Western Digital is undoubtedly one of the biggest storage manufacturers for both the business and the consumer markets. Among the company's most prestigious products, we also have one that is meant to present computer enthusiasts with a high storage capacity built in a high-speed hard drive. We're talking here about the high-end VelociRaptor drives, which, up until now, could only be used in desktop computer systems.

Fortunately, the company has announced today that its high-end VelociRaptor drives will now be available in a 2.5-inch form factor as well. They are said to be the world's fastest enterprise SATA hard drives, offering a maximum rotational speed of 10000 RPM in an enterprise-class 2.5-inch form factor. Packing 300GB of storage capacity, they are designed for 1U and 2U rack servers. Another significant feature is also their low power consumption level, as these VelociRaptors consume 35 percent less power than the previous generation of WD Raptor drives.

"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." Mr. Rydning added.

Some of the specifications of the new drives include a fast SATA 3GB/s interface and 16MB of cache, which, coupled together with a 1.4 million hours MTBF, enable them to deliver enterprise-class performance. On the downside, Western Digital hasn't provided any details concerning the price range of their new drives but, according to the press release, they are expected to become available at select commercial distributors by the end of the month.

Western Digital's 3.5-inch VelociRaptor hard drives are built using 2.5-inch drives encased in 3.5-inch heatsinks. This solution was conceived to enable a better performance of these high-speed drives.