The Philippine Online Chronicles

Blame it on Steven Spielberg and his Jurrasic Park movie.  The name, Velociraptor (‘swift sizer’) evokes fear and speed.  This beast belongs to the family of bird-like, bi-pedal, feathered carnivores called, dromaeosaurid. That translates to ‘running lizards’ for us mere mortals.  It isn’t such an odd name for a class of Hard Drives that not only is blazing fast and reliable, but also is huge enough to store data.

Western Digital’s new 600GB VelociRaptor spins at 10,000 RPM with a 6GB/s SATA interface, and huge 32 MB Cache.  Scorching ultra-fast doesn’t even begin to describe this hard drive, which is 15 percent faster than its award winning previous generation model.  Western Digital made these 2.5” drives to run cool enough and is low power, which is a win in this age of power efficiency!

This new iteration of WD VelociRaptor was perfect designed for the enterprise. The new VelociRaptor was built to run high-performance demands, running 24x7.  The size, the speed and this hard drive’s industrial strength reliability makes it most suited for blade servers, workstations, low-end servers, Mac users such as myself and yes, for you PC Enthusiasts!

WD VelociRaptor is also available in IcePack enclosure, which is a 3.5-inch mounting frame that has a built-in heat sink.  The IcePack factory customization will fit this 2.5” drive into your 3.5” bay.

What else comes with this new hard drive?

There’s “Rotary Acceleration Feed Forward Technology” that optimizes operation and performance when used in vibration-prone conditions that happen in multi-drive chassis.

VelociRaptor comes with NoTouch ramp load technology. What this basically means is that the recording head of the drive, never touches the disk media.  This ensures significantly less wear to the recording head likewise for the media.  Also this makes sure that the drive has better protection while in transit.

WD VelociRaptor is compliant to the Restriction of Hazardous Substances Directive (ROHS) compliant, which was adopted by the European Union and is halogen-free.

Axis Global Technologies and ATP Peripherals in the Philippines are the places to go to for the model WD4500HLHZ and WD6000HLHX-3.5-inch version with IcePack.  They come with a manufacturer’s suggested retail price of PHP13,754.00 and PHP15,134.00, respectively.

WD VelociRaptor 2.5-inch drives will be made available through commercial distributor later this quarter, and is currently undergoing evaluation with WD’s select OEM manufacturers.

OC Metro quoted WD President and CEO John Coyne saying, “We believe that 2010 will continue to be a strong year for digital storage.” OC Metro added that Western Digital revenue jumped more than 60 percent for the period ending April 2, 2010.

Western Digital reported revenue of US$2.6 billion, with hard drive shipments at 51.1 million units this in spite of increased competition with SSD drive technology, WD’s drive shipments are up nearly 62 percent.  Net income is at US$ 400M or US$1.71 per share. In the year-ago quarter, WD reported revenue of 1.6 billion with 31.6 million hard drive units and net income of US$ 50 million, at US$0.22 per share.

The company ended the quarter with US$2.8 billion total cash and cash equivalents.

At stocktwits, @BroomeStreetTrader tweeted, Western Digital ($WDC) is “coming off its morning lows vurrrry nicely.”

“Demand for performance combined with increase in capacity continues to rise and WD is the leader in this category,” Tom McDorman, vice president and general manager of Western Digital’s enterprise business unit said in the company’s press release. “WD customers can rely on the new WD VelociRaptor to deliver high performance under the harshest conditions, while continuing to keep user data safe.”

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Image courtesy of Western Digital