Western Digital releases 1TB VelociRaptor 10,000RPM HDD

18 Apr 12 12:56 by in category Hard Disk Drives

Before Solid State Drives started grabbing the market, Western Digital was the only company to offer a 10,000RPM SATA Hard Disk for the consumer market. Even today, their VelociRaptor series are the only 10,000RPM SATA HDDs available, at least without turning to expensive server grade SCSI based HDDs the other HDD manufacturers have.

Western Digital have now announced its latest VelociRaptor addition, a 1TB model which features SATA3 (6Gbps), 64MB of cache, 3 x 333GB platters and the same fast 10,000RPM spindle as previous models. This is a 2.5″ HDD fitted inside a 3.5″ heat-sink frame, which in turn fits within a standard 3.5″ bay. It also features Rotary Acceleration Feed Forward (RAFF) technology to optimise operation/performance even when used in an environment with heavy vibration, such as alongside multiple HDDs. Finally, it features NoTouch ramp load technology to ensure the recording head never touches the surface.

The VelociRaptor series is now available in capacities of 250GB, 500GB and 1TB, with suggested retail prices of $160, $210 and $320 respectively. These models also include a 5-year warranty.

7 Comments on Western Digital releases 1TB VelociRaptor 10,000RPM HDD

Bakst0ne
Posts: 92
Posted on: 18 Apr 12 14:13
I will never ever purchase a WD disk again, I had three of them and all broke within a year or so and I didn't have good experience with the warranty. While these disks sound great, I'll leave them to someone else...
olddancer
Posts: 285
Posted on: 18 Apr 12 16:27
10,000 rpm? Does that mean that they will self destruct 33% faster than their 7,500 rpm offerings?
vroom
Posts: 7490
Posted on: 18 Apr 12 16:59
Quote:
Originally Posted by olddancer View Post
10,000 rpm? Does that mean that they will self destruct 33% faster than their 7,500 rpm offerings?
Good one, but the five year warranty shows a lot of faith on the product.
I wonder how much improvement there would be if they had, lets say, 32GB NAND for caching.
CDan
Posts: 3913
Posted on: 18 Apr 12 17:38
I've had a half dozen Raptors dating back to when they were first introduced. All are still running and up till last year were all running 24/7 for many years. WD Enterprise class drives are as well built as anything out there. There are faster drives now days if you look only at sustained transfer speeds, but the Raptor prevails for access times. Perfect for servers and other multitasking applications.

I'll add that WD warranty service is quite good, but I only had to use it once many years ago.

The 2TB Caviar Black SATA-3 drives are actually faster for sustained transfers.

It's unfortunate that WD and Seagate are forced to sell super-cheap HDDs to maintain a market advantage, but neither should be judged based on performance or durability of those low-end drives. I for one am glad that WD is dedicated to continue making high-end enterprise drives.
alan1476
Posts: 18368
Posted on: 18 Apr 12 18:44
Personally that nice of WD but even if I didnt have SSDs, I would use the 15,000 RPM Seagate Cheetah. If you look closely on some site they sell Cheetahs as fibre drive, all you have to do is unplug the adapter on the fibre drive and you have an SATA drive.
tmc8080
Posts: 965
Posted on: 19 Apr 12 03:34
My bet is SDXC 1tb (maybe not 1st generation) cards will blow away HDD's when they can get the transfer speeds much higher than 20MB/sec.
zeljkoni
Posts: 3
Posted on: 25 Jun 12 21:25
I advice not to buy WD atm, i sow bunch fail produced after factory flood.... and no reply from WD RMA
Tell us, what do you think about

Western Digital releases 1TB VelociRaptor 10,000RPM HDD

Most popular headlines

Windows Blue to allow boot to desktop and brings start menu back? (3)

  • Tue 16 Apr 16:12 by DoMiN8ToR
  • Software, Windows 8

The upcoming update of Windows 8 might allow users to boot to the desktop again.

Jobs in US entertainment industry on all-time high - piracy?! (8)

The number of jobs in the film and music industry in the United States has increased despite the claimed negative effects of illegal downloads.

The Piratebay domain moves to Greenland - circumvents blockade (3)

The PirateBay has moved to the domain thepiratebay.gl in fear that their previous domain would be ceased by Swedish authorities

Intel 9 series chipset has native SATA Express (SATA over PCIe) support (2)

A Chinese tech site has posted a picture that reveals details on Intel's 9 series chipset.

See all headlines

Active Commenters