Western Digital Raptor WD740 ADFD

Western Digital has released several capacity points of its popular 10,000 RPM Raptor drive, ranging from 36 GB to the familiar 150 GB. WD combines the SATA interface with a 10,000 RPM spindle to crank out performance. Much like the Barracuda's onboard sensors that guard against vibration-prone environments, WD has included its own proprietary technology known as Rotary Acceleration Feed Forward (RAFF). Users may be disappointed to see the discontinuance of the see-through plate on the ADFD versions of the Raptor, which was some cool eye candy on the Raptor-X, which has been replaced with an opaque plate concealing drive mechanics. After the first few times watching the head movement, though, how many people really care?

The mechanical similarity of both platforms when compared to their non-ES counterparts caused us to anticipate congruent test results. So let's take a look at the numbers.