HD Tach
We tested HD Tach with the benchmark's full variable zone size setting.

The VelociRaptor is the first SATA hard drive we've seen eclipse 100MB/s in HD Tach's sustained read and write speed tests. The SpinPoint F1 and 640GB Caviar SE16 aren't far behind, but they don't quite reach that mark.

Western Digital's previous Raptor drives use slower 150MB/s Serial ATA interfaces, and that holds them back in this test. With its 300MB/s Serial ATA link, the VelociRaptor's burst performance is the fastest we've seen from any drive.

We expected the VelociRaptor's random access time to be quick, and it is. Obviously, the VR150 has a huge advantage over 7,200-RPM drives here. What's more impressive, however, is that it's 1.5 milliseconds quicker than the Raptor X.

CPU utilization results are within HD Tach's +/- 2% margin of error for this test.