The Contenders & The Test

To make these graphs legible I've left out the SSDs, but note that these are the same benchmarks we use for our SSD reviews. If you want to compare, head on over to our SSD Bench database.

I've included the latest 6Gbps drives from Western Digital and Seagate, the Caviar Black and the Barracuda XT. Both are TB-class drives that are the fastest 7200 RPM offerings you can buy for a desktop today.

I've also included the previous generation 300GB VelociRaptor and the old 150GB Raptor to give you an idea of how far things have come if you're still holding on to one of those old drives.

For you notebook users I ran tests on a Seagate Momentus 5400.6 drive. It's not fast compared to a desktop drive but it gives you an idea of the performance difference that exists between 2.5" and 3.5" drives.

Finally I included an older Seagate Barracuda ES to give you a reference point if you have a 7200 RPM drive that's a few years old.

CPU Intel Core i7 965 running at 3.2GHz (Turbo & EIST Disabled)
Motherboard: Intel DX58SO (Intel X58)
Chipset: Intel X58 + Marvell SATA 6Gbps PCIe
Chipset Drivers: Intel 9.1.1.1015 + Intel IMSM 8.9
Memory: Qimonda DDR3-1333 4 x 1GB (7-7-7-20)
Video Card: eVGA GeForce GTX 285
Video Drivers: NVIDIA ForceWare 190.38 64-bit
Desktop Resolution: 1920 x 1200
OS: Windows 7 x64
Meet the VR200M Sequential Read/Write Speed
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  • Aezay - Tuesday, April 6, 2010 - link

    The model used in this review is the new WD1002FAEX disk, which is the upgrade to the WD1001FALS model. This new drive is considerably faster, even compared to the 2TB Black (WD2001FASS).
    http://gigglehd.com/zbxe/files/attach/images/89985...
  • Imperceptible - Tuesday, April 6, 2010 - link

    Not according to this review: http://pcper.com/article.php?aid=870&type=expe...
  • Belard - Tuesday, April 6, 2010 - link

    Er... either way... that is more up to the user.

    RAID 0 adds several additional points of failure... Considering how fast G2 as it is. G3 with SATA 3.0 would be more exciting thou... :)

    I'd still go with a single drive. That is me.
  • Imperceptible - Wednesday, April 7, 2010 - link

    Replying to the wrong comment? This has nothing to do with RAID. Just simply mentioning that the WD Black 2TB is the fastest single mechanical drive and it would have been nice if it was used in this review. But in the real world, I'd only ever use it as a storage hdd, with an SSD as the main drive.
  • deputc26 - Tuesday, April 6, 2010 - link

    I as thinking the same, 2Tb Black is this drives nearest non-SSD competitor.
  • Romulous - Monday, August 30, 2010 - link

    I concur. The WD2003FYYS is no slouch.
  • vol7ron - Tuesday, April 6, 2010 - link

    First pass:
    there in while -> there in a while

    Also when typing a comment, if you forget the subject, this is the error message:
    "Account creation was unsuccessful. Please correct the errors and try again."

    I think "account creation" is a little misleading. Perhaps a "Please type in a subject" would be okay.
  • DanNeely - Tuesday, April 6, 2010 - link

    I'm a bit confused. If these are using 200GB platters both the 450 and 600GB versions are both 3 platter drives which doesn't really make sense. A 2 platter 400GB model would be a more reasonable step down from the top.
  • vol7ron - Tuesday, April 6, 2010 - link

    Perhaps the 450GB drives, which as Anand has indicated is using 150GB platters, are really using damaged 200GB platters due to the manufacturing anomalies.

    - just a hypothesis that needs testing.

    vol7ron
  • DanNeely - Tuesday, April 6, 2010 - link

    Where does it indicate that the 450 is using a 150GB platter? The table on the first page lists it as a 200GB. The 150 is the prior generation model.

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