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Western Digital ships first 2TB hard drive

updated 08:50 am EST, Tue January 27, 2009

 

WD Caviar Green 2TB


As promised, Western Digital today launched the Caviar Green 2TB, the world's first desktop hard drive to cross the 2TB milestone. The 3.5-inch SATA drive takes advantage of the 500GB per platter technology behind its 1.5TB drive to reach the record capacity but uses intelligent seek patterns and on-the-fly changes to spin speed, reducing the amount of power used in certain loading situations or in low demand.

The drive carries the same 32MB of cache as its more recent counterparts and is designed to prevent the drive head from ever touching the magnetic surface itself and thus guarding the disk from easily wearing out or from breaking if the drive is moved. Western Digital is making the 2TB drive available today and says it officially sells for $299; no mention is made of price cuts to 1.5TB and below drives.


By Electronista Staff

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upgrades/storage, Western Digital, Caviar

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  1. Feathers

    Grizzled Veteran

    Joined: Oct 1999

    -1
    01/27, 09:46am | report spam | (1 reply) | reply

    wow...

    Talk about putting all your eggs in one basket!


  1. bobolicious

    Junior Member

    Joined: Aug 2002

    +3
    01/27, 10:12am | report spam | reply

    Time Capsule convert...

    ...this may be of interest in converting/expanding a time capsule with a green drive to a less power hungry, cooler & quieter device:

    http://www.hardmac.com/articles/79/page1/

    Given Apple's attention to making quiet computers I must admit I am surprised at the noise my TC makes & hope to follow suit soon...


  1. testudo

    Forum Regular

    Joined: Aug 2001

    -5
    01/27, 10:53am | report spam | reply

    re: wow

    What eggs in what basket?

    Larger drives are great for mac users, since most mac users only have room for one hard drive to begin with.


  1. mytdave

    Fresh-Faced Recruit

    Joined: Aug 2000

    +2
    01/27, 01:12pm | report spam | reply

    same eggs, more space

    Yes, testudo, most Mac users have room internally for 1 drive (except the Mac Pro which can take 4), because Apple makes sleek designs the PC world still hasn't successfully copied despite their efforts. But so what?

    If you'll look around you'll find that almost every single PC (not including build it yourself) also comes with just a single HD.

    Of course Mac users can add a pile of external HDs and still have a smaller footprint than the typical uninspiring PC box.

    Users everywhere on every platform are putting more eggs in that one basket. So, now people just need larger backup media... so buy two, and start making good use of TimeMachine (or other backup utility).

    At $299, I'll tell you what I'd like to do... buy 16 of 'em and slap 'em in a RAID shelf... heh heh, 32TB in 3U of space... that's what I'm talkin' 'bout!!

    Not much more than a year ago 32TB would set you back $120k. If you already have a 16 slot 4TB SATA based shelf, you could now upgrade it to 32TB for a measly $4,784!! 'Course these are not enterprise class drives, but depending on QoS level needs, they'd work fine!


  1. testudo

    Forum Regular

    Joined: Aug 2001

    0
    01/27, 01:49pm | report spam | reply

    @mytdave

    Gee, thanks Dave for all that wonderful background. But you didn't answer the question: "What eggs in what basket". The original comment is usually considered a negative, i.e. a bad thing. I was trying to figure out what the eggs were that was bad to put into one basket.

    Yet you seem to imply its a good thing.

    I have a PMac G5, which is the biggest honking computer you will find around, including PCs. And its one heavy thing as well. So it sits on my floor, taking up more footprint space than any PC I've seen.

    And in all that space, it can only manage 2 internal hard drives. I basically have 2 other drives sitting out for more storage, just because Apple couldn't figure out how to put four in there (oh, and the 'elegant' drive bays are one big pain in the a** to add/remove disks from, because the wires are so elegantly 'out-of-the-way' and makes it hard to disconnect).

    And I don't know what your definition or use of the term 'inspiring', but I have yet to be inspired by either a PC box or a Mac box. Its a computer. Its sits under a desk. Its the OS that allows the inspiring.


  1. nhmlco

    Fresh-Faced Recruit

    Joined: Mar 2007

    0
    01/27, 02:17pm | report spam | reply

    Price

    Keep in mind the price is MSRP. Amazon and most other sites sell WD drives for 30-35% off, which takes it down to $200 or so.


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