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.

[b4cheung @ Jul 23rd 2008 9:04PM]

Wait... So these will work in a laptop?

[Kurt @ Jul 23rd 2008 9:06PM]

Doh, you beat me too it.

[Matt @ Jul 23rd 2008 9:51PM]

No.

[El Taco @ Jul 23rd 2008 11:42PM]

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)

[Kamokazi @ Jul 24th 2008 12:32AM]

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.

[Rick White @ Jul 24th 2008 9:02AM]

Laptop hard-drives are 1.8" or smaller. I was wondering the same thing, though: when is the new laptop line coming out?

[schmitty338 @ Jul 24th 2008 9:19AM]

"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.

[TomFox @ Jul 24th 2008 12:41PM]

*Clap Clap* Thank you!

[Nacho PATA @ Jul 29th 2008 2:19PM]

I want a 1.8" to fit in my ASUS R2H!

Just remember, 80C isn't hot, if you are a thermophile bacteria.

[Kurt @ Jul 23rd 2008 9:05PM]

Hm... I wonder if it could fit in a laptop...

[MadMike @ Jul 23rd 2008 10:55PM]

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.

[kal326 @ Jul 24th 2008 9:49AM]

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.

[who? @ Jul 23rd 2008 9:05PM]

Wow! This thing is smokin'!

[sD @ Jul 23rd 2008 9:12PM]

ps3?

[Mam00th @ Jul 23rd 2008 9:18PM]

That would be a waste?

Yes, yes it would be.

[vileta2 @ Jul 23rd 2008 11:55PM]

Haha I was just thinking the same thing. But I think he's right, it'd be wasteful.

[Nacho PATA @ Jul 29th 2008 3:14PM]

why?

[Arm51 @ Jul 23rd 2008 9:12PM]

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

[deyanimay @ Jul 23rd 2008 9:16PM]

The 2.5" WD Veloci Raptor is enclosed in a 3.5" enterprise-class mounting frame.

[Stets @ Jul 23rd 2008 9:19PM]

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.

[Mam00th @ Jul 23rd 2008 9:19PM]

Like denayimay said, it's a 2.5' hdd in a 3.5' enclosing for better cooling.

[Mam00th @ Jul 23rd 2008 9:22PM]

2,5'' and 3,5'' sorry

Freaking huge drive otherwise...

[rayw @ Jul 23rd 2008 9:23PM]

@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

[Ruben @ Jul 23rd 2008 9:23PM]

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.

[Arm51 @ Jul 23rd 2008 9:27PM]

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)!

[barry99705 @ Jul 23rd 2008 9:16PM]

As long as your laptop can take a 15mm thick drive, sure. Most laptop drives are 9mm.

[Towncivilian @ Jul 23rd 2008 9:16PM]

1.4 million mean time before failure what? 1.4 million seconds?

[rayw @ Jul 23rd 2008 9:31PM]

@Towncivilian

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mean_time_between_failures

[Hung @ Jul 23rd 2008 10:05PM]

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.

[Wwhat @ Jul 24th 2008 12:11AM]

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.

[Wwhat @ Jul 24th 2008 12:18AM]

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

[Arm51 @ Jul 23rd 2008 9:19PM]

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."

[Arm51 @ Jul 23rd 2008 9:20PM]

Yeah, I need to read better...

[Mam00th @ Jul 23rd 2008 9:21PM]

Does anyone know why there isn't 15k RPM SATA HDD?

[Zeth Ethereal @ Jul 23rd 2008 9:51PM]

there is...check newegg

[Mam00th @ Jul 23rd 2008 9:58PM]

Well I just cheked and all I see is 15000 RPM SAS drives. Are you sure there are 15000 RPM SATA drives?

[Ron @ Jul 23rd 2008 10:10PM]

SAS = Serial Attached Sata

[Zach @ Jul 23rd 2008 10:13PM]

SAS drives are SATA drives, it stands for Serial Attached SCSI Drive.

[Hung @ Jul 23rd 2008 10:27PM]

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.

[Wwhat @ Jul 24th 2008 12:24AM]

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.

[Reese @ Jul 24th 2008 2:06AM]

SAS = Serial Attached SCSI
SATA = Serial ATA

Saying SAS and SATA are the same is like saying SCSI and ATA are the same.

[Mam00th @ Jul 24th 2008 9:41AM]

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.

[TomTom2007 @ Jul 23rd 2008 9:37PM]

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

[Mam00th @ Jul 23rd 2008 9:47PM]

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?

[Irfan @ Jul 24th 2008 8:25AM]

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).

[charlie w @ Jul 23rd 2008 9:43PM]

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

[juzten @ Jul 23rd 2008 10:19PM]

i love wd, they just keep making better and better hardware, thanks wd.
juzten
Daily Free Software

[Yevon @ Jul 23rd 2008 11:31PM]

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?

[A.C.E.R. @ Jul 24th 2008 12:31AM]

Yeah because nobody's buying that Wii, right?

[Yevon @ Jul 24th 2008 9:15AM]

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.