Thunderbolt-equipped beast
Western Digital has broadened its external hard-drive storage solutions with the introduction of the My Book VelociRaptor Duo. Fetching a cool £620 ($899) at retail and shipping with a 2TB capacity, you may be surprised to learn that it features two mechanical disks in a RAID0 configuration. But these aren't ordinary hard drives, and neither is the interface.
 |
 |
Letting the cat out of the bag, VelociRaptor Duo uses two 1TB WD VelociRaptor (WD1000DHTZ) 2.5in drives that spin at up to 10,000RPM. Built for the workstation/creative market and capable of sequential read and write speeds of 200MB/s, these SATA 6Gbps drives retail for £170 apiece. Combine them in RAID0 and speeds of 400MB/s are possible, though the configuration choice is open to the user. WD makes the most of this bandwidth potential by using nascent Thunderbolt connectivity, providing up to 1.2GB/s of bidirectional bandwidth per channel.
Ensconced within a well-built enclosure that, save for colour, is identical to the regular Thunderbolt Duo - which uses slower drives - the 16cm-high, 2kg box features a couple of Thunderbolt ports on the rear. Either one can be used to connect the dual-drive VR Duo up to the system, while the other can be connected to another Thunderbolt-totin' device. The interface enables 10W of DC power to be drawn through each port, but keeping matters simple, especially with fast-spinning drives, WD supplies an external power adapter. Perhaps missing a trick and expanding upon the VR Duo's compatibility, a USB 3.0 connection would have been nice to see.
 |
 |
WD designs the drives to be user-accessible. A soft-touch top flips open to reveal a perforated metal holding plate that's thumbscrewed into the chassis. Underneath, two heatsink-clad drives sit alongside one another, smoothly docking into a SATA interface within the enclosure. The entire structure is solid and well-designed. Drives are labelled 'A' and 'B' to avoid confusion and aid trouble-shooting in case anything goes awry. WD also includes a metre-long Thunderbolt cable in the package, and this is no mere afterthought; they usually cost around £30.
Ostensibly designed for the Mac operating system - the drives are formatted in HFS+ - and pre-configured in speedy RAID0 (striped), WD provides a Mac-only utility that enables the user to change the default format to RAID1 (mirrored) or to function as two separate disks under JBOD. Attach the VelociRaptor Duo to a Windows machine and, understanding the Mac formatting, one needs to reformat the drives using the OS' built-in Disk Management utility.
Setup, then, is pretty straightforward, and the VR Duo is up and running in a matter of minutes. Placed on a desk the fast-spinning drives emit an audible hum at most times, and touching the sides reveals a subtle vibration from the chassis. Hit the drives hard with some large-file transfers and the background hum rises to a low-frequency tapping as the heads scurry around the platters. It's not loud, but coming from using SSDs day in, day out, the noise is certainly perceivable.
 |
 |
And stripping the enclosure bare shows why the unit always makes a little noise. At the bottom is a 40mm fan that activates as soon as the VR Duo enclosure is switched on. Actually, the fan's noise is mostly masked by the drives', as manually stopping the fan - using a high-tech method of placing a finger on it - does little to reduce the overall noise profile.
 |
 |
To Western Digital's credit, each 10,000RPM hard drive sits on a thin silicon bed that helps absorb vibrations. The holding cage is also required because the drives use an extra power connector that's not present on a standard SATA interface. This extra four-pin notch means that users' 2.5in SSDs cannot be plugged into the holding cage, though a drive can be wiggled directly into the enclosure.
In sum, you receive two drives valued at £170 apiece, a custom, well-put-together dual-port Thunderbolt enclosure, and a metre-long Thunderbolt cable... all for £620. Looking at the basic costing facts, we believe the price needs to come down to comfortably below £500 for it make a lot of sense. Backed up by a three-year warranty, well-heeled creative types will need to see performance before considering busting out the credit card, so let's hop to it.
