WD announced today that it is now shipping WD VelociRaptor 450 GB and 600 GB hard drives, the next generation of its 10,000 RPM SATA family of hard drives. The new WD VelociRaptor hard drive is designed for blade servers, high-performance PCs, Mac computers, professional workstations, as well as 1U and 2U rack servers that require a balance of high performance and capacity. As the only 10,000 RPM SATA hard drive on the market today, the WD VelociRaptor hard drive now comes packed with twice the capacity and up to 15% performance increase over the previous generation, WD said.

The WD VelociRaptor hard drive is built with enterprise-class mechanics that provide 24x7 durability under high-performance demands and packs up to 600 GB of capacity into a 2.5-inch enterprise form factor. The WD VelociRaptor drive is also available in the IcePack? enclosure, a 3.5-inch mounting frame with a built-in heat sink - a factory customization that fits the drive into a standard 3.5-inch system bay and keeps this drive extra cool when installed in a desktop chassis and 3.5-inch HDD form factor enterprise chassis.

Features of the new WD VelociRaptor hard drives include:

- SATA 6 Gb/s interface and 32 MB cache
enhance the next generation 10,000 RPM WD VelociRaptor making it up to 15% faster than the award-winning previous generation.

- WD VelociRaptor SATA drives are available in capacities up to 600 GB, double the capacity of the previous generation.

- Designed and manufactured to mission-critical enterprise-class standards to provide enterprise reliability in high duty cycle environments. With 1.4 million hours MTBF, these drives have the highest available reliability rating on a high capacity SATA drive.

- Cool operation - Consumes no more power than the previous generation WD VelociRaptor while offering double the capacity and higher performance.

- IcePack mounting frame - The 2.5-inch WD VelociRaptor is enclosed in a backplane-ready 3.5-inch enterprise-class mounting frame with a built-in heat sink that keeps the drive extra cool when installed in high-performance desktop chassis.

- Rotary Acceleration Feed Forward (RAFF) - Optimizes 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 in transit.

WD VelociRaptor (model WD4500HLHX and WD6000HLHX - 3.5-inch version with IcePack) hard drives are available now at select distributors and resellers. WD VelociRaptor 2.5-inch hard drives (model WD4500BLHX and WD6000BLHX) are under evaluation with WD's OEM customers and will be available through select commercial distributors within this quarter. Manufacturer's Suggested Retail Price (MSRP) for the WD VelociRaptor 450 GB (model WD4500HLHX) is $299 USD and the 600 GB (model WD6000HLHX) is $329 USD.