Western Digital Launches Two New 2TB Drives - Press Release
by Gary Key on September 1, 2009 8:00 AM EST- Posted in
- Gary's First Looks
Western Digital is launching two new 2TB hard drives today. Unlike their 2TB Caviar Green, the latest Caviar Black and RE series drives have their platters rotating at 7,200 RPM. Each drive contains four platters sporting 500GB each along with a new 64MB cache scheme, dual processors, and five-year warranties. The drives retain the current 3Gbps SATA interface. The RE4 is similar to the Caviar Black but adds RAID-specific features, additional validation testing, and includes premium component selections.
The big news is a new dual-stage actuator that is at the heart of the performance increases expected by these drives. In addition to the standard mechanical actuator, WD has added a piezoelectric motor to the drive arm. The PZT offers an additional 500 nm of fine tuning, which covers around five tracks on the platter. WD is quoting that short seek times are reduced about ~.04 mS along with improvements in track follow PES capability by up to 30% and op-vibe PES performance increases by 50%. This also allows improved performance in high vibration environments.
The 2TB Caviar Black should reach the retail channel this week with an expected MSRP of $299. That is the original price of the Caviar Green 2TB drive, which is now selling in the $220 range. The RE4 is expected to ship to in the later part of October. Pricing has not been set but we expect it to be around $349 based on previous RE pricing. We expect review samples shortly. The full press release is located here.
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AnnonymousCoward - Tuesday, September 8, 2009 - link
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ayembee - Monday, September 7, 2009 - link
bought 3 of the original greenpower variants back when they first came out not that long ago. two have ALREADY failed! i've owned a lot of hard drives over the years and i've never seen anything like this...both died with 'reallocated sector count' SMART failure messages. i believe this is the exact same error at the heart of the seagate 1.5TB fiasco, but somehow nobody is picking up on it online. either i am incredibly unlucky, or they are doing well preventing news from becoming too widespread.
so, my advice? tread very, VERY carefully with western digital's 2TB drive lineup.
ayembee - Tuesday, September 8, 2009 - link
i don't believe it... the third one just got a SMART error too! reallocated sector count, again. that's three from three -- these things are APPALLINGLY UNRELIABLE. as i, completely defective. avoid like the goddamned plague...JonnyDough - Wednesday, September 2, 2009 - link
A single platter drive spinning at 7200 rpm with the PZT for under $100? That's the drive I want to get. RAID 5 FTW.kkwst2 - Saturday, September 5, 2009 - link
Please, just say no to RAID5. You're asking for pain in the long run. Just do it right and go RAID10.Finally - Wednesday, September 2, 2009 - link
I hereby request a review of the new Samsung F3 drive series with 500GB-platters. They are available on the European market right now and I'd like to know how they do against the old F1 320GB-Platters and the F2 5400rpms.Thanks.
HVAC - Wednesday, September 2, 2009 - link
Buy some and donate them. Hard drives don't buy themselves, you know.Finally - Thursday, September 3, 2009 - link
Joker.yugmus - Tuesday, September 1, 2009 - link
This has been available for a little while,http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N8...">http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N8...
I am interested in the performance and reliability of this RE4
drive when the price comes down a bit.