Original URL: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/08/31/my_book_velociraptor_duo/
Velociraptor drives get Thunderbolt boost
VD and daisy-chaining go together, says WD
Posted in Storage, 31st August 2012 06:29 GMT
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Western Digital's speeding disk dinosaurs, its Velociraptors, have been given a dose of Thunderbolt.
The MyBook Velociraptor Duo (MyBook VD?) pairs two of the 1TB, 10,000rpm Velociraptor drives with two Thunderbolt ports. It delivers up to 400MB/sec, close to SSD performance WD claims, which means transferring 2000 5MB images in less than 33 seconds. SSDS would respond faster to small file data requests than the Velociraptors though.
A RAID 0 (striping) arrangement can be used to maximise performance and RAID 1 (mirroring) to optimise for data protection. There is also a JBOD (Just a Bunch Of Disks) option for Windows users on a Mac.
WD says its twin Velociraptor and Thunderbolt MyBook is a great fit with high-rez video editing, 3D rendering, graphic design and other data-hungry digital media use cases. The senior director of WD's consumer storage solutions group, Jody Bradshaw, provided a canned quote saying:
"The My Book VelociRaptor Duo is the fastest and most reliable high performance consumer storage device on the market today … Daisy-chaining multiple My Book VelociRaptor Duo devices together offers even greater speed, more capacity and flexibility.”
The My Book VD joins the existing My Book Thunderbolt Duo [1] which contains two 2TB Caviar Green drives and pumps out up to 225MB/sec. The saurians make it go faster.
In a related announcenent WD has also added the USB 3.0 interface to its My Passport for Mac line of external drives and their maximum capacity has increased to 2TB.
A Thunderbolt cable is included with the My Book VD which is Apple Time Machine compatible and okay for use with HFS+ Journaled for Mac computers. It's £699.00 ($899.99) at the manufacturer's suggested retail price and available now at WD's online store and selected retailers. ®