Western Digital Releases 4 TB WD Green Drive HDD

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By Jane McEntegart
published

Western Digital has expanded its Green series to include a 4 TB option.

Western Digital has finally released the 4 TB iteration of its Green series HDD. The company's Green series is already home to 1 TB, 2 TB, and 3 TB models. WD's plans for a 4 TB model were revealed in a roadmap from late in 2012 which said a 4 TB option would be available in the third quarter. Though the arrival of a new 4 TB drive isn't exactly exciting, it does mean we're getting closer to those 5 TB models.

The WD Green series is the company's more environmentally-friendly line of desktop drives, manufactured with lead-free, conflict-free and halogen-free materials. According to last year's leaked schedule, the 4 TB model (WD40EZRX) was to ship sometime around the second or third quarter of 2013. The 5 TB model (WD50EXRX) is slated to arrive not too long after, in the following quarter, so it looks like we'll see the 5 TB before the year's end. Both the 4 TB and 5 TB models sport a 3.5-inch form factor, 64 MB of cache, and a SATA 3 (6 Gb/s) interface.

We haven't spotted the WD Green 4 TB in stores or online but TechPowerUp reports that it is available and is priced between $170 and $190, depending on what package you choose. Let us know if you find it!

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10 Comments Comment from the forums
  • Axelion
    It's available on newegg and ncix.

    http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822236604&Tpk=wd%20green%204tb
    http://us.ncix.com/products/?sku=718037778457&vpn=WD40EZRX&manufacture=WD%20Bulk&catid=18
    Reply
  • fourzeronine
    I like how Western Digital is paying for advertising on something Seagate is actually developing and making it look like they are leading technology. Seagate is the only one moving forward and Western Digital is just slapping their name on existing technology and charging an addition fee because using names like "green" because it's "hip". Not to mention a year late to the party.
    Reply
  • merikafyeah
    Yeah WD is way behind. Seagate already has 1TB per platter drives on sale for ages now. Seagate's 4TB drives have only 4 platters which inherently makes them better than any 4TB drive from WD since they use less energy, have fewer points of failure and due to the higher density, faster speed and access times. And now we hear that Seagate will release SMR drives which will bring the upper capacity to 5TB in 2014.

    Supposedly they'll max out SMR at about 20TB per drive, at which point they can combine SMR with HAMR to reach even higher capacities. And once they max out that route, they can start using helium to eek out that last bit of density assuming they will not have found a better means of increasing capacity at that point in the future.

    SSDs will keep getting faster but HDDs will continue to increase in capacity at about the same rate. Their relevance will not be overshadowed in the near or foreseeable future.
    Reply
  • antilycus
    99 out of 100 hard drives that fail, will be SEAGATE, so don't even bother saying that seagate is innovating. I just tested 4 WD hard drives. They were tossed into my trunk, drove on(no padding) for 2 weeks. I left all 4 of them out in the rain for 3 days. Each has a power cycle reaching 2000. Cleaned them off, put them in the computer ran extended SMART tests and not one problem with any of them.

    Yet I have had hundreds of customers, spending thousands of dollars (one customer had to spend 28k to get his data back) on their SEAGATE drives.

    HITACHI and WD are the only two companies that actually make long term storage a possibility. Even the Seagate "enterprise" drives fail at a M U C H higher rate than WD or HITATCH combined.

    If you honestly believe that Seagate makes nice hard drives, then you are simply "playing the part" and have no real world experience.
    Reply
  • dextermat
    To hard disk maker:
    Yeah, if you all could make hard drive that lasts more than a few years that would be great! I would hate to lose 4 T O of data
    Reply
  • Jeff Krogue
    Thats really impressive except for the fact that I have no use for that much space.
    Reply
  • Jeff Krogue
    Personally I'm just waiting for an affordable 256GB SSD.
    Reply
  • Jeff Krogue
    Personally I'm just waiting for an affordable 256GB SSD.
    Reply
  • jtdeanjr
    Woo Hoo, now we can loose 4TB of data when the drive fails...
    Reply
  • shin0bi272
    Where was this announcement when WD released the 4tb Raid Edition drive? I could have used that article. Not that I need 3x4tb drives but If im going to upgrade my raid Id like to know when things like this happen. Or did I just miss that article?
    Reply