Western Digital apparently wasn’t fooling around with 1.5TB drives and decided to jump to the next level and release 2TB drives. The first drive available in the 2TB format from Western Digital is the Caviar Green model which is the power saving model that runs cooler and use less power than regular hard drives. The Caviar Green drives are usually rated at 5400 RPM, but interestingly these drives seem to be 7200 RPM. The drives right now have only shown up in Australia, but will probably appear in other locations as Tuesday rolls around in their time zone. The drives show up at the price of $377.80 AUD which converts to about $250 USD; so a little higher price per gigabyte than more 1TB drives going right now, but you can replace two drives with just one. It should be interesting to see how the other manufacturers will react to this latest development.
Full Article: Engadget
Available online: Mwave Australia
WD announced today the WD VelociRaptor(TM) 10,000 RPM enterprise SATA
hard drives in an enterprise-class 2.5-inch form factor for blade servers
and 1U and 2U rack servers. The newest WD VelociRaptor hard drive is built
for business-critical applications with enterprise-class mechanics and
packs up to 300 GB of capacity into the enterprise small form factor bays,
while consuming 35 percent less power than the previous-generation WD
Raptor(R) drive.
“WD is bringing to enterprise customers what PC enthusiasts already
appreciate about the WD VelociRaptor: a combination of high performance and
high capacity for hard drive storage,” said John Rydning, IDC’s research
director for hard disk drives. “WD’s new WD VelociRaptor, designed
specifically for the enterprise in an energy efficient 2.5-inch form
factor, gives system OEMs and end users a new storage option to consider to
meet growing storage requirements.”
Full Article: PR Newswire
It is good to see these drives showing up in servers. I have a 150 GB Raptor drive and it is very impressive. The latest 300 GB VeliciRaptors for desktops are 2.5 inch drives, but in a 3.5 inch enclosure that is a heat sick and sound buffer. Some may think they can slap these drives in their laptops, but they are too tall at 15 mm instead of 9mm and they also require a 12v line in addition to the 5v line. For notebooks, SSDs would be the best performance choice even though they are expensive right now.
According to Bit-Tech sources, Western Digital is developing a 20,000 RPM drive to compete with the SSD market. The drive is planned around the current VelociRaptor which features a 2.5 inch drive in a 3.5 inch enclosure. The drive is said to be silent which is possibly engineered by using the heatsink as a noise dampening mechanism. Further details are not yet available, so it is unknown when this drive may hit the market.
Full Article: Bit-Tech