Western Digital has announced a brand new ultra-fast serial-ATA hard drive, which is actually a 2.5" fitted into a 3.5" massive heatsink. The VelociRaptor series are 10000rpm drives which WD alleges are more than 30 percent faster than the successful Raptor series.

"Demand for ever-higher PC performance continues to increase and WD is the leader in this category with the WD Raptor. We created WD VelociRaptor hard drives to lead PC enthusiasts into the next era of PC and Mac storage performance and satisfy their insatiable thirst for computing speed," said Tom McDorman, vice president and general manager of WD's enterprise business unit, in a statement.

The new drives have advanced features such as the IcePack Mounting Frame which allows for the cooling of the 2.5" drive; Rotary Acceleration Feed Forward (RAFF) which optimizes performance when the drives are used in a high-vibration environment; and SecurePark which ensures the recording head never touches the disk surface by parking it during spin up, spin down and when the drive is off, among others.

The WD VelociRaptor 300 GB comes with a Manufacturer's Suggested Retail Price (MSRP) of $299, much lower than comparable solid state drives. Also, Western Digital announced in its statement that WD VelociRaptor drives will be available on Alienware's high-performance ALX gaming desktop by the end of this month, including in a RAID 0 configuration with two drives working in parallel.

"The new WD VelociRaptor delivers the greatest performance and reliability of all SATA hard drives currently on the market," said McDorman.