Western Digital intros 2.5-inch 10,000RPM VelociRaptor HDD

Western Digital has been flaunting its VelociRaptor for some time now, but the drive you've been slamming into towers is now available for low-power, high-performance blade server applications. The 2.5-inch, 10,000RPM enterprise SATA drive (WD3000BLFS) is specially designed to fit snugly within 1U and 2U rack servers, and aside from consuming 35% less power than the previous Raptor drive, this one is available with up to 300GB of capacity. You'll also find 16MB of cache and a 1.4 million mean time before failure rating, though you won't be able to procure one until later this month for an undisclosed price.

[Hydra Posted Jul 23rd 2008 9:55PM]

a bit expensive , but great, i love my 10k 70gb drive

[(Unverified) Posted Jul 23rd 2008 10:02PM]

Add mine to the "mean time between failures." In my day MTBF was in years ...

[Alex Posted Jul 23rd 2008 10:19PM]

So when will they stick a 10k-er in a laptop sized box eh?

[kobachi Posted Jul 23rd 2008 10:24PM]

I want to know who is getting paid to write these press releases. I count at least twelve uses of "enterprise" in the main press release...nothing like keyword spam, I guess.

[(Unverified) Posted Jul 24th 2008 1:50AM]

Ctrl+F says 15.
Very true, though - that's pretty bad on their part :P

[Wwhat Posted Jul 23rd 2008 11:39PM]

Here's an idea for WD, since they obviously use small size because the platters get so much tension at 10K speeds:
Put the disk attachment with some sort of bearings, and the drive, on the outside edge instead of the center of the disc, and why you might ask? because first off you have a larger contact area so you don't have an axle that heats up so much, and secondly you get a nice multi sided buffering of the disk,
Concept ASCII of sideholder whic holds some kind of bearing and driving mechanism:
_ _
| -------------------disc
¯ ¯
A little innovation never harmed nobody. (except the people in target areas of course)

[ACER Posted Jul 24th 2008 12:36AM]

Yeah, to hell with hiring engineers! They should just read Engadget and learn how to make hard drives from the armchair experts who post here.

[Wwhat Posted Jul 24th 2008 9:31AM]

Yeah let's all stick to steampower, it's a proven technology and learned engineers make steamengines..
Try to read up on history and how long it took engineers to think up the most obvious things, and to accept innovation.

[Alex Posted Jul 24th 2008 11:34AM]

_ _
| -------------------dick
¯ ¯

[Wwhat Posted Jul 24th 2008 12:57PM]

Yeah nobody saw that coming, nobody knew 12yo's post on engadget so that's a big surprise there.

[NachoPATA Posted Jul 29th 2008 2:42PM]

The big problem with the disk spinning faster is the speed of sound. Besides, the best performance is on the outermost edge (spins the fastest), so why waste it with a drive mechanism there?

Maybe they should make adjustable angle delta winged disk heads and run them up to Mach 3?!?

[Wwhat Posted Jul 30th 2008 2:14AM]

I think I outlined the theoretical advantages, and I don't get why you think the best performance is on the outside since the data is packed together more tightly near the center obviously, and they are now making 2.5" drives with cooling fins to get them to a 3.5" formfactor (the basis of my thinking they have trouble with 3.5" platters at 10K) so they could easily extend the 2.5" platter to attach the imaginary drivemechanism if that mechanism enabled them to use larger platters.
Which brings me to another thing I wonder about, since we all have free 5-1/4 bays why do they not use that fact to fabricate slightly larger drives for desktop systems, as long as it fits in those slots it would sell I bet.

Which links me of another idea I had some time ago, make 2 arms (with heads) on opposite sides of the platter (viewed from above), that way data is read twice as quick and arrives under the head twice as quick and you can use 'slow' disks of 7200RPM or even the 5K ones and yet get high-speed 10K -like disk performance, only issue would be the size of the device which you can just extend and fit in those CD/DVD bays that are now often not used.
Try to argue with that one without saying "Oh you aren't certified to use your brain, please don't it upsets the balance of our universe"

[(Unverified) Posted Jul 24th 2008 6:03AM]

Well, I sure do hope WD does not save costs like Samsung does by not supporting 1.5 Gb/s mainboards anymore with their latest drives:
http://blog.techflaws.org/2008/07/22/samsung-hd753lj-sata-hdd-750-gb/

I gave this one to my sister to put into her external USB case so I can use her WD 500 GB Caviar green. Better for a media PC anyway.

[(Unverified) Posted Jul 24th 2008 12:05PM]

Hey, thats can fit in a xbox 360 drive!!

[kris2lee Posted Jul 27th 2008 5:26AM]

This is plain wrong that no current hard drive does not go over USB 2.0 speed limitation.

These drives in the article definitely do and also new 1 TB drives from Samsung and WD do also (I do not have experience with others).

60 MB/sec that is upper limit for USB 2.0 is minimum read speed for new drives.

[(Unverified) Posted Oct 5th 2008 2:43AM]

Well, I just bought one of these bad boys for my desktop, but decided to try it out in my laptop first. It did indeed fit inside the second HDD bay in my Toshiba X205-S9810, (with a little TLC, and minus the mount that is on the existing hard drive). And apperently my laptop does NOT supply 12v power at the hard drives :( (I know....already discussed, but I wanted to try anyway). It simply did not power up, and failed to show up in the BIOS. So, oh well........on to my new gaming rig.