
Almost three years ago, Western Digital's WD360 Raptor drive first saw the light of day, and was greeted with cautious optimism. It was meant to be a cost effective alternative for expensive SCSI enterprise-class hard drives, but would it succeed? WD's gamble paid off, but the majority of Raptor drives made their way into high-performance desktop PCs rather than into server systems.
The new top model offers 150 GB, a good amount of extra performance and officially targets high-end enthusiasts. It is pretty obvious that the Raptor-X is a great drive, but is it great enough to become a "must-have"?
Now that Western Digital finally caters to the enthusiast crowd, it had to create a very special product. Thus the firm decided to offer its end user Raptor-X with a clear cover, which is quite a respectable move given the rather conservative pace that used to dominate product policy. The center top part of the Raptor-X is equipped with a coated transparent polycarbonate, which allows for an insight into the mechanical heart of the drive, particularly fascinating while the drive is busy. The website www.wdraptorx.com explains how this was realized, since the clear cover material has to be able to cope with changing inside pressure levels, temperature fluctuations and electrostatic discharge. You may have seen clear cover drives at exhibitions or shows, but the Raptor X is the first production drive that offers this feature to the masses.
If you consider the clear cover an unnecessary gadget you may go for the ordinary WD1500AD Raptor (without the X). Just like the WD740 and the WD360 Raptor, this latest model is designed for servers or workstations. Technically, it isn't even different from the Raptor-X, making it the more attractive choice for users that prefer a lower price to a fancy cover.
We had to make an important point back in December, when we received Samsung's T133 series and the Seagate Barracuda 7200.9, because both fell short of our performance expectations. On the one hand, hard drive makers offer products with capacities of up to 500 GB today, and these offer enough capacity for the requirements of most home and small business applications. On the other hand, it seems that these capacities are achieved by trading off additional performance gains (Samsung) or even by tolerating a performance decline (Seagate).
In fact, hard drives are the only component that noticeably slows down your everyday work with your computer. Whether you start or shutdown your system, open large project files or applications or have the system load level data in 3D games, it is always the hard drive you are waiting for. Obviously, changing the operating system will help as little as criticizing the hard drive companies would. From a technology point of view, the hard drive makers are squeezing out as much performance as possible while maintaining data safety.
On the basis of our experience we recommend using two hard drives if you are at least a bit performance conscious. In order to maximize data safety and performance, you should use the fastest hard drive that you can get for your operating system and temporary data, and store all regular data such as images, music, project data, video files etc. onto a larger hard drive. This one does not necessarily have to be that fast, because access happens only occasionally.
Another advantage of splitting system and user data onto two different drives is the backup advantage. Why not copy your really important data from one drive to the other once in a while? Of course this cannot replace regular backups, but it adds a safety margin in case something horrible happens. In fact, the secondary, large hard drive could also be furnished with a complete image of your system drive. This will give you the option to use it as a transitional system drive until you are able to replace the defective system drive.
In this context we don't want to ignore the option to use two or more hard drives to build a RAID array. These so-called Redundant Arrays of Inexpensive/Independent Drives allow you to either improve performance by distributing reads and writes across all drives - RAID 0 striping - or increase data safety by mirroring data on a second drive in real time - RAID 1 mirroring. In the latter case, one of the drives failing will not have an effect on performance and will not cause a data loss. At the same time, a RAID 0 multiplies the risk of a data loss, because any of the two (or more) drives dying will kill the whole array and thus all of your data.
Many modern systems support RAID 0 or 1. Most likely, RAID will be handled by the mass storage controller(s) on motherboards that cost at least $ ~120; double-check the manual if you aren't sure. RAID 0 generally is the best choice if you require high data transfer rates; in fact, it is possible to almost double throughput numbers by deploying a RAID 0 configuration. However, access times do not improve, and sometimes you will even see an increase in access time. Your everyday life with Windows won't be accelerated much by using a RAID 0 array, even if many people tend to believe that! We have proof for this statement in the form of benchmark numbers that compare the WD1500 Raptor with a two-drive RAID 0 setup that consists of two 7,200 RPM drives.

