News

posted on 23 July 2008 15:02

Western Digital's VelociRaptor has sloughed off its 3.5-inch form factor to reveal the skinny but fast 10,000rpm, 2.5-inch SATA drive inside.

WD is now shipping its VelociRaptor in its true 2.5-inch form factor (pictured below), targeted at blade server and 1U/2U rack tray markets. It can have up to 300GB of capacity and boasts a 1.4 million hour MTBF (mean time before failure) rating, the highest rating for any SATA drive. It has a SATA II 3Gbit/s interface and 16GB cache.

John Rydning, IDC's research director for hard disk drives, said: “WD's new 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 when meeting growing storage requirements.”

Tom McDorman, VP and GM WD’s Enterprise Storage Solutions business unit, said: “In the server market, demand for high performance drives continues to shift from the 3.5-inch form factor to the enterprise 2.5-inch form factor. The new 2.5-inch WD VelociRaptor drive is the only drive available that can offer server customers the flexibility of integrating SATA technology while benefiting from server-class performance and reliability.”

WD is posed to ride a transition wave from 3.5-inch drives to 2.5-inch drives. So too are other hard disk drive suppliers.

WD's next-fastest 2.5-inch SATA drive is the 320GB, 7,200rpm Scorpio Black.

Seagate has a 10,000rpm, 2.5-inch Savvio SAS drive offering 300GB and full disk encryption.

WD president and CEO John Coyne has hinted that WD has a SAS VelociRaptor in development. It looks as if a full disk encryption capability will be required as well to better compete with the Savvio.

WD's 2.5-inch VelociRaptors (model code: WD3000BLFS) are under evaluation with OEM customers and will be available by the end of the month through select commercial distributors.

^{[Martin Edwards, news writer.]}