Conclusions
One might look at the VelociRaptor's name next to the growing number of solid-state drives entering the market and conclude that the VR200M is already a dinosaur. Indeed, the substantial performance advantage enjoyed by the Corsair and Intel SSDs in many of our performance tests would seem to confirm the notion that flash-based storage is destined to push performance-oriented mechanical hard drives into extinction. Even the VelociRaptor's once-fearsome 10k-RPM spindle speed is no match for near-instant seek times afforded by silicon-based storage, and when you factor in the lower power consumption and nonexistent noise levels inherent to SSDs, writing off the VR200M would be easy.

Don't dismiss it too quickly, though. The new VelociRaptor may not be able to keep up with SSDs in some areas, but it does have a substantial edge on the capacity front. Starting today, the 600GB version of the VR200M is slated to sell for $329, with 450GB flavor ringing in at $299. In both cases, you're getting a lot more capacity per dollar than any SSD out there. You're also getting more than enough storage for an operating system, applications, plenty of games, and loads of other files. Try managing that with a 128GB SSD.

Solid-state drives may own the performance segment of the storage market some day, but they're still pricey enough to leave plenty of room for the VelociRaptor to flourish. Unlike SSDs, the VR200M isn't bound by limited write-erase cycles, so it's well-suited to enterprise applications that write a lot of data. SLC-based flash drives with ten times the write-erase endurance of the MLC-based models familiar to PC enthusiasts are even more expensive than consumer-grade SSDs, further solidifying the VelociRaptor's cost advantage.

The VR200M's attractive cost per gigabyte is central to its appeal over SSDs. Whether the additional storage is worth more to you than potentially much faster performance, quieter noise levels, and lower power consumption depends entirely on what sort of environment you have planned for the drive. That environment will also determine whether the VelociRaptor is worth stepping up from a 7,200-RPM drive that offers a lot more storage for a good deal less money.

Ultimately, then, the VR200M rests between traditional desktop drives and SSDs, which just so happens to be where it sat throughout the results of our performance testing. The new VelociRaptor may not be the world beater that its predecessors were, but it's fast enough to leave lesser mechanical drives in the dust while packing enough capacity to give prospective SSD buyers pause. I still think the ideal enthusiast desktop pairs a high-performance SSD with a slow, low-power hard drive for mass storage. However, that's still an expensive setup, and one could employ a VR200M in place of the SSD for those who need a large amount of data accessible on their high-performance drive.

Only time well tell whether the Raptor line will endure beyond the VR200M, and we may have to wait another two years to find out. In the meantime, Western Digital's own SSDs are likely to make the storage market even more inhospitable for a family of drives that has long been an enthusiast favorite.