Western Digital intros 2.5-inch 10,000RPM VelociRaptor HDD
By Darren Murph 
posted July 23rd 2008 8:59PM
posted July 23rd 2008 8:59PM
posted July 23rd 2008 8:59PM
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Wait... So these will work in a laptop?
Doh, you beat me too it.
No.
theoretically, but I'm not sure the connections would be the same, and without a heatsink, you could look forward to 3rd degree burns on ur lap (and things near it that could lead to difficulty making children)
No, they don't work in anything close to a normal laptop. These drives are considerably thicker than laptop drives, almost as thick as full size drives.
Laptop hard-drives are 1.8" or smaller. I was wondering the same thing, though: when is the new laptop line coming out?
"Laptop hard-drives are 1.8" or smaller. I was wondering the same thing, though: when is the new laptop line coming out?"
WTF are you talking about? Why do morons such as yourself insist on spewing false information...not only that, but you do it with such confidence that you may actually convince some other ill-informed readers that you actually know what the hell you are talking about.
MOST laptops use 2.5" drives actually, the more informed people above you are correct, however, in stating that this drive is too thick to fit into current laptops.
*Clap Clap* Thank you!
I want a 1.8" to fit in my ASUS R2H!
Just remember, 80C isn't hot, if you are a thermophile bacteria.
Hm... I wonder if it could fit in a laptop...
I don't think so. A lot of these drives use the enterprise SAS connector that won't fit without some artful cutting. Even then, I think the power requirement is too much for a standard laptop.
Not without a little help from your friend Mr Dremel. The height of this drive is 15mm, most laptops will only take drives that are 9.5mm tall. This is also totally disregarding the inevitable heat issue of the drive in operation.
Wow! This thing is smokin'!
ps3?
That would be a waste?
Yes, yes it would be.
Haha I was just thinking the same thing. But I think he's right, it'd be wasteful.
why?
Pardon me if I'm wrong, but I think this is the same thing. It's been on Newegg for a bit now:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822136260&Tpk=VelociRaptor
The 2.5" WD Veloci Raptor is enclosed in a 3.5" enterprise-class mounting frame.
That drive is sold as a complete 3.5" unit because of the attached heatsink. This is a stand-alone 2.5" version without the heatsink for use in servers.
Like denayimay said, it's a 2.5' hdd in a 3.5' enclosing for better cooling.
2,5'' and 3,5'' sorry
Freaking huge drive otherwise...
@Arm51: Actually, the link you gave points to the 3.5" version (WD3000*G*LFS) which has indeed been out for a while now - this is about the 2.5" version (WD3000*B*LFS).
GLFS: http://www.wdc.com/en/products/products.asp?driveid=459
BLFS: http://www.wdc.com/en/products/products.asp?driveid=494
These are the enterprise level drives, which are more likely to reach that 1.4 Million MTBF rating than your standard consumer drives. There is also better built-in error correction that consumer drives generally don't have.
Seagate does the same thing with their ES drives, along with all the other companies.
Whether these are literally the same drives, but just sold at a higher price with features enabled, who knows. If Nvidia and ATI are used as an example, then chances are these enterprise drives are no different.
Yeah, I jumped the gun a bit too early with the post. Damn details are always in the fine print (or in this case, staring you straight in the face)!
As long as your laptop can take a 15mm thick drive, sure. Most laptop drives are 9mm.
1.4 million mean time before failure what? 1.4 million seconds?
@Towncivilian
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mean_time_between_failures
What rayw meant to say, but was too lazy to elaborate, is that MTBF isn't a time frame. It's the inverse of the failure rate. MTTF is the mean time TO failure.
Cliffs:
*MTBF is a rating. 1.4 million = 1/failure rate, failure rate = 0.00000071
*MTTF is a measurement with units of time.
From the site:
With 1.4 million hours MTBF, these drives have the highest available reliability rating on a high capacity SATA drive.
So it's hours.
Here's a definition used by another manufacturer:
Mean Time Between Failure (MTBF) is an indication of the average amount of time that will pass between random failures on a given type of drive. It is generally defined as the number of hours under observation divided by the number of failures.
