newegg had these on sale on black friday for 79.99. Regardless of how they performed I figured worst case scenario I could simply turn around and sell them and make a profit. -Running 4 of them in a RAID 0 (a bit overkill) there's absolutely nothing I can do to saturate their throughput. I have a 4 drive WD black 1 TB array and transfers of large files between the array's sits pretty around 400+ MB/s. The VelociRaptors definitely seem to have more throughput however as I can simultaneously transfer a different file to a different drive without the original transfer suffering. Total combined transfer rate of simultaneous transfers sits around 600MB/s usually. Considering that in that scenario the drives are jumping between files there seems to be even more headroom available. -Reasonably quiet. Quieter than my WD Black 1TB drives, but not as quiet as my WD Green 2TB drives. -Reasonably cool, barely warm to the touch. Cooler than my WD Black 1TB drives, but not as cool as my Green drives.

Cons: -Not as responsive as I had hoped. Previously I had 2 300GB Velociraptors in RAID 0, and while the throughput has noticeably improved Windows 7 doesn't boot any faster (perhaps even slower?). Programs don't seem to benefit with any decreased load times. -Even though this is 4 of these beastly drives in a RAID 0 Windows experience index still gives them 6.6 which while better than 5.9 still seems a bit underwhelming.

Overall Review: I have been planning to upgrade from my 2x 300GB velociraptor setup for about a year and was holding out for SSD deals. I jumped at this deal instead to give the ol mechanical drives one last go 'round as my system drives. I'm a bit underwhelmed in their performance in that setting but this setup would probably make for a great multimedia design swap space drive for large projects.

Pros: Fast, quiet until they burst then you hear just a slight whirl sound. Two in raid 1 on a Gigabyte GA-F2A85X-UP4 and they fly.

Cons: None, price was awesome when they were on sale. I was going with the RE4 until I seen the sale and the choice was clear. Now that I know how snappy these are I'd pay the premium over the RE4, these have raid specific features as well.

Overall Review: CDM Sequential Read : 478.444 MB/s Sequential Write : 146.497 MB/s Random Read 512KB : 540.107 MB/s Random Write 512KB : 240.611 MB/s HDtunepro shows: 186mb max read 160mb avg read 4161mb/s burst, that is blistering. Web sites explode onto the screen, programs load up almost instantly. The 64mb cache really shows it's power here.

Pros: I bought this an a Samsung SSD. Guess which is faster? This one is, by a LONG shot. For that alone, this deserves 5 eggs.

Cons: I can not think of any.

Pros: Fast! and Silent.. not as fast as a SSD but still good enough to hold all my steam games and play on it. While this will hold my steam games have another SSD for boxed games.

Cons: nothing to report

Overall Review: If you got money and want the fastest platter drive. I think this is the one!!

Pros: Although I seldom turn my computer off, I just did so to test boot up time for this review. I was on the desktop within 27 seconds and ready to go. Not as fast as most SSD’s but plenty quick enough for me. After it’s loaded I can hardly notice any difference between it and SSD for real world use, plus I have more peace of mind. Raptors have been good to me and I trust them. I know that I won’t notice any slowdown after years of use, while the jury is still out with SSD’s. Not trying to make this a Raptor vs SSD thing but it’s a decision that needs to be made before deciding which way to go. I wouldn’t have bought more than a dozen SSD’s over the past couple years if I didn’t like them. However, I still give the overall edge to Raptor for my own personal use. 5-Year Warranty

Cons: none

Overall Review: I like being able to download the WD version of Acronis True Image for free. The latest version worked with Windows 8.1 when the retail version wouldn’t. I started using it long before Win8 came out but just though I’d mention it. I’m running Windows 7 on the machine I’m writing this review on. The Data Lifeguard tools are handy too. I always install them with my WD drives. I also like being able to use Windows 7 sleep mode without worrying about it. There is a lot of conflicting information about using sleep mode with SSD’s along with some horror stories. It does make what I call “thinking noises” so if you are one of the many who get freaked out by them you might not like this drive. Being a long time Raptor user I associate those noises with a fast, rock solid drive. I like hearing the quick little zizzz... when it saves something (weird, I know). I’ve owned many Raptors over the years going all the way back to the 36GB (still running) version and have had only one fail. That was several years ago and WD replaced it within in a few days. WEI is a joke when rating hard drives. A Raptor and a green drive both get the same score although performance difference is night and day. I bought the Raptor that resides on the computer I’m writing this review on Black Friday 2012.

Pros: Just an FYI, on Windows 7, a 5.9 disk IO rating is the highest rating possible for mechanical (aka non-SSD) drives. I own several of the the prior generation, the 600GB version, and these are rock solid. W/ Crystal Disk, I get ~120MB/s read/write on a single drive and nearly 230MB/s on a software-based stripe set of two. I didn't buy it for that reason though, it was simply the lower-latency, nearly half the response time to any traditional drive.

Cons: A little expensive, but well worth it. Just delete some junk and it will be plenty of room :-)