WD's New VelociRaptor Shows Drive Innovation

I admit I'm a storage geek. I'll also be the first to admit that hard drives rarely enter the conversation when it comes to cool, tangible innovations.

Sure, we get to see boosts to hard drive areal density (which is what allows capacities to increase) over time--but then again, experts tell us to expect hard drive capacity to jump, so the drive boosts rarely have the ability to make us speechless anymore (okay, I will be excited when we hit 1.5TB or 2TB in a 3.5-inch drive, or 1TB in 2.5-inch drive, but before you know it, those capacities will seem the norm). Most hard drive innovations are inside the drive, known to the engineers, but not tangible to those of us in the real world.

WD's Cool New Drive

Western Digital's VelociRaptor, the company's latest 10,000 rpm (rotations per minute) drive, changes that. One of WD's big innovations on the VelociRaptor is its IcePack heat sink. You can't miss this integrated, black heat sink: The drive is securely mounted onto it, and the heat sink acts as the mounting apparatus to adapt the 2.5-inch VelociRaptor for a 3.5-inch drive bay. (See New WD VelociRaptor Hard Drive Cruises Through Speed Tests for more details about the VelociRaptor's performance and availability.)

According to Western Digital, the thermal temperature ratings on this drive are about the same as its predecessor. But the heat sink serves to reduce the drive's temperature by about 5 degrees.

Heat is a hard drive's number one enemy. I often hear this and that from internal drive manufacturers about what a drive's heat specifications are; and from PC manufacturers about how a PC's chassis design may promote air flow and dissipate heat. But the IcePack marks the first pro-active, integrated approach I've seen to dissipating heat coming off a desktop hard drive. I hope to see more such innovative approaches to address the heat issue--for internal drives as well as external drives.

Comments

do you have one for a dell dimension 2400 series with 180 to 220 gigs, and if so how much would i have to invest? rogerm125w101@yahoo.com

rogerm125w

June 09, 2008

9:54 AM PT