WD makes enterprise Velociraptors

WESTERN DIGITAL CAME out with the 10,000RPM 2.5-inch Velociraptor HDs last spring, and instantly took the enthusiast crown. Now the firm is aiming for the same niche in the enterprise space with the new Velociraptor WD3000BLFS.

If you are expecting wildly new specs and features, prepare to be underwhelmed. Like the rest of the drives that WD makes, these enterprise variants are very similar to the normal Velociraptors, with updated firmware, slightly differing construction and better validation. The aim is to make them faster at the things servers do, not the things gamers do. And have a more reliable life while doing so.

The main thing WD is adding is a technology called Rotary Active Feed Forward (RAFF) which makes it live longer in multi-unit vibration prone chassis. This helps in achieving the 1.4 million hours MTBF rating - 9.8 million hours in dog years for the curious - or basically forever. Otherwise it is the same as the Velociraptor, 2.5-inch 10K RPMs and a 16M cache.

It will be interesting to see how well these drives do in the market,, The 2.5-inch enterprise sector is rife with SCSI/SAS competitors, but there are no SATA 10K drives out there. The other makers have a SAS line to protect, so they are staying out of the market for cannibalisation reasons.

Let's hope this one does well, nothing like cheap speed and capacity to shake up a staid marketplace. µ