WD VelociRaptor 600GB SATA 6Gbps Hard Drive Review

Free Space and Conclusion

Capacity

When it comes to storage capacity, the Western Digital VelociRaptor 600GB HDD has a free capacity of 558GB as shown above.

Final Thoughts and Conclusions

The Western Digital VelociRaptor 600GB hard drive (WD6000HLHX) has been rumored for many months now and it is great to finally see the drive come to market. The drive doesn’t bring many new features other than SATA 6Gbps and the larger 32MB cache to the table, but WD has doubled the capacity of this 10,000 RPM drive series and did manage to boost performance as advertised. In fact, we noticed more than a 15% performance increase in some benchmarks, which was great to see. It was also interesting to see how large the performance gap has come between hard drives and solid-state drives. The VelociRaptor series is an enthusiast class product and is ideal for those PC users who don’t want to jump into the SSD market right now. The new 450GB and 600GB VelociRaptors would also make for great secondary storage drives to those that have an SSD as their primary storage drive.

Western Digital VelociRaptor hard drives are available through select distributors and resellers starting today. All of the WD VelociRaptor drives come backed by WDs five-year limited warranty. Manufacturer’s Suggested Retail Price (MSRP) for the WD VelociRaptor 450 GB (model WD4500HLHX) is $299 USD and the 600 GB (model WD6000HLHX) is $329 USD.

That breaks down into something like this when it comes to cost per gigabyte:

• 300GB: $199 ($0.67/GB)
• 450GB: $299 ($0.66/GB)
• 600GB: $329 ($0.55/GB)

When it comes to pricing, the new VelociRaptors actually cost less per gigabyte than the previous generation, so there really isn’t much to complain about with the new VelociRaptors! The capacity has doubled, the performance has increased and the price per GB has decreased by nearly 18 percent! If you are looking to buy a hard drive and want a SATA 6Gbps drive with performance as a key feature then be sure to give the new 450GB and 600GB VelociRaptors a really good look!

Legit Bottom Line: The WD VelociRaptor 600GB hard drive has solid overall performance and price is right if you want a hard drive and not an SSD.