Western Digital VelociRaptor 1TB 2.5″ Hard Drive Review

Given the performance and growing capacity of SSDs it is a surprise in some respects that the VelociRaptor is able to put up a good fight. We know that in the pre-SSD era, if you wanted performance, then these were the way to go. With the updates, tweaks and tune, the VelociRaptor has made a great comeback. its biggest selling point when marked against an SSD is without doubt its capacity and this is the main reason why hard drives are still on the market.

We do know that there will come a time when hard drives will eventually start to die off as solid state media takes the full stronghold, but as things stand at this moment in time, this is not going to be any time soon. The VelociRaptor line of drives for the foreseeable future still have a place in the market alongside their motionless counterparts, purely down to their capacity and at the same time a cost effective form of storage, even if they will set you back around £220 each for the 1TB models.

SSD caching is another technology that has come about recently to counteract the performance and capacity bottleneck, however there does come a point where having one media for a cache and another for the physical storage of data is neither feasible nor practical, for example in laptops and SFF systems. the 2.5″ form factor of the VelociRaptor shows how far hard drive technology has come in recent times and in respect of cached options, it not only provides the capacity but also the same speeds (if not better in some areas) in a package that works as it should straight out of the box like nay other hard drive would.

Pricing for the VelociRaptor’s barely differs between the 2.5″ and 3.5″ models which is great considering the only difference between the two is a heatsink that surrounds the 2.5″ drive to keep it cool and make it 3.5″ compatible. With the disk starting with a budget saving 250GB for around £80, working up to £130 for 500GB and then on to £220 for the full blown 1TB of capacity, it is an option that most users will steer away from, but for those that want both performance and capacity in one neat little package that has a fitting price to suit, the VelociRaptor line of drives are back to make their stand.