Western Digital, a leading maker of hard disk drives, announced at Consumer Electronics Show (CES) its new Raptor X hard drive that features see-through-top glass, targets modders and computer enthusiasts as well as offers enterprise class performance to those who demand it on the desktop.

“Created exclusively for performance enthusiasts, WD Raptor X delivers what they want most – maximum performance and plenty of flair, in addition to the proven quality and reliability WD’s customers worldwide have long relied on,” said Tom McDorman, vice president and general manager of enterprise storage for WD.

As the only major component inside a PC with moving parts, all hard drives until now have been sealed with a solid metal top. WD Raptor X features a large clear lens embedded in the top through which the read and write action of the drive’s head and disk assembly can be viewed while the drive accesses its media.

“Maintaining these high WD standards while designing the ground-breaking, one-of-a-kind clear lens design represents a technological accomplishment that we are excited about delivering to these passionate PC enthusiasts, who are continually tricking out their systems,” Mr. McDorman added.

The Raptor X inherits specifications of the recently unveiled Raptor 150GB: it features 150GB capacity, 10 000rpm rotational speed, 16MB cache, 4.6ms read seek time, 5.2ms write seek time and average latency of 2.99ms. The Raptor X drive also offers best-in-class random I/O performance with native command queuing (NCQ), which increases performance by intelligently ordering multiple simultaneous read and write commands.

WD Raptor X 150 GB (model WD1500AHFD) hard drives are expected to be shipping in volume this quarter. Estimated retail pricing for WD Raptor X is $349.