Western Digital's WD Caviar Green is available as both 2.4TB and 3TB internal SATA drives for current-generation desktop and server hardware.
Western Digital has unveiled what it claims is the largest
capacity internal SATA hard disk drive on the market.
As part of the WD Caviar Green family, the disk drive will
ship in 3TB and 2.5TB sizes, the company said. The WD Caviar Green 2.5TB and
3TB hard drives will be used primarily for use as secondary internal storage,
although it can be used as external storage, as well. It can also be installed
in 64-bit based systems.
This will be the largest single internal hard disk drive on
the market.
Seagate Technology unveiled a 3TB external hard drive earlier this
year.
Industry watchers have worried about the
impact on the HDD
business as companies shift away from the trusty magnetic disk drives toward
faster and more rugged flash-based alternatives. The immense popularity of
mobile devices and tablets has also impacted
PC and laptop sales.
"We remain concerned that consequent to the 'tablet
invasion,' the PC segment is likely to stay weak for all HDD vendors in the
historically stronger second half of this calendar year," ThinkEquity
analyst Rajesh Ghai wrote in a research note recently.
Both versions of the Caviar Green drive will include 64 MB
of cache and features SATA 3.0 Gb/s connectivity. The higher capacity comes
about as a result of WD increasing the areal density to 750GB per platter, the
company said in a statement. The drive also uses Advanced Format technology, which
writes 4,096 bytes per data sector.
There are several
multi-terabyte storage options currently
available, usually by stringing at least two drives together in a RAID array. What
makes this single internal drive notable is the sheer size of its available
storage.
Hard disk drives have been kept at 2.19TB or smaller
because of several hardware, firmware, and software support issues, according
to Western Digital. To overcome these barriers, Western Digital is using the
latest industry standards and specifications, which result in some restrictions
on how the drive can be used. For example, the Caviar Green drive would be
supported only 64-bit versions of Windows Vista and Windows 7.
Motherboards will need to be relatively new, with Unified
Extensible Firmware Interface support to properly detect the drive and its total
available storage. However, for older
non-UEFI machines, Western Digital will bundle the Caviar Green 2.5 and 3TB
hard drives with an Advanced Host Controller Interface (AHCI)-compliant Host
Bus Adapter (HBA) so that the operating system will be able to use known
drivers to properly support the drive.
"Customers will be able to take advantage of this
breakthrough capacity point now for secondary external storage in legacy 32-bit
systems that run on Microsoft Vista or Windows 7 platforms," said Jim
Morris, executive vice president and general manager of WD's client systems
storage group.
WD Caviar Green drives are considered eco-friendly, with
less power consumption thanks to lower operating temperatures, decreased
acoustical noise for make the PC much quieter, and improved performance.
"With our WD Caviar Green drives, we enable energy-conscious
customers to build systems with the highest capacities that deliver the optimal
balance of system performance, ensured reliability and energy
conservation," said Morris.
The WD Caviar Green 2.5TB and 3TB hard drives are currently
available in the United States. The suggested retail price for the 2.5TB $189 and the 3TB hard drive is $239.
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