Western Digital about to ship 2TB Caviar Green hard drive?
By Darren Murph 
posted Jan 13th 2009 11:49PM
posted Jan 13th 2009 11:49PM
[Via Electronista]
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You can bet on seeing it soon! And they work!
Seagate already has their 1x500GB platter out. I don't see what's stopping them from releasing their 2TB or even 2.5TB drive any day now as well. Personally, I'd rather have a 2TB Seagate over a WD.
@Pip
Maybe it's just me, but I trust WD more than I trust Seagate.
It's probably not just you, but I'm the opposite, though WD isn't far behind these days, and tend to be quieter the last few generations.
Hitachi is fine, though too loud generally. I'm happy with my Samsung drives, but they don't have enough history for me to form a real opinion.
I'm generally a fan of Seagate drives, but the 1.5TB drive appears to have some issues, locking up for multiple seconds at a time, especially in RAID configurations. Just look at the reviews on newegg.com. Even the recent posts with a newer flash update are continuing to show the problem, which even Tom's Hardware has written about. The Seagate might not be a good idea for a while.
@leo:
I used to agree with you. I used to be a WD fan boy but my story is like many others. I've never had a Seagate drive fail, I have had a WD drive fail. I have 2 1.5TBs Seagates and love them. I know of the RAID problems. The 2TB Seagates will be based on the 12th generation instead of the 11th as the 1.5TB drives. Hopefully Seagate has learned from the mistakes of the 7200.11 1.5TB. I'm betting them have.
@ leo, get your own damn name!
I have been put off from Seagate after my 6 month old 7000.10 series 700GB drive failed spectacularly. The laminate they used on the surface flaked off and got under the heads. The drive ended up only 10% retrievable in the end. Until I know that they are not using the same technology or anything like it I wont be trusting them for a while. 600Gb of data gone. I was not amused.
@pip
really? i have never had issues with WD but had major issues with seagate. never buying from them again. and it was a huge pain in the ass just to send in my drive to get replaced. and with my older server motherboard it was a pain to cap the sata to 1.5. the piece of crap software i had to download AND put on another computer was written wrong. the menu was backwards. 1.5 to 3.0 was actually 3.0 to 1.5 (and vice versa). some dyslexic programmer. WD just needed a jumper. and all my seagate drives run about 10 degrees hotter than my WDs. i wanted to get a seagate 1.5tb but decided to wait until WD came out with one after my bad experiences. im glad a did because from what i hear on the newegg product reviews they have been horrible.
It's about time we're hitting the 2GB barrier!
TB****
Ouch. Huge mistake man. Tis ok, it's one Engadget editors (and even the best of us) make sometimes; I'm sure you know the difference between 2 TB and 2 GB....
what qualifies as "the best of us" ?
Clak & iEye. Duh.
Holy $hite ... loads of green p0rn !!! ooooOOOoooo
its pr0n dude.check your urban dictionary.and quit looking at it because you are obviously going blind
nah, it's notpron
... sigh... loved those riddles.
Now if only they can get the 2TB Caviar Black Drives out.
I have had some bad luck with green powers and poor reliability.
Personally, I perfer to snap up smaller drives.
I don't have anywhere near 1 TB, so to me, its safer to buy a 500 GB HDD in my desktop and then buy a portable drive to back the desktop up to. This way, I never have all my eggs in one basket.
Get TWO 1TB drives. Then you'll have one egg in two baskets!
quantum eggs? just what kind of chicken was this?
Schrödinger's Chicken.
Quantum superposition is in your computer, both damaging and not damaging your important data...
@monkfishbandana
...I think I hear a new lolcat coming...
@msalivar
quantum eggs? just what kind of chicken was (wasn't) this? - I fixed that for ya ;-)
I hope the reliability of these things is increasing WITH the size, cause damn I'd be pissed if I had one of those go on me.
I'd be pissed if anything took a piss on me, hard-drive or not.
They're not... Even Raid5 can't necessarily always help with failures either.
http://www.tomshardware.com/news/RAID-5-Doomed-2009,6525.html
wow i think i had being living under a rock in the
hard drive tech world, a 2TB hard drive cost only
$225...damn it had being a long time since i bought
a hard drive...time to go shopping.
Exactly! That pricing is crazy!
