Serial ATA Hard-Disk Drive Targets Embedded Servers

Look for Serial ATA drives to go into servers and high-performance embedded applications. Desktop and typical embedded applications will follow suit, but only when Serial ATA motherboards become more common. The 36.7-Gbyte Western Digital (WD) Raptor looks to displace SCSI drives with its 10,000-rpm performance. The Serial ATA connection runs at 150 Mbytes/s. Designed for 100% duty cycle, the WD Raptor will be used in RAID environments where its capacity matches SCSI drives designed to minimize RAID rebuild times. The WD Raptor's small Serial ATA cable will help minimize cable origami and improve cooling within a server. Priced at $160, the WD Raptor is available in quantity now. www.westerndigital.com