WD Begins Shipping VelociRaptor Hard Drives
Company calls the 450 GB and 600 GB units “the only 10,000-RPM SATA hard drives on the market today.”
Western Digital’s VelociRaptor 450 GB and 600 GB hard drives have begun shipping. The latest iteration of WD’s 10,000-RPM SATA family of hard drives are designed for blade servers, high-performance PCs, Mac computers, and professional workstations, as well as 1U and 2U rack servers that require a balance of high performance and capacity.† 
WD calls its VelociRaptor hard drive “the only 10,000 RPM SATA hard drive on the market today.” WD also says the hard drive comes packed with twice the capacity of its predecessors and up to a 15 percent performance increase over the previous generation.
Indeed, the WD VelociRaptor hard drive packs up to 600 GB of capacity into a 2.5-inch enterprise form factor. It 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) for cooling when installed in a high-performance desktop chassis and 3.5-inch HDD form factor chassis.
“WD is a leader in the performance and reliability of enterprise SATA hard drives,” said WD vice president and general manager Tom McDorman says his company is “a leader in the performance and reliability of enterprise SATA hard drives.” Moreover, he says the market is thirsty for these types of WD solutions.
“Demand for performance combined with an increase in capacity continues to rise and WD is the leader in this category. WD customers can rely on the new WD VelociRaptor to deliver high performance under the harshest conditions, while continuing to keep user data safe.”
Features of the new WD VelociRaptor hard drives include:
- SATA 6 Gb/s interface and 32 MB for increased speedAvailable SATA drives in capacities up to 600 GB
- Cooler operation
- IcePack mounting frame around the 2.5-inch WD VelociRaptor with a built-in heat sink
- Rotary Acceleration
- Feed Forward for optimization of operation and performance
- NoTouch ramp load technologyROHS compliance.
WD’s 3.5-inch VelociRaptors with IcePack (models WD4500HLHX and WD6000HLHX) are available now via select distributors and resellers.
WD’s 2.5-inch VelociRaptors (models WD4500BLHX and WD6000BLHX) are under evaluation with OEM customers and will be available through select commercial distributors by the end of the quarter.
MSRP for the WD VelociRaptor 450 GB (model WD4500HLHX) is $299, and the 600 GB (model WD6000HLHX) is $329.†