For real... my 640gb Western digital drive was $84.99 when i bought it, but if you think about it $225 is a realistic price for 2tb since the 640gb is now $69.99 : 3x69.99 is just under 225 dollars and 3x640gb is just under 2tb.
1TB drives have been around 99.99 to 109.99 on sale for a while now. So it would seem normal to have a $5-25 is premium on a new drive with all the bits in one box.
now i can finally have 8tb of storage on my hp mediasmart server without dealing with usb or esata.
nom nom nom to the 2TB, but what makes it green?
Green Hard Drives are.......people!
@Stompntom
Now THAT was an obscure reference! You almost made me Soylent my pants.
Green hard drives consume less power than normal HD's.
Meaning you can get away with a smaller power source, and you can "Save the planet".
Its a marketing ploy to make people buy underperforming hard drives so they can feel better about themselves.
As far as I can tell, there is nothing remotely organic about the drive or any part of the manufacturing process.
As if a low-power hard drive is going to make up for all that juice your cpu and graphics card(s) require... it's only going to save you a few watts.
It adds up, especially in an array. Even with a single drive in an otherwise low power system. Plus they're quieter, and much cooler, since they run at 5400 RPM.
Honestly, when was the last time you needed your non-OS/app data faster than a 5400 RPM drive can provide it? Even in a custom built NAS a good hardware/software RAID 5, ZFS pool, or HammerFS equivalent, 5 or 6 GP drives will max out a single gigabit link.
They switch between 5400 and 7200 rpm. I'd rather destroy the environment with all of my evil 7200 rpm drives.
They switch between 5400 and 7200 rpm. I'd rather destroy the environment with all of my evil 7200 rpm drives.
There's been no sign of variable RPM in any reviews, and the specification is very ambiguous. They're full time 5400 RPM drives, but they're afraid to market them as such.
Oh my sweet lord in heaven :-)
Another drive for D-Link to claim to support in their NAS boxes, but actually they're completely incompatible!
WOW! I can store lots more crap on this.
I just purhcase three 1TB HDD (Maxtor, 32MB Cache HDD) for my NAS and now they come out with this.
Ok do I look into buying these or save my money for a couple 1TB SSD (I can dream can't I)
1TB SSD? You'll either be saving for that until your last day of life, or you can just sell out your house and car for it :p
Imo: Why would you need a 1TB SSD? It's not like you need even more speed to play movies, music, games... SSD is imo only good to install ur OS and software on (preferably on laptops) So you (Esp now with the insane prices) don't need more than 32 GB
I need my data to be safe, in the past I've had HDD's that died will lots of data and I lost it all today however I can afford to purchase more that one 1TB HDD so I have backup of Backup and in some cases backup of that.
of late however my HDD's have not faile me as they did in the past however if I can give my self even more peace of mind I will take it.
SSD dont have any moving parts ans thats as safe as I can get. I would like to know the life span of an SSD HDD compared to a standard HDD.
I do imagine I would be saving for a couple years to get that 1TB SSD
or a 8GB DROBO!!
Seems like all hard drives are good for is storing pr0n
The internet is for porn! And so are hard drives!
Probably the last of the platter drives.
GO SSD!
HDDs aren't going anywhere for a while. Until SSDs can surpass magnetic drives in both capacity and price per GB, they are out of the question for the average computer user. This person thinks to themself, "Hmm, I can get a 2TB drive for ~$250 or a 64GB SSD for ~$200." Which will they choose? The HDD. I'm all for SSDs passing up HDDs, but it won't happen for a while.
That depends if you need the capacity. Geek circles will want huge capacity (I know I do), but for most people an SSD will still have more capacity than they need, and have higher reliability and performance to boot.
Hard drives will become a niche item soon, only for use as secondary storage for huge libraries of data. I'll bet we see boot drives in both laptops and desktops go overwhelmingly SSD by the end of next year.
While I agree its going to take a while, its already happening in the netbook space. And it won't just happen when SSDs are the same price. HDDs are becoming bigger than many people really need, so the fact that they continue to get bigger won't matter to everybody. And SSDs are getting quite a bit faster. The early SSDs were not much better than HDDs, but the possibility for parallelism is huge in SSDs, so as new controllers come on line you just wait. Just look at the performance of the Intel X25M drive for example. Imagine what that drives performance will look like in 6 months or a year. And hopefully with Windows 7, we'll see some additional optimization on power utilization and performance for SSDs too...
