14 DAY TRIAL // The storage industry has seen a strong development of Flash-based Solid State Drives, as these solutions have recently become more affordable, while providing consumers with a noticeable increase in performance, when compared to traditional drives. The launch of SATA 6Gbps interface, however, could further increase the competition between Flash-based drives and traditional hard disk drives, delivering the latter a much-required boost in performance. On that note, Western Digital has announced today the launch of its new generation of VelociRaptor hard drives, featuring the aforementioned SATA interface.
“WD is a leader in the performance and reliability of enterprise SATA hard drives,” said Tom McDorman, vice president and general manager of WD's enterprise business unit. “Demand for performance combined with an increase in capacity continues to rise and WD is the leader in this category. WD customers can rely on the new WD VelociRaptor to deliver high performance under the harshest conditions, while continuing to keep user data safe.”
To name a few of the highlights that make up the new VelociRaptor hard drive from Western Digital, we should mention that it is designed in a 2.5-inch form factor, featuring 10,000RPM platter speed and 32MB of cache. As with the previous generation of VelociRaptors, the fresh drive has been encased in 3.5-inch enterprise-class mounting frame, designed to better protect and keep the 2.5-inch drive cool, ultimately resulting in better performance and reliability. Talking about reliability, it is specified at around 1.4 million MTBF hours.
With the introduction of this drive, Western Digital can now provide its customers with a wide range of high-performance hard drives, part of the VelociRaptor lineup, including 450GB and 600GB capacities, in both SATA 3Gbps and 6Gbps interfaces. The drives are also available in 2.5-inch and 3.5-inch form factors. As far as pricing is concerned, it will be available for around US$299 and US$329, for the 450GB and 600GB models, respectively.