Western Digital first released its Raptor in 2003 and this was significant in a number of ways. For a start it was its first SATA hard drive. However WD did something far more interesting than taking one of its Caviar drives and simply nailing on a SATA interface. Instead, it built a drive with a 10,000rpm spindle speed offering a superior data transfer speed than conventional 7,200rpm ATA100 drives thanks to lower rotational latency.



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