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The Western Digital Raptor (often marketed as WD Raptor, 2.5" models known as VelociRaptor) is a discontinued series of high performance hard disk drives produced by Western Digital first marketed in 2003. The drive occupied a niche in the enthusiast, workstation and small-server market. Traditionally, the majority of servers used hard drives featuring a SCSI interface because of their advantages in both performance and reliability over consumer-level ATA drives.
Although pitched as an “enterprise-class drive”, it won favor with the PC gaming and enthusiast community because the drive was capable of speeds usually found only on more expensive SCSI drives. Adopting the SATA interface meant that it could be used easily on all modern motherboards with no separate host adapter card. Also, integration was made easier still by the inclusion of a standard 4-pin Molex power connector in addition to the standard SATA power port. This, however, was available only in 3.5" models.
Despite having been in production since early 2003, there was no direct competition in the same market for many years.
In 2006, Western Digital acknowledged the primary consumer of its Raptor brand drives by releasing a revision of its 150 GB drive. In keeping with the PC case modding trend of stylizing, the drive was given a Perspex window to match the internals of computer cases. This allows the user to see the drive's inner workings while it is in operation.