*Exclusive* Western Digital VelociRaptor™ 2 ½” SATA Hard Drive – Initial Looks

It’s been several months now since the almighty VelociRaptor hit the streets.  Many of the old guard Raptor users have immediately up taken this new technology with open arms and seen their systems fly to new all time heights.   On launch there were mutterings of a possible 2 ½” variant of this beast to be unleashed upon the Enterprise sectors that would nicely service blade servers pulling back on energy consumption and a reduction of heat.   Though ultimately providing all parties a very fast unit which would mean data centre’s etc would benefit greatly with its high speed read times.

Today we are swiftly looking into the beast with much more to follow over the forth coming weeks.  Initial results have been extremely good therefore we decided why wait for the big event, lets let you all into what we have been initially finding.  Many Tier Ones and OEMS alike have been putting these rascals through their paces for a few weeks now and the results on high are good.  The usage of these magnificent little beasts can be utilised in many scenarios indeed.  For today though we will briefly focus on a workstation environment as so many of you out there will be wondering how to fill the rack gaining the ultimate performance in pushing out your images.

Key Features of the Western Digital 2 ½” VelociRaptor (Out Thanks to Western Digital PR for the information supplied here)

Engineered for maximum speed! WD VelociRaptor, the newest member of our unique class of 10,000 RPM SATA hard drives, combines a SATA 3 Gb/s interface and 16 MB cache to deliver performance that’s up to 35% faster than its speedy older brother.

Key Features

        Killer speed - Built on the performance bloodlines of WD Raptor®, these 10,000 RPM drives, with SATA 3 Gb/s interface, and 16 MB cache deliver mind-bending performance. Not only are they 35% faster than the previous generation WD Raptor drives, but they also beat out all other competitors in the field.
        Rock-solid reliability - 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.
        Double the capacity - State-of-the-art technology packs twice the capacity per disk compared to its older brother WD Raptor resulting in up to 300 GB of high-performance storage space in this enterprise-class 2.5-inch drive.
        Small form factor - This ultra fast 2.5-inch hard drive is engineered to fit into blade servers and other enterprise storage configurations. (Not designed for use in laptop or notebook computers)
        Ultra-cool operation - WD VelociRaptor consumes 35% less power than the previous generation of WD Raptor.
        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.

Ideal For

Blade servers, performance enthusiast systems, workstations, and low-end servers

Compatibility

Windows
        Windows® Vista/XP/2000
        SATA interface connector on motherboard or SATA host controller*

Many eagle eyes will have noted just how low on the actual power consumption of the hard drive actually draws.

(Examples of the number of photos, songs, videos and any other files that can be stored on a hard drive are provided for illustrative purposes only. Your results will vary based on file size and format, settings, features, software and other factors.)