I think it'll be a couple of years before SSDs are simply everywhere on laptops. Longer on desktops maybe. But SSDs are going to be awesome!
That said, I'll be buying some of these 2TB drvies shortly after they come out...
Not quite the deal it appears - you can easily get 1.5TB drives for $129 at NewEgg, so you're paying quite the premium for those extra 500GB. Of course, we'll see this come down as competition enters shortly.
First, read up on those 1.5TB drives. They are Seagate drives and have a known lockup issue. So, if WD offers a reliable drive, even slightly more expensive, I think it's a better deal.
Wow, one of this would be almost enough to replace the three 750GB I have in my server. I knew that elementary school math would come in handy one day. Now, the debate is in waiting for this or getting a 1TB and replace when these puppies come alive. It'd probably be cheaper to get the 2TB than 2 one TB. Decisions, decisions, decisions.
Yes please!
This brings up a legitimate question, WHY? What POSSIBLE use could you EVER have with this much space?
A few numbers:
Take a TiVo then put one of these drives in it, then add a 2TB ESATA drive and you are talking 25 full days worth of HD content :)
If my calculations (and TiVo's numbers) are correct you could store on these hard drives in a TiVo, in HD, EVERY EPISODE OF LAW & ORDER AND LAW & ORDER SVU EVER MADE
On one drive you can store 40 dual layer blu-ray disks (80 single layer) or 235 DVDs
If you wanted to, you could store the extended edition of the first Lord of the Rings movie in uncompressed 1080p on 2 of these drives
It's not really a matter of space, but rather a matter of production cost and progress of technology. HDD usually don't carry the premiums that the latest and greatest video cards do, and generally don't see much change in price other than with respect to general inflation.
That being said, if it takes nearly the same amount of raw material, time, and effort to produce a 200GB HDD on old technology as it does to create a 2TB HDD on new technology, why wouldn't you create the larger one?
At this point in time, 2TB is pretty niche. I don't know a single person who deals with such vast amounts of personal data. The only realistic thing is large media server with uncompressed video.
Well, I'm working on a documentary shot in HD and so far we're up to 2TB of disc space used, and we expect it to eventually hit 3TB.
On my computers I have roughly 3 TBs worth of TV & Movie DVDrips (not whole DVDs but 700MB to 1.8GB .avi files). There are people who make a hobby out of collecting media, and while it used to be physical format collections, I don't think it's unreasonable to think that it'd move towards digital equivilents requiring larger hard disks.
My father actually just invested in a 1TB HDD last year because he wanted an HTPC and have his video library available to him on the computer rather than just on DVDs stored in racks around the TV. And this is a man who is largely technologically inept. I don't think that large storage drives are actually going to remain niche for all that long. Streaming only goes so far. I think a lot of people still want that sense of ownership that video streaming services like Netflix don't provide.
These are also extremely nice for backup drives. A couple of these in RAID5 or 6 and you can do multiple full backups, plus incremental backups of file servers and whatnot.
how about the fact that many people are now starting to have larger and larger media collections, and wish to be able to access this media throughout there house?
they've been telling us for years it was going to happen. It was called the "Connected Household", and it's becoming a reality more and more.
i know literally hundreds of people that own several hundred DVD's, and they much prefer being able to easily browse and select from a good 10 foot interface than having to flip through the cases on a shelf.
and that just takes into account the ones that have LEGAL dvd's and rips.
if you are a fan of television series, it doesn't take much to get to a couple hundred DVD's.
Hell if you like Sci-Fi, you can get to 150 with only purchasing Stargate SG-1, Farscape, and Andromeda....... and that is about 1TB right there in full format (because compressed video sucks ass on large displays)
people are getting more and more of their television this way.
it's cheaper. You only buy what you want to watch, there are no commercials, and you don't have to wait a week to watch the next episode.
DVR's started the trend, now some people simply wait until the season is out on DVD and buy it and watch at their ultimate convenience.
personally, other than sports and some shows on discovery and history channel, i find 99% of the drivel on network television and about 75% of the rest of the channels to be useless crap that is merely repeated over and over.
honestly, how many variations of the same show do you need?
HD (recording and blu-ray rips) takes up a ton of space. Even 2TB won't last long for that, will need several of these drives.
