WD's Velociraptor I/O connection issue resolved with design update
By Joshua Fruhlinger 
posted Aug 14th 2008 6:05AM
posted Aug 14th 2008 6:05AM
UPDATE: Official word from WD on this is as follows: "WD knew they would have the WD VelociRaptor drive ready for PC/WS (Wintel apps) months ahead of the enterprise versions because of the firmware/system validation required in our ESG labs across the thousands of enterprise slots. We decided to come out with GLFS as "Wintel only" and put together a simpler mounting frame for the cabled systems which dominate the PC/WS market. The backplane sled requires the design of an interposer card and extensive signal integrity testing (anyone who has dealt with enterprise applications knows that interposer cards can create nightmares). Instead of delay the introduction of WD VelociRaptor all together, we decided to go with the simple mounting frame while we did our backplane validation along with the firmware, vibration, etc... type validation we do for enterprise."
[Via Crunchgear]
Does WD still have that media protection software inside it's HDDs? I would be pissed if they control what kind of stuff you download even though it's your own HDD.
That's the most ridiculous nonsense I heard in a long time, 'media protection software' on a HD, the one that told you that is making a fool of you.
If something prevents you from storing media it's not the HD, it's either vista or some rootkit software sony happily installed for you while you weren't watching.
Also it should be "its" in that line not "it's", but that's an error we all make all the time.
No, Wwhat, "it's" was right.
"even though [it is] your own HDD."
No no no... the first "it's" is wrong in that case...
Possessive = its
Contraction of it is = it's
The media protection software you heard about is on some of their external hard drives (the ones with ethernet)
I totally missed that one. Man, now I feel silly.
Right... I totally missed the first one. Now I feel silly.
The software you're thinking of is only on WD's "world edition" external NAS drives. And it's not even written by WD, it's from a third party vendor that WD has bundled in.
That's not in the HD, that's in the enclosure software, that has nothing to do with a normal HD.
Not that MS would not happily make it a windows7 requirement of HD's to not be able to store media that didn't have a special encryption and approval.....
It's good to mention such shenanigans though, don't let them get away with such crap.
Thanks for clearing up the mishap for me guys and improving my grammar too. ^.^ "awesome grammar ftw"
It seems like the flawed placement is due to the fact that the drive is actually 2.5" placed within a 3.5" heatsink, so the connectors can't be placed as far to the edge as standard SATA hard drives. I may be wrong though: I thought I read about a 3.5" velociraptor that did not have the heatsink, but all I saw on Western Digital's site was a 2.5" drive without the heatsink.
After looking up backplane, it seems the position of the SATA connections is irrelevant as the backplane drive would have it's own interface.
http://www.wdc.com/en/products/Products.asp?DriveID=495
What's sort of annoying is that the 360 degree view doesn't allow you to see the connectors for the drive from a head-on position which might help people notice the issue. It looks very similar to a normal SATA hard drive though; does anyone know what the actual difference is between this drive, standard backplane drives, and normal SATA drives?
If you strip the casing off it mounts properly in a 2.5 hot swap bay, so the connectors are correctly positioned for its size. What doesn't work is when it is mounted in that casing, which you don't need if you have proper cooling anyway. This is really a 2.5 drive. My guess is that we'll see more and more drives moving down to this form factor and that it will become the standard in the future.
velociraptors are now available in 74gb and 150gb sizes now, they both have 150gb single platters, the 74gb is short-stroked (made 1/2 of it unusable), so they are just as fast as the 300gb version but alot cheaper £96, £125 compared to £188 for the 300gb version.
Also wd has released a 2.5" version which you could use in servers or laptops assuming they can fit the 15mm drive in.
I/O interface FAIL!
Redesign WIN!
I still wonder how this one initially got out the door as an enthusiast/low end enterprise drive without supporting the industry standard interface for a 3.5" drive.
My only complaint about the redesign is they changed the direction of the fins. Most hard drive cooling configurations have fans at the front of the fans blowing towards the rear.
So as long as you're using separate power and SATA connectors there's no problem right? Would be nice if WD dropped the price on these "basically useless" drives.
Does this mean it can fit in the Mac Pro now?