WD 2TB Hard Drives Announced

[HelenWeathers]

http://www.westerndigital.com/en/company/releases/PressRelease.asp?release={01D0EF49-E149-410A-A173-F872D0E6C335}

LAKE FOREST, Calif. - Jan. 27, 2009 - WD (NYSE: WDC) today announced the first 2 terabyte (TB) hard drive - the world's highest capacity drive and the latest addition to WD's popular, environmentally friendly, cool and quiet, WD® Caviar® Green™ hard drive family. This new 3.5-inch platform is based on WD's industry-leading 500 GB/platter technology (with 400 Gb/in2 areal density) with 32 MB cache, producing drives with capacities of up to 2 TB.

The WD Caviar Green 2 TB is available at select resellers and distributors. MSRP for the WD Caviar Green 2 TB hard drives (model WD20EADS) is $299.00 USD. More information about WD Caviar Green desktop drives may be found on the company's Web site at
http://wdc.com/en/products/Products.asp?DriveID=576

[vexhold]

Very nice... hope Best Buy gets em...

<evil employee discount grin>

[Muchacho]

I wonder whether performance would be better recording to two 1TB drives vs one 2 TB drive. Would be cheaper as well.

[HelenWeathers]

Originally Posted by Muchacho

I wonder whether performance would be better recording to two 1TB drives vs one 2 TB drive. Would be cheaper as well.

I would think recording two shows to two drives would be better than two shows to only one drive. These will be great in my case for my Blu-ray movie server though.

The MSRP at $300 will fall and from places like newegg.com the price will be better anyway.

[sandor]

data density will affect throughput as well. I'm not sure whether the 1 TB drives are 2x 500 GB platters, 3x333 GB or 4x250 GB....

[reggie14]

Originally Posted by sandor

data density will affect throughput as well. I'm not sure whether the 1 TB drives are 2x 500 GB platters, 3x333 GB or 4x250 GB....

I'm not completely sure, but I think the 1TB green power drives that are out there right now are 3x333. So, these new drives should be a bit faster, since they're 4x500. But, I suspect the next revision (and maybe this has already happened) of the 1TB drives will be 2x500.

[aaronb]

On sale now at NewEgg for $299. I'll wait until the price/GB is a little closer to $0.10 like it is for 1TB drives.

[vexhold]

Sheesh, remember when .50 per GB was a steal?

Was only like 2-3 years ago

[Slipshod]

Originally Posted by vexhold

Sheesh, remember when .50 per GB was a steal?

Was only like 2-3 years ago

Dude. I remember being stoked that I got $1/MB with my friend's employee discount at Quantum.

This whole $0.10/GB thing is blowing my mind. As soon as that 2TB drive drops close to $200 I'll be picking it up. Performance will be fine for recording, but with lower power consumption and it'll only take one slot in the Icy Dock.

[vexhold]

Of course then again, my first computer didnt even have a HD. All it had was 20kb of ROM and 64kb of RAM.

Yey!! Commodore 64!!

[davephan]

I think the 1.5 TB drive is a much better deal than the 2 TB drive. The Seagate 1.5 TB drive is only $139.99 at Micro Center. You could buy two 1.5 TB drives cheaper for the price of only one 2 TB drive.

http://www.microcenter.com/single_pr...uct_id=0301994

Dave

[aaronb]

Originally Posted by davephan

I think the 1.5 TB drive is a much better deal than the 2 TB drive. The Seagate 1.5 TB drive is only $139.99 at Micro Center. You could buy two 1.5 TB drives cheaper for the price of only one 2 TB drive.

http://www.microcenter.com/single_pr...uct_id=0301994

Dave

With the recent problems they've had I would not put any data I cared about on one of those drives.

[Skirge01]

Originally Posted by aaronb

With the recent problems they've had I would not put any data I cared about on one of those drives.

Hehe... that's why people need WHS to back up their data! Then, it doesn't matter whether your drive fails.

[sandor]

Originally Posted by Skirge01

Hehe... that's why people need WHS to back up their data! Then, it doesn't matter whether your drive fails.

when it is a seagate it does. try three out of 5 in a RAID-5 failing simultaneously.


of course, this was just after the big ruckus, and i had already taken them out of *real* service - so i was just watching for the "3 months of use...then...BLAMO! failure."

[comet48]

Originally Posted by vexhold

Sheesh, remember when .50 per GB was a steal?

Was only like 2-3 years ago

I remember $20,000 for 20 mBytes of disk, and $1 million for a 1mB memory! Mid 70's.

[tmiranda]

Storage is so cheap it's almost ridiculous.

My strategy with disks is to buy "one generation old" drives. So when these 2 GB drives come out and the 1 GB drives drop to $79 I might buy one of those to replace a smaller drive.

[Fuzzy]

You can already get 1TB drives for close to $79 after sales/discounts/rebates. For $300 for the 2TB, I'd rather buy 3 1TB drives, run them in RAID-5, and get my 2TB, faster, with data protection. As tmiranda said, best bet is "One Generation Old" drives. The REAL news ehre is that the 2TB's being out will lower the cost of 1TB's.

[EmuZombie]

My own very first hard drive was 20megabytes. My second was 80. Then I jumped up with a huge upgrade and got a computer with a 3 gigabyte drive. I thought, how will I ever fill this?

[sandor]

Originally Posted by Fuzzy

You can already get 1TB drives for close to $79 after sales/discounts/rebates. For $300 for the 2TB, I'd rather buy 3 1TB drives, run them in RAID-5, and get my 2TB, faster, with data protection. As tmiranda said, best bet is "One Generation Old" drives. The REAL news ehre is that the 2TB's being out will lower the cost of 1TB's.

And, again, the only 1.5 TB drive is a Seagate, part of the 7200.11 series, which have had dramatic failure rates, and Seagate has yet to issue a firmware update that effectively fixes it.

So you can get a 1 TB or 2 TB drive, but not a 1.5 TB drive if you care about your data at all.

http://www.xlr8yourmac.com/feedback/...s.html#reports
http://www.msfn.org/board/index.php?showtopic=128807

[bastafidli]

actually all seagate 7200.11 and 2 other product lines are affected but there is already a new firmware available on seagate website which fixes the problem. Seagate also ofers free data recovery service for affected users. I am using 2 of the 1.5TB which I have upgraded with new firmware the day I got them. So far so good.