Conclusions
Western Digital's Raptor X won our Editor's Choice award for being the fastest Serial ATA hard drive on the market—and for pushing the envelope by incorporating a window on the drive's internals. The WD1500ADFD trades the Raptor X's window for a lower price tag, and with the latest firmware, actually improves performance in a number of tests. For enthusiasts, that's a pretty sweet trade-off, especially if you don't even have a case window. That's why we're giving the WD1500ADFD an Editor's Choice award.

With a $250 street price and 150 GB capacity, the WD1500ADFD may not be the most attractive hard drive from a cost per gigabyte perspective. However, the Raptor's performance is in a class all its own, particularly with multitasking and multi-user loads. It's no slouch with the single-user tasks typical of desktop PCs, either, although its advantage there is less pronounced.

At the end of the day, the Raptor WD1500ADFD is simply the fastest Serial ATA drive we've ever tested. It's perfect for enterprise-class workstations and servers, and easy to recommend for high-performance gaming rigs and enthusiast desktops. And you won't have to worry about Windexing the window.