News

posted on 21 April 2008 16:52

Western Digital has introduced the fastest SATA drive in the world, and the most reliable, the 10,000rpm, 300GB VelociRaptor.

It is a 2.5-inch drive in a 3.5-inch IcePack (pictured below) mounting frame, so that it can be added to desktop PCs or other systems lacking a 2.5-inch drive bay. The mounting frame has a built-in aluminium heat sink which means no extra cooling is required.

Western Digital says it is an enterprise-class drive. With a mean time between failure rating of 1.4 million hours it is the most reliable SATA drive in the world.

Tom McDorman, VP and GM of WD's enterprise business unit, said: "We created WD VelociRaptor hard drives to lead PC enthusiasts into the next era of PC and Mac storage performance and satisfy their insatiable thirst for computing speed. The new WD VelociRaptor delivers the greatest performance and reliability of all SATA hard drives currently on the market."

It has a couple of additional features.

Rotary Acceleration Feed Forward (RAFF) optimises
performance when the drives are used in a vibration-prone, multi-drive chassis. Also the recording heads are parked off the disk at spin up, spin down and when the drive is switched off. The heads never touch the recording surfaces which increases the drive's reliabiliy.

The drive is twice the capacity and 35 percent faster than Western Digital's previous 2.5-inch product. Its speed is helped by a 16MB cache and the SATA II 3Gbit/s interface.

The VelociRaptor (model WD3000GLFS) hard drives will be available through selected distributors and resellers in mid-May. The Manufacturer's Suggest Retail Price (MSRP) is £250.00.

^{Paul Roberts, news editor.}