Hard drive storage has been a bottleneck point in computers for as long as most of us can remember. Solid State Drives have hit the market, but currently are so expensive for the amount of storage that you get that they just aren't feasible. When you're looking at $200 for 128 GB of storage (for a generic SSD) you're likely to keep your old slow hard drive and just drool over the SSD line of products, wishing they offered a better price performance ratio.

We feel your storage needs pain and went in search of higher speed, better price performance products that still offer good speeds, but a better price performance ratio than SSD's. The Western Digital VelociRaptor 300 GB hard drive offers faster transfer rates than traditional platter drives, larger storage capacities than their more expensive cousins, the SSD, and speeds that rival SSD's when used in RAID 0.

To show how the different drives perform we went to the ends of theEarth and collected seven hard drives and ran them in nine different configurations, but none will ever have the coolness factor of the Western Digital VelociRaptor. With one exception, the Western Digital VelociRaptor in RAID 0!

Western Digital is now shipping WD VelociRaptor hard drives, the next generation of its 10,000 RPM SATA "Raptor" series of drives. Designed with an enterprise-class foundation, the new hard drive comes packed with twice the capacity and a 35 percent performance increase over the previous generation.
The WD VelociRaptor hard drive is built with enterprise-class mechanics and packs 300 GB of storage capacity into a 2.5-inch enterprise form factor. The 2.5-inch WD VelociRaptor drive is enclosed in the IcePack, a 3.5-inch mounting frame with a built-in heat sink - a customization that fits the drive intoa standard 3.5-inch system bay and keeps this powerful drive extra cool when installed in a high-performance desktop chassis.

"Demand for ever-higher PC performance continues to increase and WD is the leader in this category with the WD Raptor. We created WD VelociRaptor hard drives to lead PC enthusiasts into the next era of PC and Mac storage performance and satisfy their insatiable thirst for computing speed," said Sharad Srivastava, Director Sales (India & South Asia), Western Digital. "The new WD VelociRaptor delivers the greatest performance and reliability of all SATA hard drives currently on the market."

WD's Velociraptor Drives are available through select WD's distributors in India, at select retail stores and online retailers for a suggested retail price of Rs. 16,500.