Western Digital Launches Its First USB 3.0 HDD
Western Digital today revealed its latest addition to the My Book external hard drive series, boasting compatibility with the new, hot & juicy SuperSpeed USB 3.0 interface. Granted consumers will need a new motherboard with built-in USB 3.0 technology or install a PCI-e card with a SuperSpeed interface, consumers can now store meaty data on an external drive up to 10 times faster than the old and decrepit USB 2.0 interface.
"Consumers no longer have to wait for technology to keep up with their ideas. With the new super speed My Book 3.0 drives, consumers have the speed they need for resource-intensive video editing, animation, and graphic design applications," said Dale Pistilli, vice president of marketing for WD's branded products group.
Consumers can purchase the USB 3.0 My Book drive in two tasty flavors: a standalone drive or as a kit with an included USB 3.0 PCI-e (gen2) adapter card. Naturally the latter would be ideal for those who don't have an itch (or the funds) to replace the entire motherboard, but want the extra burst of speed. Currently WD is offering the My Book 3.0 drives in 1 TB capacities only, but expect to ship 2 TB drives in the coming weeks.
Want one now? WD has the drives up for sale over on shopwd.com and at "select retailers." The price difference between the standalone and the kit version isn't the huge gap we expected either: $179.99 for the standalone and $199.99 for the drive/PCI-e version.
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did you guys wanna benchmark it for us?
YEAH GO FOR IT...
overpriced. You can get a RAID NAS for a little more, and it will be faster too.
No thanks I'll keep my 2 Velociraptors in Raid. I will snag a 3.0 usb board on my next build when more hardware takes advantage of it. Say 2011 sometime!
maybe usb 3.0 will become the standard faster than i thought it wud be...
"old and decrepit USB 2.0"... awesome
eSATA FTW!
eSATA FTW!
Top end bandwidth is supposed to be 5Gbps to eSata's 3Gbps. If nothing else, the standard ups the ante even if the available devices are not quite that fast yet.
standalone means internal drive yes?
hopefully this pushes ssd prices down...
Top end bandwidth is supposed to be 5Gbps to eSata's 3Gbps. If nothing else, the standard ups the ante even if the available devices are not quite that fast yet.
Yeah, but now we have eSATA 3.0 coming too, 6Gbps.
hopefully this pushes ssd prices down...
Isn't that what we were all hoping the home robot would do?
I am sure I will get flamed for this but for the life of me I can't figure out what purpose this fast of storage technology would do for me as a standard consumer. As of right now I can watch and record HD movies and videos at a full 1080p resolution with no slowdown even across my dated 10/100 network. If I need blazing speed for external devices I could use eSATA. As it stands right now owning USB 3.0 storage devices is more geared toward professionals. No matter how quick the BUS is platters can only spin so fast.
Will it be completely powered from the USB port (no AC adapter)?
I'll buy one. but may be six months from now.
Great, I need a new My Book drive and I've waiting WD to update it's range to USB 3 as transferring 500Gb over USB 2 will take..............well a long time.
Umm, it shows the 2tb version now available too.
Yeah, but now we have eSATA 3.0 coming too, 6Gbps.
... and I will be happy when it gets here as well.
Anyone know if you can RAID if you plug in more than one of these drives?
Be aware that these USB 3.0 PCI-e cards require an internal 5/12V power connector. The slot does not provide the needed power to operate. One vendor uses a SATA power connector and another uses the standard 4-pin connector. The port does provide a higher (900ma) current but it's still not enough to drive a 3.5" device. I suspect the newer USB cameras will need the higher current to avoid using an AC adapter.
I wonder if they put a fan in the enclosure so it wouldn't fry the hard drive after hours of use... Also, if the internal drive is SATA2 (3GBps max) how is this better then ESATA? Don't get me wrong, I'm all about faster interfaces, just seems like a moot point until something can actually utilize it.
I like eSATA but there's just not enough widespread support. Much like firewire, I have hunt for enclosures which support eSATA. With some type of devices, for example the Western Digital Passport type of external portable 2.5" laptop drives, those only support USB. I look forward to the day when all the devices released support this new 3.0 standard.