Western Digital has announced it is now shipping the new WD VelociRaptor 1 TB hard drive, the latest addition to its award-winning drive family, the largest capacity 10,000 RPM hard drive on the market today. Designed for high-performance PCs, Mac computers and professional workstations that require a balance of high performance and capacity, the WD VelociRaptor drive is a favorite among enthusiasts and creative professionals. The WD VelociRaptor will also come in capacities of 500 GB and 250 GB.
Leveraging enterprise-class mechanics to provide 24x7 durability under high-performance workloads, the new WD VelociRaptor 1 TB hard drive is geared for creative professionals who demand the ultimate SATA drive.
“Creative pros use write-intensive applications that manage large, dynamic files; for example, video editing and digital content creation and management, which ultimately put a strain on storage devices that utilise write-challenged NAND memory for performance enhancement. WD VelociRaptor’s outstanding read and write performance across the entire disk capacity make it a perfect match for the creative professional and enthusiast who want to optimise their tools, enhance productivity, and increase storage space at the same time”, says Barber Brinkman, Western Digital Sales Manager Benelux and South Africa.
“WD is committed to providing customers with the best performing and most reliable SATA hard drives and our WD VelociRaptor family of drives underscores that promise,” says Darwin Kauffman, vice president and general manager of WD’s enterprise storage. “With ever-increasing demand for greater capacity, the new 1 TB WD VelociRaptor drive delivers the ultimate combination of speed and storage for the power user.”
The WD VelociRaptor 2.5-inch hard drive comes in the IcePack enclosure, a 3.5-inch mounting frame with built-in heat sink - a factory customisation that fits the drive into a standard 3.5-inch system bay and keeps the powerful drive extra cool when installed in a high-performance desktop or workstation system.
Says Anamika Budree, Western Digital Country Manager – South Africa, “The local market is ready for the new and improved VelociRaptor with the increasing demand for power, performance and capacity. The value lies in the combination of a high performance and now high capacity drive which improves read/write speeds as well as the overall performance of the drive. We expect the market to grow further and will see more users adopting this high-performance drive, thanks to the adoption of more ‘standard’ desktop values.”
Features of the WD VelociRaptor hard drives include:
- Super speed - SATA 6 Gb/s interface and 64 MB cache optimise the 10,000 RPM WD VelociRaptor.
- Higher capacity - WD VelociRaptor SATA hard drives employ Advanced Format Technology to achieve capacities up to 1 TB.
- Rock-solid reliability - Designed and manufactured to workstation standards to deliver stellar reliability in high workload environments.
- Ultra-cool operation - Consumes less idle power and uses similar active power as the previous generation WD VelociRaptor while offering greater capacity and performance.
- Rotary Acceleration Feed Forward (RAFF) - Optimises operation and performance when the drives are used in vibration-prone, multi-drive chassis.
- NoTouch ramp load technology - The recording head never touches the disk media ensuring significantly less wear to the recording head and media as well as better drive protection when in transit.
- Environmentally conscious - In addition to being RoHS-compliant, this generation of WD VelociRaptor is also a halogen-free design.
Price and Availability
The VelociRaptor will be available from resellers and select retail outlets.
The recommended retail pricing exclusive of V.A.T. is:
VelociRaptor 250GB – R 1 530,00
VelociRaptor 500GB - R 2 005,00
VelociRaptor 1TB – R 2 850,00