If the product is in-use or powered-on all the time, then the MTBF is equivalent to the number of hours in a year (8,760 hours) divided by the annual failure rate
And this is from the Features section under the Specifications tab on Newegg:
"The 2.5" WD Veloci Raptor is enclosed in a 3.5" enterprise-class mounting frame."
Yeah, I need to read better...
Does anyone know why there isn't 15k RPM SATA HDD?
there is...check newegg
Well I just cheked and all I see is 15000 RPM SAS drives. Are you sure there are 15000 RPM SATA drives?
SAS = Serial Attached Sata
SAS drives are SATA drives, it stands for Serial Attached SCSI Drive.
SAS allows for the higher voltages required for significantly longer cords that commonly appear on server backplanes. SATA does not support the lengths required by this implementation.
There is no speed* difference between SAS and SATA, since no current hard drive surpasses even USB 2.0's speed limitations.
15K drives are in fact SLOWER than 10K for conventional users. 15K drives typically have half the capacity of 10K and drivers. Thus, for a 50% increase in rotational speed (the extra 5K), the 10K gets 100% more read speed (the doubled storage density). 15K drives benefit servers because people aren't accessing consecutive sets of data on the server's disks. Instead, the drive's needle needs to be able to jump back and forth to access different data fragments. This lowers seek times. Seek times, however, are misleading for end users. 10 milliseconds (1/100th of a second) is NOTHING in desktop usage.10 millisecond delays compound thousands of times, on hundreds of servers, connected to thousands of users, is somewhat noticeable.
Cliffs:
•15K drives don't increase the size of your e-penor.
*Speed is not the single determining factor in regards to SAS vs. SATA. Viable cord length, durability, cost, and interface (WWN vs bus) should also be considered.
Which doesn't explain why there aren't 15K drives with the same density as 10K drives, so his question stands.
I guess as the 'bit' moves under the head at 15K it becomes a bit hard to read them reliably? Not to mention it's noisy and hot to run stuff at these speeds (and heats makes it harder to write a magnetic bit reliably too, especially at such a short timespan) and it requires a sturdiness that's cost-prohibitive I'm sure.
SAS = Serial Attached SCSI
SATA = Serial ATA
Saying SAS and SATA are the same is like saying SCSI and ATA are the same.
Glad to see some people are able to differenciate SAS from SATA!
@Hung
Thanks for the interesting piece information but this doesn't explain why there are no 15k RPM SATA drive. Is it because of the voltage?
As for my "e-penor". Could you please stop talking about the size of my e-genitals in public, it makes me shy.
They are coming, but don't expect any time soon or cheap.
http://www.geek.com/seagate-15000-rpm-drives/
http://arstechnica.com/journals/thumbs.ars/2007/01/16/6650
Well thank you Tomtom, but I was wondering about 15000 rpm SATA hdd, those in your articles are SAS drives. 15k RPM SCSI drive have been out in the wild for a little while now.
Is there some kind of limitation from the SATA interface?
You can buy Savvio drives (SAS interface) right now, have been able to do so for a while.
I have one myself, which I have running of a consumer level motherboard, via a cheapo Dell SAS card (PCI-Express slot).
A ha, now things make more sense. People were curious as to why the VelociRaptor came as a 2.5" drive mounted in a 3.5" heatsink caddie... people thought maybe that the heatsink was completely necessary and that the drive itself was only exactly 2.5" so that they could save money by using existing 2.5" parts and designs... except then why didnt they convert the rear interface to be compatible with 3.5" SATA drive slots?
This is why
And they still should have a legit 3.5" SATA interface on the back of the 3.5" VelociRaptor
i love wd, they just keep making better and better hardware, thanks wd.
juzten
Daily Free Software
Isn't that kind of the idea with tech stuff? If it got worse and worse (like Nintendo/the Wii), who the hell would buy it?
Yeah because nobody's buying that Wii, right?
I love the Wii (I waited 8 hours for it on release day) but it is getting more unimpressive every day, especially with the last E3.