The Western Digital VelociRaptor SATA 6G

Western Digital sends OEM packaged drives to reviewers so we didn't get to show the retail packaging this round. We have all seen the WD retail packing before and know that the drives are packed very well in retail trim.

All of the information is located on the top label that is found directly on the drive.

On the bottom of the adapter we see that it still has the mounting locations that are found on standard 3.5 inch form factor drives, so you will not have an issue mounting the new VelociRaptor in locations that use the bottom mounting system.

The first round of VelociRaptor drives is why we check for standard power and data SATA connectors and here we see that WD learned from the first VelociRaptor and made sure to get the placement right this round.

All three of the standard mounts were also found on the side.

There isn't much special about the front of the drive, but this view shows the height of the IcePack's fins on the side.

We noticed something odd about the adapter used in the IcePack; it appeared that where the drive connects to the adapter that it may be a SAS drive. With the drive separated from the adapter we see that it is not a SAS connector.

A quick look at the bottom of the drive doesn't tell us much since all of the components are mounted to the other side of the PCB.

With the drive out of the IcePack we were able to snap a shot of the thermal transfer materials used to move heat from the drive to the IcePack.

We were correct on the pin configuration on the adapter. Here we see that it is defiantly setup to accept SAS drives, but the additional pins is not the only thing needed to make a SAS drive run. For fun I installed a Seagate 15K.2 SAS drive into the adapter and attempted to operate it off of a standard SATA cable. SAS drives do not turn on just from receiving power, a command has to be sent to the drive and SATA does not support this command, thus the 15K.2 just sat there in an inoperable state.