Western Digital Raptor

"VelociRaptor" redirects here. For the dinosaur velociraptor, see Velociraptor.

The Western Digital Raptor (often marketed as WD Raptor, 2.5" models known as VelociRaptor) is a discontinued series of high performance hard disk drives produced by Western Digital, first marketed in 2003. In mid 2016 WD discontinued the lineup without any direct successor, only made obsolete by Solid State Drives(SSDs) which were significantly faster with less noise and power consumption in a smaller form factor too. The drive occupied a niche in the enthusiast, workstation and small-server market though they never reached mainstream adoption and popularity. Traditionally, the majority of servers used hard drives featuring a SCSI interface because of their advantages in both performance and reliability over consumer-level ATA drives, as well as compatibility with standard computers which lack SCSI ports.

Although pitched as an "enterprise-class drive", it won favor with the PC gaming and niche enthusiast community because the drive was capable of speeds usually found only on more expensive SCSI drives due to its 10000rpm speed. Adopting the SATA interface meant that it could be used easily on all modern motherboards with no separate host adapter card. Also, integration was made easier still by the inclusion of a standard 4-pin Molex power connector in addition to the standard SATA power port. This, however, was available only in 3.5" models.

Despite having been in production for many years from early 2003 until mid 2016, there was no direct competition in the same market for years and these drives did not become mainstream instead the vast majority of desktops stuck with 7200rpm drives for cost and power usage efficiency. The rise of affordable SSDs has made this drive obsolete leaving only 7200rpm drives as the main drive in computers today.

In 2006, Western Digital acknowledged the primary consumer of its Raptor brand drives by releasing a revision of its 150 GB drive. In keeping with the PC case modding trend of stylizing, the drive was given a Perspex window to match the internals of computer cases. This allows the user to see the drive's inner workings while it is in operation.

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