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For those with no desire to spend countless hours staring at the Raptor X’s drive head dart back and forth across the platter, Western Digital makes the Raptor WD1500ADFD. This drive lacks a window, but otherwise, it’s mechanically identical to the Raptor X—same spindle, cache, platters, and theoretically, performance. The WD1500ADFD also sells for roughly $50 less than the Raptor X, making it even more tempting for enthusiasts looking for a speedy storage upgrade.
Thanks to identical internals, we can expect the WD1500ADFD’s performance to at least match that of the Raptor X. But how much faster are these Raptors than the best 7,200-RPM desktop drives on the market? Can they keep up with Seagate’s latest perpendicular Barracuda 7200.10? Read on to find out.

The drive
Although the Raptor X is clearly designed for PC enthusiasts, Western Digital has always pushed its other Raptors as enterprise drives for servers and workstations—not that enthusiasts have had a problem ignoring the arbitrary product segmentation. For enthusiasts, the Raptor WD1500ADFD really sells itself. Western Digital has made it clear that little more than a window separates the drive from the Raptor X, and both are much improved over the previous WD740GD.
Raptor WD1500ADFD | Raptor WD740GD | |
Maximum external transfer rate | 150MB/s | |
Maximum internal transfer rate | 84MB/s | 72MB/s |
Read seek time | 4.6ms | 4.5ms |
Write seek time | 5.2ms | 5.9ms |
Average rotational latency | 2.99ms | |
Spindle speed | 10,000RPM | |
Available capacities | 150GB | 74GB |
Cache size | 16MB | 8MB |
Platter size | 75GB | 37GB |
Idle acoustics | 29dBA | 32dBA |
Seek acoustics | 36dBA | 36dBA |
Idle power consumption | 9.19W | 8.40W |
Read/write power consumption | 10.02W | 7.90W |
Command queuing | NCQ | TCQ |
Warranty length | Five years |
Since the original, the Raptor’s biggest handicap has been limited storage capacity. Even the WD740GD’s 74 GB capacity proved too limited for many, but Western Digital has managed to squeeze 150 GB into the WD1500ADFD. That size obviously isn’t all that impressive next to the half-terabyte and higher capacities offered by today’s beefiest drives, but it should be enough for most folks, if only as an OS and applications drive.
Denser platters allow the WD1500ADFD to offer a greater storage capacity than the previous generation Raptor. A higher areal density should also improve performance by allowing the drive head to access more data in the same physical area.

The new Raptor has other performance perks, as well. Western Digital has doubled the drive’s cache to 16 MB and ditched its obscure Tagged Command Queuing implementation in favor of the more widely supported Native Command Queuing.
Support for 300 MB/s Serial ATA transfer rates, however, is conspicuously missing from the WD1500ADFD. When it first released these new Raptors, Western Digital candidly admitted that its 300 MB/s Serial ATA implementation wasn’t yet ready to interoperate correctly with all if the various SATA disk controllers on the market. With an enterprise-class drive like the WD1500ADFD, reliability was a greater priority than support for this feature. We have yet to see real-world applications really benefit from 300 MB/s Serial ATA transfer rates, anyway. In fact, some drive manufacturers have started shipping 300 MB/s drives in 150 MB/s mode to avoid compatibility problems with certain chipsets.
Western Digital covers the Raptor WD1500ADFD with a five-year warranty. That nicely matches the warranty coverage typically offered with enterprise-class SCSI drives, although it’s somewhat less notable now that Seagate offers a five-year warranty on all its internal hard drives, including desktop models.

