2TB hard drives now available from Western Digital

Western Digital has released their 1.5 and 2TB Green Caviar drives. With a 32mb cache, these variable rpm (5400-7200) drives use about 15-25% less power than the normal 7200rpm drives when under load and about 45% less power when idling. I've been using the RE2 GP enterprise versions for my home server and they certainly draw less power from my solar grid.

You do lose about 10-20% of speed compared to the 7200rpm drives. However I use them in RAID configs so the loss is minimal. I have a 8 drive 4TB RAID 0 for uncompressed HD using these drives and it hits the necessary 240MB/s read write without a hitch.

The new 2TB drives are the Caviar Green ranges which means they are not enterprise models designed for servers (24/7 on). I use the 1TB Caviar Greens on my desktop and they tend to be quieter than the more powerful drives.

Western Digital 2TB Caviar Green

The great news is now with 2TB drives, you can carry 2 of these to backup video and pictures on your laptop for extended trips. eSATA gadgets such as the CoolDrives SATA dock combined with a ExpressCard 34 or PCMICIA eSATA card will give you fast backup access with minimal fuss compared to USB2.0 or Firewire drive enclosures. With 4TB , you can keep 200+ hours of XDCAM EX HQ video or 60+ hours of DVCPRO HD 1080i, more than enough for extended shoots.

2TB in a sigle drive!! harddiskmanufactorers are feeling the heat of solidstae storage for sure.

WD is my choice of drives too, both in my home server (3x320GB RAID3) and in my bunsiness bladeserver (2x320GB RAID1) drives are running just great!

2TB amazing!

I have a WD portable drive. I had a lot of problems with it when I used it as supplied. Reformatted it for the MAC and it has been excellent.

Alex

After last week with Alex a 2TB drive is starting to look attractive.

Having said that I have also had a lot of pox from WD drives, though it would seem that other folks here swear by (rather than at) them.

Also wonder how 'green' it is to junk your old drives to landfill and buy into newer 'green' drives.

Paul C

I'm using some WD Green caviars in my RAID boxes. They've been reliable so far...

I have a WD portable drive. I had a lot of problems with it when I used it as supplied. Reformatted it for the MAC and it has been excellent.

I usually reformat drives before use. Sometimes they use FAT32 as the format which blows big time. Hfs+ or NTFS are better file systems.

After last week with Alex a 2TB drive is starting to look attractive.

Having said that I have also had a lot of pox from WD drives, though it would seem that other folks here swear by (rather than at) them.

Also wonder how 'green' it is to junk your old drives to landfill and buy into newer 'green' drives.

Paul C

NEVER junk your old drives to landfills. Always recycle them AFTER you destroy the data. Degaussing or shred the data plates. Your local recycling center or HP or Dell have programs and can even do pickups if the quantity is pretty big. I normally collect all electronic hardware from my neighbors and they come to pickup a big load.

I usually recycle dead drives if they are out of warranty. My old UWSCSI3 40GB array still works! If I have to replace drives to increase storage space, I give the oldest drives to the local thrift stores like Salvation Army. Always remember to zero your sensitive data before giving the drives away.

Now they've released the enterprise version:

http://www.wdc.com/en/products/products.asp?driveid=610

Fast!