Western Digital Velociraptor 600 GB SATA III 10000 RPM 32 MB Cache Bulk/OEM 3.5 Inch Desktop Hard Drive

I spent 10 years working as a System Engineer for a storage vendor. We sold performance, features and reliability.Background issuesBefore my purchase, I had a Windows 7 system that took 6min 8secs to boot. And this is with a defragmented disk drive. My system is configured with 6GB of memory, a Maxtor 320GB 7200 rpm hard disk and an Intel i7 CPU. I had two major problems with this system - the aforementioned start-up time and an annoyingly slow application start-up. The fact that when waking up from sleep mode the system would still need to be re-booted due to OS problems meant I did frequent boots. I was sure after reviewing performance reports that I needed faster storage.In the past, this system was configured with a 120GB OCZ Vertex SSD (from 6/09 1/10) but it was unreliable and not earth shattering in GB capacity. However, it booted in little less than two minutes. The manufacturer said I should re-install Windows 7 after I experienced intolerable SSD driver issues. This was an effort I could not afford. Also, I didn't trust the manufacturer's solution. So the SSD now sits in my desk drawer.ConsideredSSD and VelociRaptor. Obviously, SSDs are expensive. Even the recently announced crop of SSDs are still pricey. According to the online reviewers, they have reliability issues - and that includes Intel's. SSD performance is probably not an issue for most applications I use. However, I do movie editing and THIS may be a problem for SSDs - large sequential reads and writes. For the time I used my 120GB SSD, HD 1080p movies were choppy. In fact,the Maxtor hard disk also exhibited choppy movie editing.SolutionThe VelociRaptor is terrific. It exceeded my expectations. My boot time is now 2min 38seconds from the time I hit the power button. Applications start without any annoying delays. Editing HD movies is fine. An unexpected bonus is the drive is running cool and silent. I remember earlier 10,000 rpm drive running hot and noisy. This drive is actually 2-1/2 inches in a 3-1/2 inch enclosure. Spinning the 2-1/2 inch drive does not seem to generate noise or much heat - which is the most common cause of electronic failure.Conclusion - highly recommended storage solution based on price, capacity and performance

I replaced the 1TB boot-drive in my Windows 7 computer with this 600GB gem. My browser was very slow to display pages due to all the plug-ins and extensions I use. Now they literally pop up. I am also very pleased with the increase in speed with which my applications start up. It now takes 18 seconds from "Starting Windows" to the password page. It used to take around 30. Timing after the password page is rather imprecise but I get a completed desk top in about a minute from "Starting Windows" and I have years of junk on the computer.This hard drive replacement has had a greater effect on speed than any other modifications I have made, including stepping up to a new motherboard with an i7- 2600k chip.(It should go without saying that these results may only be obtained with a SATA III capable system board.)The installation is a breeze if your new drive is as big or bigger than your old drive. I had to learn (the hard way) that Windows will not recover a saved drive-image from the backup drive if the new boot-drive is smaller than the old boot-drive. It doesn't matter if the used space on the old drive is smaller than the capacity of the new drive. It is a matter of the drive volume.In order to make it work, these are the steps to take.1. Shrink the volume of your old boot-drive (see below).2. Now save a new image of the drive to your backup drive.3. Create a system recovery disc. Don't skip this. The recovery disc seems to know things your system disc does not.4. Remove the old boot drive and install the new one.5. Boot to the recovery disc and recover the image.6. Enjoy the results.Shrinking the volume of a disk is one of the easiest and more user-friendly things Windows does.1. Right click on MY COMPUTER2. Click on MANAGE3. Click on DISK MANAGEMENT4. Right click on the right portion of the C drive5. Click on SHRINK VOLUME6. There is a slick little sliding-scale dialog box that will let you experiment with sizes before making a selection. Shoot for a volume slightly smaller than your new drive. I went for about 575GB. Everything on my boot-drive comes to less than 200GB.7. You will finish with a block of volume at the far right showing unallocated space.8. After your new drive is all set up, you can expand the volume to fit the new drive if you like. I left it alone.

I have a 300 GB Velociraptor in the PC I'm using to type this review and it's still working great after 3+ years, which is why I bought a pair of new 600 GB Velociraptors. No doubt, these 10K RPM units are quick and there is a definite snap to their performance compared to ordinary 7200 RPM disks.But reliability seems to be a problem.WD advertises these as "enterprise class" disks, but reliability shows me otherwise. I bought this pair only 15 months ago, and already one has completely failed. Not bad sectors, total failure, and it died suddenly without leaving any hint of impending failure in the event logs.They are installed in a PC used only for monitoring (so disk usage is very light), and the machine lives in a rack at a datacenter (a real datacenter, not just a rigged up server room) with clean filtered power and proper cooling. In other words, they live in a nearly perfect environment.I'll RMA the bad one with WD under warranty, but unfortunately I'll just get a refurbished one in return. (Translation: a repaired one that previously failed for someone eise.)UPDATE: Since laying hands on the PC (it lives in a datacenter 35 miles away) it appears the problem could have been a bad SATA cable or a failing disk controller on the motherboard. After rebooting the machine to re-detect attached devices, the Velociraptor is back in service. I can't say for sure whether the reboot brought a sketchy disk back to life, or if it was the PC at fault, so I'm replacing the PC out of caution. If this disk disappears again in the new PC, then I'll know it's a bad disk and will update this review again.In the meantime, I'm going to raise my 2-star rating to 4 stars based on the assumption this problem was the result of a defective cable or motherboard.