We’ll be comparing the Raptor WD1500ADFD’s performance with that of a slew of competitors, including some of the latest and greatest Serial ATA drives from Hitachi, Maxtor, Seagate, and Western Digital. These drivers differ when it comes to external transfer rates, spindle speeds, cache sizes, platter densities, NCQ support, and capacity, all of which can have an impact on performance. Keep in mind the following differences as we move through our benchmarks:
Max external transfer rate | Spindle speed | Cache size | Platter size | Capacity | Native Command Queuing? | |
Barracuda 7200.7 NCQ | 150 MB/s | 7,200 RPM | 8 MB | 80 GB | 160 GB | Yes |
Barracuda 7200.8 | 150 MB/s | 7,200 RPM | 8 MB | 133 GB | 400 GB | Yes |
Barracuda 7200.9 (160GB) | 300 MB/s | 7,200 RPM | 8 MB | 160 GB | 160 GB | Yes |
Barracuda 7200.9 (500GB) | 300 MB/s | 7,200 RPM | 16 MB | 125 GB | 500 GB | Yes |
Barracuda 7200.10 | 300 MB/s | 7,200 RPM | 16 MB | 188 GB | 750 GB | Yes |
Caviar SE16 | 300 MB/s | 7,200 RPM | 16 MB | 83 GB | 250 GB | No |
Caviar RE2 | 150 MB/s | 7,200 RPM | 16 MB | 100 GB | 400 GB | Yes |
Deskstar 7K500 | 300 MB/s | 7,200 RPM | 16 MB | 100 GB | 500 GB | Yes |
DiamondMax 10 | 150 MB/s | 7,200 RPM | 16 MB | 100 GB | 300 GB | Yes |
Raptor WD740GD | 150 MB/s | 10,000 RPM | 8 MB | 37 GB | 74 GB | No* |
Raptor X | 150 MB/s | 10,000 RPM | 16 MB | 75 GB | 150 GB | Yes |
Raptor WD1500ADFD | 150 MB/s | 10,000 RPM | 16 MB | 75 GB | 150 GB | Yes |
Note that the Caviar SE16 and Raptor WD740GD lack support for Native Command Queuing. The WD740GD does support a form of command queuing known as Tagged Command Queuing (TCQ), but host controller and chipset support for TCQ is pretty thin. Our Intel 955X-based test platform doesn’t support TCQ.
Since Seagate makes versions of the 7200.7 both with and without NCQ support, the 7200.7 in our tests appears as the “Barracuda 7200.7 NCQ” to clarify that it’s the NCQ version of the drive. The Caviar RE2, Deskstar T7K250, DiamondMax 10, 7200.8, 7200.9, 7200.10, Raptor X, and Raptor WD1500ADFD aren’t explicitly labeled as NCQ drives because they’re not available without NCQ support.
Finally, we should note that our WD1500ADFD has a slightly newer firmware revision than the Raptor X sample we’ve had since February. The drives still share identical internals, but firmware optimizations could give our newer Raptor an edge over the X in some tests.
Our testing methods
All tests were run three times, and their results were averaged, using the following test systems.
Processor | Pentium 4 Extreme Edition 3.4GHz |
System bus | 800MHz (200MHz quad-pumped) |
Motherboard | Asus P5WD2 Premium |
Bios revision | 0422 |
North bridge | Intel 955X MCH |
South bridge | Intel ICH7R |
Chipset drivers | Chipset 7.2.1.1003 AHCI/RAID 5.1.0.1022 |
Memory size | 1GB (2 DIMMs) |
Memory type | Micron DDR2 SDRAM at 533MHz |
CAS latency (CL) | 3 |
RAS to CAS delay (tRCD) | 3 |
RAS precharge (tRP) | 3 |
Cycle time (tRAS) | 8 |
Audio codec | ALC882D |
Graphics | Radeon X700 Pro 256MB with CATALYST 5.7 drivers |
Hard drives | Hitachi 7K500 500GB SATA Maxtor DiamondMax 10 300GB SATA Seagate Barracuda 7200.7 NCQ 160GB SATA Seagate Barracuda 7200.8 400GB SATA Seagate Barracuda 7200.9 160GB SATA Seagate Barracuda 7200.9 500GB SATA Seagate Barracuda 7200.10 750GB SATA Western Digital Caviar SE16 250GB SATA Western Digital Caviar RE2 400GB SATA Western Digital Raptor WD740GD 74GB SATA Western Digital Raptor X 150GB SATA Western Digital Raptor WD1500ADFD 150GB SATA |
OS | Windows XP Professional |
OS updates | Service Pack 2 |
Our test system was powered by OCZ PowerStream power supply units. The PowerStream was one of our Editor’s Choice winners in our last PSU round-up.
