Western Digital VelociRaptor 600GB Review

Testing Setup

We test hard disks with the same tests as SSDs, but as there's no performance degradation over time with a hard disk, we don't run our TRIM tests. We've tested the VelociRaptor 600GB on the SATA 3Gbps ports of our test motherboard (see below) and via the SATA 6Gbps ports of a HighPoint Rocket 620 storage card.

We've also re-tested the comparison disks, as our previous data was gathered on a Windows Vista test rig rather than the Windows 7 one we now use.

Common Components

• Intel Core i7-920 (operating at 2.66GHz – 20x133MHz) - TurboBoost and power saving states disabled.
  
• Gigabyte X58A-UD7 motherboard (Intel X58 with ICH10R Southbridge, USB 3 and Marvell SATA 6Gbps)
  
• 3x 2GB Corsair XMS3 1,333MHz DDR3 memory
  
• Nvidia GeForce GT 240 512MB
  
• PC Power & Cooling Silencer 750W PSU
  
• Windows 7 Home Premium x86-64
  
• Nvidia Forceware 196.21 WHQL
  
• Stock Windows AHCI driver (msahci.sys)

TRIM is confirmed as running by using the command line and entering fsutil behavior query disabledeletenotify - a response of disabledeletenotify = 0 indicates TRIM is active.