Western Digital intros 320GB-per-platter 3.5-inch hard drives

It looks like Western Digital's hard drives are about to get a good deal denser, with the company now rolling out its first 3.5-inch WD Caviar drives based on 320GB-per-platter technology. That, as the company points out, is the very same areal density seen recently in WD's 160 GB-per-platter 2.5-inch Scorpio drives, which topped out with a total of 320GB of storage due to the obvious size constraints. While the 3.5-inch drives have plenty more room to grow than their smaller counterparts, Western Digital seems to be starting things out slow, with only a single-platter 320GB drive available at the moment. That'll apparently be followed by upgrades across WD's various product lines throughout the year, including drives at "additional capacity points.," Unfortunately, the company doesn't seem to be ready to specify exactly what those points may be just yet, although The Inquirer speculates that we should see three-platter 1TB drives from the company before everything is all said and done.

[Via The Inquirer]

[l3lueMage @ Jan 24th 2008 3:09PM]

I want one, just make it an external hdd that size and I'm good xD

[Paris @ Jan 24th 2008 4:03PM]

You can buy a £10 usb enclosure and make it external (if they don't release one).

[Wwhat @ Jan 25th 2008 1:15AM]

Be wary of dodgy power adaptors with cheap enclosures, and iffy firmware, either will make all your data go bye-bye

[James Bowe @ Jan 25th 2008 10:48AM]

why is this important? You can buy 1TB drives for around $300. They improved their density? Great. Show me something bigger than 1TB and I might care. Until then...

[asphixiated @ Jan 24th 2008 3:13PM]

IIRC, current 1TB drives use 4x 250GB Platters right? So this should be the basis for a 1.28TB Drive in the near future

[GoldenEye4ever @ Jan 24th 2008 4:18PM]

They're not gonna make a 1.28TB drive.
Think about it, that'd sound weird to the average consumer.

The next step from 1TB has to be 1.5TB, anything less likely wouldn't take (it would seem as though that's the best they can do...not quite all the way).

[Hung @ Jan 24th 2008 5:34PM]

@ GoldenEye4ever

And a 320 GB drive does? What about 160 GB? 80?

MEGA FAIL.

[z @ Jan 24th 2008 6:22PM]

Samsung F1 1tb is 3 platter. The first batch of drives apparently have a high failure rate though.

[mabhatter @ Jan 24th 2008 10:48PM]

320 is about what sells at the low end. This will make a very cheap 1 platter drive (least moving parts) for OEM installs while they work out the bugs in manufacturing.

[Wwhat @ Jan 25th 2008 1:17AM]

This is WD mabhatter, not old maxtor.

[Gross Overload @ Jan 24th 2008 3:19PM]

I just checked - after a year of daily use I'm using 50Gbytes of a pair of 200GByte SATA drives.

I'm wondering what I would do with a terabyte...

[retro77 @ Jan 24th 2008 3:21PM]

download porn of course!

[mlody11 @ Jan 24th 2008 3:26PM]

There are many things I can do with TB of data... In the process of setting up a media server and let me tell you that media eats up space faster than you know. Now, add the fact that you want to backup all this data in case 1 or more drives go bad... you know the gist.

1 DVD movie ~ 5 GB... 100 movies = 500GB... backed up... 1TB
Pictures, home video, music ~ 250GB... .5TB

Total used... 1.5TB without trying hard
turn you computer into a HD DVR and you're going into the 2-4TB area... so, 5 X 1TB in a 10 RAID with a hot spare makes for a decent media server... $250 X 5 = 1,250... the prices on these 1TB drives need to come down....

[saintchuck @ Jan 24th 2008 3:26PM]

I need to expand my server. I still have drive bays left so it is no problem but the denser each bay is the longer I can go before upgrading older drives/getting new larger case/adding NAS boxes.

[andy @ Jan 24th 2008 3:27PM]

@ retro


This is a western digital, not a seagate.

[Wwhat @ Jan 25th 2008 1:21AM]

Modern games also eat mega GB's, as do their ISO's.
And even most women I know fill up a few hundred GB in a relatively short time, so when you only fill up 50GB I'm assuming you only just got internet and it's dialup.

[Udayan Tripathi @ Jan 24th 2008 3:35PM]

What's this? Not flash? Not SSD? How quaint!

[thedesolate1 @ Feb 16th 2008 5:08PM]

You can fill up 1 TB in less then a month thanks to all those torrents... lmao

[web2.oh @ Jan 24th 2008 6:47PM]

It's not flash, it's not an SSD, and it also doesn't cost hundreds of dollars for a far smaller capactity!

SHUTUP!! Different technologies for different purposes. Stop tossing around gadget buzzwords like an idiot.

[Wwhat @ Jan 25th 2008 1:22AM]

It is notable that all that talk of hybrid drives with 256MB or so on board has all dissipated though.

[Urza @ Jan 24th 2008 5:37PM]

Great. Lemme know when another company puts one out or the prices of the competing drives drop because of it.

Seriously, I've had a total of 10 desktop hard drives in use during the past two or three years. Two have failed, both WD, neither lasted more than a year. Only WD drives I've ever owned. Both were from the Caviar line too. Sure, two drives isn't a lot to go by, but a 100% failure rate is pretty bad...compared to 0% failure rate for the other 8 (Maxtor and Seagate). I'd gladly spend an extra $20 for the Maxtor brand name, though hard drives and shoes are the only thing I'll do that for.

[web2.oh @ Jan 24th 2008 6:52PM]

I've owned four Western Digital drives since 2000, and none of them have failed. I bought a Seagate a couple years ago, and it failed within 3-4 months. Lots of people were raving about Samsung's hard drives last year, my father has had something like half of the Samsung drives he purchased for work fail on him. It's all anecdotal evidence, it's all meaningless.

[Wwhat @ Jan 25th 2008 1:27AM]

Indeed, anecdotal, I for instance had nothing but bad experiences with maxtors (before they got bought up at least), and each time I heard someone say 'goddam it my HD went dead' I glibly said 'maxtor? ' and they replied, 'yeah, as a matter of fact it is a maxtor'.
You can get stories on any manufacturer it seems.

[K L @ Jan 24th 2008 8:18PM]

In just a month, I've used up 120GB of HD space in my MBP. My friend who works at WD gave me a 320GB HD soon after it was released (I got it 2 weeks ago). I replaced it in my Macbook Pro 15" 2.4GHz. The new 320GB HD was a bit noisier than the stock 160GB.
I don't notice any speed improvement. But it seems to run a little hotter than the stock one. (maybe, I didn't keep the temperature.)
It's worth the upgrade because with a powerful MBP, one really needs a lot of space to do video and pictures and many things.