We used the following versions of our test applications:
- WorldBench 5.0
- Intel IOMeter v2004.07.30
- Xbit Labs File Copy Test v1.0 beta 13
- TCD Labs HD Tach v3.01
- Far Cry v1.3
- DOOM 3
- Intel iPEAK Storage Performance Toolkit 3.0
The test systems’ Windows desktop was set at 1280×1024 in 32-bit color at an 85Hz screen refresh rate. Vertical refresh sync (vsync) was disabled for all tests.
All the tests and methods we employed are publicly available and reproducible. If you have questions about our methods, hit our forums to talk with us about them.
WorldBench overall performance
WorldBench uses scripting to step through a series of tasks in common Windows applications. It then produces an overall score. WorldBench also spits out individual results for its component application tests, allowing us to compare performance in each. We’ll look at the overall score, and then we’ll show individual application results alongside the results from some of our own application tests.
As expected, the WD1500ADFD joins the Raptor X at the head of the class in WorldBench. Seagate’s Barracuda 7200.10 isn’t all that far off the pace, though.
Multimedia editing and encoding
MusicMatch Jukebox
Windows Media Encoder
Adobe Premiere
VideoWave Movie Creator
Scores are generally close across WorldBench’s multimedia editing and encoding tests, but the Raptors manage to distance themselves from the competition a little in Adobe Premiere.
Adobe Photoshop
ACDSee PowerPack
ACDSee shows a small advantage for the Raptors, with the WD1500ADFD completing the test just one second slower than the Raptor X.
Multitasking and office applications
Microsoft Office
Mozilla
Mozilla and Windows Media Encoder
Neither the Raptor X nor the WD1500ADFD manage to break free of the pack in WorldBench’s multitasking and office tests.
Other applications
Winzip
Nero
The new Raptors have a field day in Nero, beating most of the field by more than 30 seconds. Seagate’s Barracuda 7200.10 finishes a close third, though, and even manages to win by a hair in Winzip.
To test system boot and game level load times, we busted out our trusty stopwatch.
It may not lead the field, but the WD1500ADFD does rather well in our boot and level load time tests. Western Digital’s latest firmware revision may be responsible for the drive’s performance edge over the Raptor X in the system boot and Far Cry level load tests.
File Copy Test is a pseudo-real-world benchmark that times how long it takes to create, read, and copy files in various test patterns. File copying is tested twice: once with the source and target on the same partition, and once with the target on a separate partition. Scores are presented in MB/s.
Although it’s by a generally modest margin, the WD1500ADFD is consistently faster than the Raptor X in FC-Test’s file creation tests. The newer Raptors all but dominate this test, with the 7,200-RPM competition only drawing close with the Windows and Programs test patterns. Those test patterns use a greater number of smaller files than the MP3, ISO, and Install test patterns, which favor fewer, larger files.
The WD1500ADFD is less dominating in FC-Test’s read tests, in part thanks to the strong performance of Seagate’s perpendicular 7200.10. Still, the WD1500ADFD’s average write speed across all five test patterns is good enough for second place overall behind the Barracuda.
Western Digital and Seagate continue to duke it out in FC-Test’s file copy tests, with the Raptor WD1500ADFD favoring smaller files than the Barracuda 7200.10. The rest of the 7,200-RPM field, and even the Raptor WD740GD, are well off the pace.
We’ve developed a series of disk-intensive multitasking tests to highlight the impact of command queuing on hard drive performance. You can get the low-down on these iPEAK-based tests here. The mean service time of each drive is reported in milliseconds, with lower values representing better performance.
Although it can’t quite match the DiamondMax 10 in our iPEAK multitasking tests, the Raptor WD1500ADFD is easily the second most consistent drive in the field. It’s even a little faster than the Raptor X in our first wave of tests, and unlike the Barracuda 7200.10, its performance characteristics don’t favor one multitasking scenario at the expense of another.
The WD1500ADFD continues its consistent iPEAK multitasking performance through our second wave of tests. It never quite catches the DiamondMax 10, but proves just a little bit quicker than the Raptor X.
IOMeter presents a good test case for command queuing, so the NCQ-less Western Digital Caviar SE16 and Raptor WD740GD should have a slight disadvantage here under higher loads.
The Raptor shows its enterprise roots in our IOMeter tests and completely dominates the competition. Our WD1500ADFD’s newer firmware apparently improves performance over our older Raptor X with higher I/O loads, as well.
