WD Announces Velociraptor SATA Hard Drive

WD announced that it is now shipping WD VelociRaptor hard drives, the next generation of its 10,000 RPM SATA "Raptor" series of drives. Designed with an enterprise-class foundation, the new WD VelociRaptor hard drive is modified specifically for PC and Mac enthusiasts and professional workstations. According to the press release, the WD VelociRaptor hard drive comes packed with twice the capacity and a 35 percent performance increase over the previous generation. 

From the bloodlines of the WD Raptor, the WD VelociRaptor hard drive is built with enterprise-class mechanics and packs 300 GB of storage capacity into a 2.5-inch enterprise form factor. The 2.5-inch WD VelociRaptor drive is enclosed in the IcePack, a 3.5-inch mounting frame with a built-in heat sink -- a customization that fits the drive into a standard 3.5-inch system bay and keeps this powerful drive extra cool when installed in a high-performance desktop chassis.

Features of the new WD VelociRaptor hard drives include:

• 10,000 RPM, SATA 3 Gb/s interface, 16 MB cache.
• 1.4 million hours MTBF.
• The 2.5-inch WD VelociRaptor drives are enclosed in a 3.5-inch enterprise-class mounting frame with a built-in heat sink.
• Rotary Acceleration Feed Forward (RAFF) - Optimizes performance when the drives are used in vibration-prone, multi-drive chassis.
• SecurePark - Parks the recording heads off the disk surface during spin up, spin down and when the drive is off. This ensures the recording head never touches the disk surface.

WD VelociRaptor (model WD3000GLFS) hard drives will be available on Alienware's high-performance ALX gaming desktop by the end of April. At launch, Alienware will offer two 300 GB WD VelociRaptor hard drives in RAID 0 configuration on www.alienware.com. WD VelociRaptor hard drives will be shipping exclusively through Alienware this month and will be available through the company's online store and at select distributors and resellers mid-May. Manufacturer's Suggested Retail Price (MSRP) for the WD VelociRaptor 300 GB is $299.99 USD.