VelociRaptor Down Grade

Hi I see that WD has removed the TLR and has put the VelociRaptor drives in the workstation section so no more enterprise class Raptors. I have contacted WD about this there first reply was a bunch of rubbish to join the forum and such. I have replyed to that email and asked them again why they would do this as there not much use if you cant raid a 300 $ drive so hehe I am awaiting there reply with not much hope of finding out why. But its a sad day when they down grade there best drive.

I don’t think is downgraded (perhaps because I love velociraptors) :slight_smile:

Hi well I have received a very  good response from WD that explains the change I will post it. As it seems the Raptor has kept its TLR even though it is classed as a workstation Drive.

The change from Enterprise to Workstation was really driven by the utilization of Advanced Format to drive higher areal density and align capacity points with traditional client-type capacity points. AF is an issue in older servers that still support 512n-sector I/O, so unilateral support in Enterprise is not possible. Workstations typically utilize the latest OS and applications that are AF-friendly. It’s important to note that the fundamental design of VelociRaptor remains unchanged – still has TLER, RAFF, other enterprise-like robustness - and maintains many of the same specs as the previous generation.

The change from Enterprise also allows us to clarify our Enterprise positioning. VelociRaptor confused many of our enterprise customers. With this move, our 2.5" 10K SAS becomes our focused Tier 1 Enterprise product, consistent with the positioning of other suppliers.