As one might expect, the WD1500ADFD’s IOMeter response rates are lower than every other drive we tested, including the Raptor X.
IOMeter CPU utilization is under 0.5% nearly across the board. Note that the WD1500ADFD uses fewer CPU cycles than our Raptor X, though.
We tested HD Tach with the benchmark’s full variable zone size setting.
It’s hard to compete with the Raptor’s 10K-RPM spindle speed, and the WD1500ADFD easily dominates HD Tach’s sustained transfer rate tests. The drive is a little faster than the Raptor X, and both have a clear advantage over the Barracuda 7200.10.
Unfortunately, the WD1500ADFD’s lack of support for 300 MB/s Serial ATA transfer rates caps its performance in HD Tach’s read burst speed test. The Raptor’s still one of the fastest 150 MB/s drives, but its burst speed is more than 100 MB/s slower than the Barracuda 7200.10.
Thanks to their 10K-RPM spindle speeds, the Raptors have always offered much quicker access times than typical desktop hard drives. The WD1500ADFD is no exception, although its predecessor, the WD740GD, is actually a little faster in this test.
CPU utilization scores are within HD Tach’s +/- 2% margin for error in this test.
Noise levels were measured with an Extech 407727 Digital Sound Level meter 1″ from the side of the drives at idle and under an HD Tach seek load. Drives were run with the PCB facing up.
The WD1500ADFD’s windowless design makes less noise than the Raptor X, and is reasonably quiet at idle. However, under a seek load, the WD1500ADFD is noticeably louder than most of the competition.
Power consumption
For our power consumption tests, we measured the voltage drop across a 0.1-ohm resistor placed in-line with the 5V and 12V lines connected to each drive. Through the magic of Ohm’s Law, we were able to calculate the power draw from each voltage rail and add them together for the total power draw of the drive.
Despite its faster spindle speed, the WD1500ADFD’s power consumption is pretty reasonable.
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.
![]() Western Digital Raptor WD1500ADFD June 2006 |
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.
Seems to me like 10k needs perpendicular storage before it can really get away from drives like the 7200.10. I mean, yeah it’s faster and all, but not by enough really.
The thing is silent idle. Totally silent. Might hear it if you stuck a stethoscope to it. But, when it seeks, you definitely know it.
Hearing fast spinning HDD’s make me want to drill my brain. Are you guys sure a 10K drive is as quite at idle as 7200 one? What are you hearing subjectively?
You are complaining about modern HDD noise? You are ether gearing towards a near-slient setup or have very senstive hearing.
The old school, high-speed HDDs were far louder and hotter. My 74GB Raptor is like a decibel or two louder then my 160GB 7200.8 Seagates.
To be honest, my 36gb raptor isn’t any more audible to me than my 120gb WD drive. *shrug*
EDIT: now the SCSI 10k cheetah’s that I have, well that’s a different story.
Just think how in the last 6 or so years that hard drives have hardly sped up more than about 50%. 🙂 I have a 13.6 GB 512 K cache-equipped 7200 RPM Quantum Fireball Plus KX from 1999 that is not all that much noticeably slower than my new 16 MB cache 250 GB SATA 3.0 WD’s. But it is a LOT louder lol. Wonderful seek sounds on that beast, and the ball bearings have a lovely eardrum-shattering whine.
Getting excited over hard drives is a bit odd. They are the worst part of our systems in every measurement other than size.
Don’t forget optical, USB devices, Network devices, alsog{
i would be curious though how this would compare with a 147 gig 15k scsi drive. i’ve been thinking of getting a raptor and i wonder how much performance i would lose
§[<http://www.storagereview.com/articles/200601/WD1500ADFD_3.html<]§ Sorry to externally linkg{<.<}g
yeah you can find anyhting at storage review, but i wanted some TR love 😉
I never did understand how you can measure level load time in ‘I/O’s per second’
I would think a lot personally. On my work computer I have a 147 GB Atlas 15K II hooked to a Adaptec U320 card and the thing is super duper fast ;). It seems as fast if not faster than my RAID 6 at home for single apps.
