THE FASTEST DESKTOP drive to ever visit our test labs, the Velociraptor is a 10,000 RPM- 300GB hard drive that offers 104MB average read/write speeds. It is 35 percent faster than the earlier performance king the Western Digital Raptor X that won our Best Buy award last year. Apart from the lighting fast transfer rates, the drive also boasts of 6. 5ms access time, again the best in the industry by a long way.

Traditionally the Raptor series from WD has been notorious for high operating temperatures but with the Velociraptor that problem has been sorted out handsomely. The completely reengineered design with a smaller platter size (2.5-inch) allows for a large heat sink that works like a charm. Performance desktops used for gaming or video processing will benefit largely with a Velociraptor under their hood.

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Runners up: THE Western Digital Raptor X 150GB is still the second fastest single drive solution for desktop Pc. If you wish to walk the tight line in terms of a balance of perfor¬mance and storage space the Western Digital WD6400AAKS is a good choice with 320GB platter density, the drive is fast, spacious and affordable as well.