Designed "... specifically for PC and Mac enthusiasts and professional workstations," Western Digital's VelociRaptor drives succeed their previous Raptor offerings and are themselves (like the Raptors before them) SATA drives boasting a 10,000 RPM platter speed. The VelociRaptors feature a 1.4 million hour MTBF rating and a 5 year warranty; and are initially served with a capacity of 300 GB.

Performance of the drive is clocked at 120 MB/sec (buffer to disk sustained transfer rate) with a 3 Gb/sec SATA interface. A 16 MB cache is standard.

Features of the drive include the vendor's Rotary Acceleration Feed Forward (RAFF) technology, which seeks to optimize the performance of the drive (minimizing vibration-related performance drains) when specifically utilized in multidrive systems; SecurePark technology, which places the recording heads off the disk surface during spin up/down and when the drive is off; and a mounting frame with a built-in heat sink. This latter feature, called "IcePack," is an enclosure built around the drive itself (the drive is a 2.5 inch drive; but the IcePack mounting frame is designed for installation in standard 3.5 inch bays).

The VelociRaptors are expected to be available in Mid-May with an MSRP of about $300.

Contact Western Digital for further information.

product submission by EITPlanet Staff

E-Mail this page to a colleague
send info about WD VelociRaptor

Suggest a link
for the WD VelociRaptor fact sheet