Comparing the clear cover of the WD Raptor-X with a moon roof for cars is not quite adequate, as you should never open the hard drive. Yet the insight into the hectic goings of a hard drive is fascinating time and time again. The clear part of the top cover extends from the center of the rotating platters over the arms that are used to position the read/write heads. These movements are exactly what is so interesting to watch, since this happens at an amazing speed. All your brain will perceive is a wild shiver of the arms.
The drive manufacturers usually place their product stickers onto the top of the drive, which is why they had to be relocated on the Raptor-X. WD chose the bottom part that is not covered by the circuit board. Traditionally, Western Digital mounts the ICs on the top of the board, which is why you never see any chips on it. This is done for the sake of protecting the chips from physical damage. The downside, however, is an increase in susceptibility to high temperatures, which is why the Raptor is only allowed to reach 55°C. Drives such as the Seagate Barracuda 7200.9, while running twice the number of rotating platters, is specified for operation at up to 60°C.
We could not find any noticeable difference between the Raptor-X and the regular WD1500AD. Obviously, the integration of the crystalline polycarbonate clear cover does not seem to have a measurable effect on performance or temperature.

The Raptor-X looks a bit naked because there are no stickers or serial number labels on the top. Even the opening vent has been moved to the bottom.


Western Digital places the chips in such a way that they cannot be damaged physically. The image also shows the product sticker. In the middle is a gap whose shape points at the compensating vent, which must never be covered.

There is a strong argument against the Raptor-X: Why do you need a clear cover, if you are not going to be able to look at it after installing the drive? If it's the performance of this new drive you want and not the fancy cover, you may go for the regular WD1500AD Raptor (without the X) and even save $50. The WD1500AD follows the WD360 at 36 GB and the WD740 at 74 GB.
It is no coincidence that the technical data of the WD1500AD Raptor and the Raptor-X resemble each other. As a matter of fact, the top cover part is the only real difference between both models, giving WD quite a bit of flexibility in producing either to meet demand. Such a strategy is widely used in aircraft construction as well, where it is necessary to switch quickly and easily from windowless cargo models to window-equipped passenger jets.


| Manufacturer | Western Digital |
|---|---|
| Model | Raptor WD1500AD and Raptor-X |
| Capacity | 150 GB |
| Rotation | 10,000 RPM |
| Design | 2 Platters, 4 Heads |
| Cache | 16 MB SDRAM |
| Interface | Serial ATA/150, 1.5 GBit/s, Native Command Queuing |
| Avg. Access Time | 4.6 ms read, 5.2 ms write |
| Weight | 1.81 lbs (822 g) |
| MSRP | $ 349.99 (Raptor-X) or $ 299.99 (Raptor) |
| Warranty | 5 years |
Is The Raptor The Drive For You? Check Out The Tom's Hardware HDD Charts!
If you are going to spend $ 300 on a hard drive, you might ask yourself whether the money wouldn't be invested better in buying a 400-500 GB hard drive running at 7200 RPM. Up to three times the storage capacity certainly is an argument that is worth considering, since the new Raptor looks pretty bad in terms of costs per gigabyte.
To allow you to check the best price/performance ratios based on real time pricing information by TG Stores, we have put together the HDD Charts. These include all the hard drives that have been tested on our reference system. So far, we have approximately 30 drives, both current models and older drives, and the number is going to increase with every hard drive review that hits the storage guide.
The HDD Charts are interactive, which means that you can select two hard drives and choose your favorite benchmark discipline, or criteria such as costs per gigabyte or price/performance. Click here to get to the HDD Charts page.
We used two Seagate NL35 drives running at 7,200 RPM to build a RAID 0 array, which can be considered an alternative to Western Digital’s Raptor-X.
We took the new 10,000 RPM WD1500AD Raptor and compared it to a 7,200 RPM RAID 0 array, since this would be the alternative if performance and high capacity are important to you. We took two NL35 drives by Seagate since these were available ; technically they are not very different from the Barracuda 7200.8, and thus one of the faster 7,200 RPM models available. We realize that two 400 GB drives would be an investment that easily exceeds the costs of one WD1500 Raptor. However, using two 300 GB drives is doable for roughly the same price, and this should result in a storage subsystem performance that outruns the WD1500 Raptor... or maybe not ?
Test Setup
| System Hardware | |
|---|---|
| Processor(s) | 2x Intel Xeon Processor (Nocona core)
3.6 GHz, FSB800, 1 MB L2 Cache |
| Platform | Asus NCL-DS (Socket 604)
Intel E7520 Chipset, BIOS 1005 |
| RAM | Corsair CM72DD512AR-400 (DDR2-400 ECC, reg.)
2x 512 MB, CL3-3-3-10 Timings |
| System Hard Drive | Western Digital Caviar WD1200JB
120 GB, 7,200 rpm, 8 MB Cache, UltraATA/100 |
| Test Hard Drive I | "Western Digital WD1500AD Raptor 150 GB, 10,000 rpm, 16 MB Cache, SATA/150" |
| Test Hard Drive II | "Seagate NL35 400 GB, 7,200 rpm, 8 MB Cache, SATA/300" |
| Mass Storage Controller(s) | Intel 82801EB UltraATA/100 Controller (ICH5)
Promise SATA 300TX4 "Promise FastTrak TX4310 Driver 2.06.1.310" |
| Networking | Broadcom BCM5721 On-Board Gigabit Ethernet NIC |
| Graphics Card | On-Board Graphics
ATI RageXL, 8 MB |
| System Hardware | |
| Performance-Messungen | c’t h2benchw 3.6 PCMark05 V1.01 |
| I/O Performance | IOMeter 2003.05.10
Fileserver-Benchmark Webserver-Benchmark Database-Benchmark Workstation-Benchmark |
| System Software & Drivers | |
| OS | Microsoft Windows Server 2003 Enterprise Edition, Service Pack 1 |
| Platform Driver | Intel Chipset Installation Utility 7.0.0.1025 |
| Graphics Driver | Default Windows Graphics Driver |
Data Transfer Diagram


