Western Digital VelociRaptor 1TB 10K RPM Hard Drive Review

Futuremark’s PCMark benchmarking suite should need no introduction – it’s been a staple of PC benchmarking for the better half of a decade. PCMark offers a range of tests to gauge every aspect of a computer’s performance and presents it in a neat simple final result. Thankfully, it also breaks down the overall score with individual subsystem scores (such as Memory, Storage, etc) in addition to given individual test results.

As we’re not too concerned with the performance of the PC as a whole, for our testing here we deselect all default tests and run only the “Secondary Storage” suite, with the hard drive in question as the chosen drive. Tests in this suite range from the loading of applications, running a Windows Defender scan, editing video, gaming and more.

WD’s 1TB VR drive is the clear winner here, but that isn’t much of a surprise. I wouldn’t go as far as to say it leaves the Caviar Black in the dust, but for those looking for ultimate performance in a hard drive, it seems clear so far that there is just one option (RAID 0 aside, of course).