Western Digital on Thursday announced its enterprise-class 10,000RPM 2.5-inch drive designed for rack-mounted servers. The 10K VelociRaptor is designed for blade servers and 1U and 2U rack servers, and offers up to 300GB of capacity, while consuming 35 percent less power than the previous-generation WD Raptor drive, the company claims. WD said that the drive will be manufactured for high reliability in high duty cycle environments, resulting in the highest available reliability rating of any SATA drive at 1.4 million hours MTBF. It features a 3Gb/sec SATA interface and 16MB for maximum performance.

"WD is bringing to enterprise customers what PC enthusiasts already appreciate about the WD VelociRaptor: a combination of high performance and high capacity for hard drive storage," said John Rydning, IDC's research director for hard disk drives. "WD's new WD VelociRaptor, designed specifically for the enterprise in an energy efficient 2.5-inch form factor, gives system OEMs and end users a new storage option to consider to meet growing storage requirements."

The drive features Rotary Acceleration Feed Forward (RAFF) technology that optimizes performance when the drives are used in vibration-prone, multi-drive chassis and NoTouch ramp load technology so 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.

The WD VelociRaptor 2.5-inch hard drives (model WD3000BLFS) are currently under evaluation with OEM customers and will be available through select commercial distributors by the end of the month.