The new Raptor reaches a maximum transfer performance rate of more than 80 MB/s when the drive is empty; this is when the drive usually uses the outer area of the rotating platters where the absolute rotation speed is highest. The more capacity you utilize, the more the transfer rate is going to decrease; this is normal for all drives. The minimum transfer speed, however, is even more impressive than the maximum number. The Raptor-X does not fall below 55 MB/s, which some 7,200 RPM drives cannot even provide as a maximum.

An average access time of 8.0 ms (including seek time and rotational latency) is slightly better than the numbers we measured for predecessors. All the 7,200 RPM drives are clearly slower, which can be noticed every time a large number of small files is to be loaded, such as Photoshop with lots of plugins for example. A disadvantage, though, clearly is the access noise that is caused by the rapid movements of the read/write heads. At the same time, the spinning noise of the drive is very acceptable, and won't be very noticeable when mixed with the noise that is generated by your power supply, processor and graphics chip fans.
Interface Performance

Western Digital remains at Serial ATA/150 rather than going for the 300 MB/s interface bandwidth. As you can see in all the other benchmarks, this does not have any negative effect at all. Even though other drives offer more interface performance, they do not perform any better in the important benchmark disciplines. This, by the way, also applies to the RAID 0 setup that we built using two Seagate 7,200 RPM drives.
Data Transfer Performance

If data transfer performance is all you are looking for - video and audio editing in high quality would require high throughput - the RAID 0 array definitely beats the WD1500 Raptor. However, the amazing transfer performance is not enough to dominate in the application benchmarks.

PCMark05 Write Benchmark






In order to show the Raptor's advantage in everyday work with your computer, we decided to compare it to our RAID 0 setup using the application benchmark suite SYSmark 2004 SE. This program runs various popular application and simulates actual user input in order to measure performance. It's quite amazing to see that the new Raptor easily beats the RAID 0 array here.
Temperature Measurement

Although the new Raptor spins considerably faster that its competitors, the WD1500 did not really get warmer than the 7,200 RPM drives. This is impressive proof of the advances that have been made in reducing friction and increasing the efficiency of heat dissipation.

Finally, we have a new high-performance enthusiast hard drive that is capable of beating its competition in the blink of an eye. Of course it's the high rotation speed of 10,000 RPM that lets the Raptor perform noticeably better than any 7,200 RPM drive in everyday uses. This applies to both access time and data transfer performance, and it helps to further reduce the annoying little delays inherent in everyday PC operation.
The Raptor-X's performance is even good enough to beat a RAID 0 array consisting of two modern 7,200 RPM drives, except in terms of pure throughput, of course. In addition, it is nicer having only one drive to install, and the data safety of a single drive is better anyway. Speaking of safety, we should refer to the five year warranty, which should give you a good feeling.
So is the Raptor-X the perfect show stopper for the competition? Yes, it is, but not only because it's better than its rivals in the enthusiast market space. Generally we would always recommend the fastest drive available as a system drive, although we believe that $350 is a bit over the top. (The fact that you will save $50 by simply doing without the clear cover should be also taken into account.)
The reason why the Raptor-X actually is unrivaled is the total lack of competition in this high performance desktop space. Seagate may have some potential due to the recent acquisition of Maxtor, but the current Barracuda 7200.8 and 7200.9, as well as the Maxtor portfolio, simply aren't good enough for users with the highest performance ambitions. That's especially the case since the new Raptor is considerably faster than its predecessors. It's time for Hitachi, Maxtor/Seagate and Samsung to get moving.