WD's new 10,000 RPM 2.5-inch drives still aren't for laptops

By Nate Mook, BetaNews

July 24, 2008, 4:51 PM

Despite reducing power consumption by 35 percent, Western Digital's new 10,000 RPM 2.5-inch hard drives won't be making an appearance in laptops. The updated VelociRaptor line, with capacities up to 300GB, are designed for 1U and 2U servers.

The new VelociRaptor drives sport a SATA 3 Gb/s interface with 16 MB cache, technology that optimizes the drive if there is vibration, and a reliability rating of 1.4 million hours MTBF. WD is going after a new market for smaller drives in servers, where 3.5-inch drives were previously the norm.

The drives offer 4.2ms read times and 4.7ms write times, with 0.7ms track-to-track seek time. Transfer rates are 120MB/second, and the drive has an average latency of 3ms.

"WD's new WD VelociRaptor, designed specifically for the enterprise in an energy efficient 2.5-inch form factor, gives system OEMs and end users a new storage option to consider to meet growing storage requirements," commented IDC's research director for hard drives John Rydning.

Although 10,000 RPM would provide additional performance for notebook users, the higher speeds would also drain the battery faster and produce more heat. 7,200 RPM drives have been available for years in portables, but 5,400 RPM models remain the most common.

For the moment, the 2.5-inch 10,000 RPM drives also remain too big for use in notebooks, with a height of 15mm; the standard size for portables is 9.5mm. WD is, however, offering a 3.5-inch casing so the new drives can be used in desktop environments.

OEMs are evaluating the new VelociRaptor drives later this month, with commercial availability slated for the end of the month. Pricing has not yet been announced.