Western Digital Launches 2 TB Hard Drive
Is your collection of “media” growing at an exponential rate? Western Digital could have what you’re looking for, as it launches the industry’s first 2 TB hard disk drive.
Western Digital’s first 2 TB hard drive (model WD20EADS) makes use of the company’s 500 GB/platter technology (with 400 Gb/in2 areal density), with a set of four to make up the massive capacity. The drive will feature a 32 MB cache.
Most computer users are still running modestly sized drives in comparison to WD’s new offering, and seem to be managing fine. Will there ever be a real need to hit 2 TB when even 1 TB seems like a luxury? Mark Geenen, president of Trend Focus, says more and more people are taking to the roominess.
"While some in the industry wondered if the end consumer would buy a 1 TB drive, already some 10 percent of 3.5-inch hard drive sales are at the 1 TB level or higher, serving demand from video applications and expanding consumer media libraries," said Geenen. "The 2 TB hard drives will continue to satisfy end user's insatiable desire to store more data on ever larger hard drives."
The new 3.5-inch drive will be a part of the Caviar Green family, which, as the name suggests, is part of WD’s low-energy line. The drive will make use of IntelliPower, which WD says “fine-tunes the balance of spin speed, transfer rate and caching algorithms designed to deliver both significant power savings and solid performance."
Overall, however, the new 2 TB drive’s specialty is storage, not speed. The WD20EADS should be filling channels and carries with it an MSRP of $299.
What would you do with all that space?
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Pei-chen After seeing WD's MSRP of $299, I suspect Seagate knows the problem with its 7200.11 1.5TB drives before release. The 1.5TB was asking for $199, lower than two 750GB drives, and in some cases, lower than two 500GB drives. Never before has a company selling the newest and biggest at a discount.Reply -
Quote: Will there ever be a real need to hit 2 TB?Reply
Answer: Try 15TB and still not enough. :(
HD video = Lot of HD space.
More! More! Faster! Faster! -
megamanx00 That would hold alot of porn ^_^. Seriously though I still think my 1TB Cavalier Black drive is huge. 2TB is just insane to me and I'd rather have a faster 1.5 TB drive or my 1TB cavalier black than a 2TB cavalier green.Reply -
resonance451 Yes, a 32mb cache.Reply
A 2TB HDD is just the next step up. You guys are all assuming that media will stay the same quality. As the common camera takes higher resolution shots, and as musicians start releasing more of their stuff in hi-def wavs (not commonplace yet, but it will be) instead of 128kbps mp3, suddenly it will take a lot more storage to hold your collection. My copy of NIN's the Slip in 128kbps mp3 is only around 50mb. My hi-def wav copy is over 1.5gb. Suddenly 2TB isn't so huge. A decade after, we'll be scratching our heads at such a silly question, wondering how one could ever do with less than a 320TB HDD, and maybe two if you had a serious music/movie collection. -
jerreece Judguh"The drive will feature a 32 MB."A 32 MB what?Reply
You beat me to it. I'm assuming 32MB Cache. Just a typo ;)