I have a couple of the original 36 gig Raptors that I presently use on my main machine as a Photoshop scratch disk. I originally bought those baby Raptors to use as OS disks on my two machines. I replaced the baby Raptors with the 74 gig Raptors when the 74’s were announced. After living with Raptors since they first came out I gotta say that as good as the 74 Raptors are [and they are good] I now feel that I should have gone with 15k scsi for an OS disk — at least my main Photoshop machine. I figure that yes, a scsi & controler setup is probably twice the price of a Raptor & sata combo BUT the scsi setup [for your OS disk] is going to be upgrade proof for several years. So I won’t upgrade from my 74’s to a 150 cause I’m going to go 15k scsi next time.
Yawn. These incremental improvements are nice, but wake me when hybrid drives become mainstream in price.
Is it silly to want to see numbers twice as fast on the boot/game load benches?
I’d prefer a mirror over a window, so I could admire my tats.
you misspelled tatas.
I think he means tats, as in tattos…
I’d take size over speed, any day of the week.
Why not settle for the best of both worlds? Speed for boot/scratch disk and space for data storage. 😉
….
Not to be a arse or anything but isn’t this article sort of redundant given all that seperates this drive from the Raptor X is a window and a bit newer firmware? There’s already a Raptor X article too :l
They need a 15k SCSI gamer article XD
I think part of it was to compare to “Seagate’s latest perpendicular Barracuda 7200.10”, as per the article description.
Can’t wait for the first perpendicular Raptors.
Same here, it may take a while for engineers to design a reliable perpendicular motor.
Perpendicular…. MOTOR?
Please tell me that you’re short on sleep. Perpendicular drives use the same kind of motors, same tech for most everything, the difference is in the platters.
The header is also different too. I am just saying that it is a bit premature to rush for 15K Perpendicular without knowing what long-term could arise. I doubt any HDD company wants to undergo another Deathstar fiscso.
Greetings!
Two things:
– This review is six months late
– Is TR planning on reviewing the WD740ADFD?
§[<http://print.tweakers.net/?reviews/621<]§
I was wondering about that too. They’re available for like $150 on newegg. 16mb cache is juicy.
How come you’re just now getting around to this?
§[<https://techreport.com/reviews/2006q1/wd-raptorx/index.x?pg=1<]§
Has anyone seen any english reviews (not the tweakers.net one) of the 74gb ADFD drives?
nevermindg{<.<}g bad eyes.
Raptors rule.
They did by a large amount at one time, but that lead has slowly been shrinking away. HD manufactures havn’t been standing still, and some impressive new drives have been released recently (perpendicular technology for one). I’m just gonna have to go read the review now to find out exactly.
And your comment is just as stupid, if not more stupid than the “first post” non-sense we’ve had to endure.
10K RPM speed offers random seek times that 7200RPM HDDs simply cannot match even perpendicular drives.
Mainstream drives are just catching-up in STR (Sustained Transfer Rate) via higher areal density.
As you can see from the results in the article perpendicular technology doesn’t really help speed much, if any. The 750GB drive blends in very well in the graphs with all the other drives, including previous Barracudas. In theory density can help in several areas with speed, but it doesn’t really show here. 188GB platters aren’t really revoluationary coming after 160GB, and obviously raw RPMs are still the dominant benefactor.
From reading the article, the 10K RPM speed does not seem to matter very much. Are Raptor drives faster? Definitely.
Enough faster to make the 10K vs 7.2K spindle speed relevant? Not compared to the modern 7200.10 drive.
The lead has shrunk too much for the Raptors to be declared a superior drive in every aspect. WDC really needs to add some new technology to their flagship drive.
Perpendicular reads/writes might add some speed, and of course supporting 300MB/sec transfers would allow them to win every chart… for a time.
300MB/sec don’t matter at all. You see the sustained transfer rate? Not even half of the 150MB/sec?
SATA 2.0 spec support isn’t going to do much.
You have never seen a 10K-15K HDD in action then. 😉
STR is simply how much data is transfer over the cable to memory or whatever. Random seek time is how fast the HDD is able to do a quick access to data a.k.a latency. 7200RPM HDDs need a couple of improvements in areal density if they ever hope of beating the new Raptors in random seek time.
Oaky doaky sarge.
Yeah, what a party pooper.