WD announced today that it is now shipping WD VelociRaptor
450 GB and 600 GB hard drives, the next generation of its
10,000 RPM SATA family of hard drives.
The new WD VelociRaptor hard drive is designed for blade
servers, high-performance PCs, Mac computers, professional
workstations, as well as 1U and 2U rack servers that require
a balance of high performance and capacity. As the only
10,000 RPM SATA hard drive on the market today, the WD
VelociRaptor hard drive now comes packed with twice the
capacity and up to 15% performance increase over the
previous generation, WD said.
The WD
VelociRaptor hard drive is built with enterprise-class
mechanics that provide 24x7 durability under
high-performance demands and packs up to 600 GB of capacity
into a 2.5-inch enterprise form factor. The WD VelociRaptor
drive is also available in the IcePack? enclosure, a
3.5-inch mounting frame with a built-in heat sink - a
factory customization that fits the drive into a standard
3.5-inch system bay and keeps this drive extra cool when
installed in a desktop chassis and 3.5-inch HDD form factor
enterprise chassis.
Features of the new WD VelociRaptor hard drives include:
- SATA 6 Gb/s interface and 32 MB cache
enhance the next
generation 10,000 RPM WD VelociRaptor making it up to 15%
faster than the award-winning previous generation.
- WD VelociRaptor SATA drives are available in capacities
up to 600 GB, double the capacity of the previous
generation.
- Designed and manufactured to mission-critical
enterprise-class standards to provide enterprise reliability
in high duty cycle environments. With 1.4 million hours
MTBF, these drives have the highest available reliability
rating on a high capacity SATA drive.
- Cool operation - Consumes no more power than the previous
generation WD VelociRaptor while offering double the
capacity and higher performance.
- IcePack mounting frame - The 2.5-inch WD VelociRaptor is
enclosed in a backplane-ready 3.5-inch enterprise-class
mounting frame with a built-in heat sink that keeps the
drive extra cool when installed in high-performance desktop
chassis.
- Rotary Acceleration Feed Forward (RAFF) - Optimizes
operation and performance when the drives are used in
vibration-prone, multi-drive chassis.
- NoTouch ramp load technology - The recording head never
touches the disk media ensuring significantly less wear to
the recording head and media as well as better drive
protection in transit.
WD VelociRaptor (model WD4500HLHX and WD6000HLHX - 3.5-inch
version with IcePack) hard drives are available now at
select distributors and resellers. WD VelociRaptor 2.5-inch
hard drives (model WD4500BLHX and WD6000BLHX) are under
evaluation with WD's OEM customers and will be available
through select commercial distributors within this quarter.
Manufacturer's Suggested Retail Price (MSRP) for the WD
VelociRaptor 450 GB (model WD4500HLHX) is $299 USD and the
600 GB (model WD6000HLHX) is $329 USD.