I have 773GB of music :D So 3 of these in a raid 5 would give me just under 4 tb of space and fault tollerance.
ha, this is great, great for servers, finally get to 2, be easier to add up when you want a even number. now i dont have a problem with WD, theres in my computer now, and i have a Maxtor for my external which is the same company as Seagate. alot of haters for both sides. i havent had bad luck with any of them.
what about you? whats your experience with these drives, WD and seagate, i need to build a server like you read before on me, and i need to know whats gonna be the best bet, reliable and trusting
I just ordered a 1TB Caviar Black last night, if I would have knownthese were coming out soon, I may have waited. Although I don't know about the Green n versions..... Seems like the extra 10 bucks is worth the 7200 RPM vs. the 5400.
Green Caviar? Disgusting!
My Drobo could use a few of these, I still have some time before I need to buy one though... (650GB of space left)
I'm with you. Bring these out, the drobos are hungry.
Those Seagate 1.5TB drives did indeed have a lockup problem. I bought one and had the problem, it was really obvious. however, they fixed it with a firmware update, and now my 1.5TB drive has no problems at all. I might get another one soon, so I can backup the first 1.5TB drive all in one place, instead of having to put some stuff here, some stuff there, etc.
I didn't see anywhere what the RPM was. Since it's their "green" model, does that mean that it's 5400rpm for sure? I'm not buying anything that's not at least 7200rpm.
- JonYo
The Caviar Green models are still 7200rpm, they just have a lower power consumption at the cost of being slightly slower than the Caviar Blue or Black models.
actually the green drives are hybrid drives that can spin as low as 5400rpm and then step up to 7200 RPM if necessary.
they mostly operate at 5400 RPM and when operating at 7200RPM have slower seek and read rates than the Black edition drives.
that's why they are labeled "Green".
Because they supposedly use less electricity to run.
however anyone that knows anything about electronics and electric motors, will tell you that they all use the same amount of electricity to start up from parked, which is where most hard drives sit for most of their lives in consumer devices, and this is magnitudes more than the amount used to keep the motor spinning, so its really just marketing crap.
go throw an amp meter on your outside ac compressor or you refrigerator compressor when it starts up, and then compare that to when it's running.
you can run the thing for hours on the same amount of electricity used simple to start the compressor.
I'm wondering why this drive is a Green Drive. There is no information about environmental issues or power consumption. Going to find out. Did the same with the Kangeroo EcoDrive and received nice information from Kangeroo.
http://www.stichtingmilieunet.nl/andersbekekenblog/?p=5056
That must mean it is time to buy a 1TB drive! Since the 1TB I bought a while back was $200 at cost, and I can no longer get cost. Soon my little raid, you will be complete.
I just got a 1tb from Newegg for $109 and then with a $30 MIR... and on top of that got like $3 more back from the live.com cashback thing. So all said and done, 1tb for under $80 (no tax, free shipping).
And it's only going to get better with drives like this hitting the market.
Hmm... I won't buy WD even if it is rock bottom price, they are not known for their quality. The number of HDD I have used over the past 2 decades is prove the WD needs to work on its HDD build quality. I have owned at least 3 of them, but none has lasted more than 6 months.
Seagate, on the other, used to be so damn good. In fact I used to work for them here in Singapore. But after they swallowed Maxtor, their quality has just been as bad. I still have some functioning Seagate HDD from back in the 80s!
I'd agree with you that after Seagate bought Maxtor, their quality went down. So, I'm very weary about buying their hdd. I have some externals that have worked great for me so far. But, I'm afraid of buying anything bigger than 500GB from them. WD has been good to me. I'm still using three 200GB and 250GB hdd I bought a little over 4 years ago and they're working just fine. I have three of these WD "green" 750GB in my server which I had for close to a year. So far, so good. There's a batch of the 1TB that had issues. But, its follow up model had better results: WD10EADS.
Im excited.....
I've been buying only WD hard drives since my IBM Deathstar died on me. After all of these years I've yet to have one fail on me. They all still work fine.
I need to upgade my media drives soon. I've already been using WD Green drives, as the speed isn't needed, and they're nice and quiet. Good timing on this badboy.
well wd drives i test with hd tune they dont have these so called yellow highlighted spin retry count error like seagates do...
The foru platter WD drives are just not reliable for the long haul.
But WD RMA supprot is beyond peer so at least I got them replaced.
That just means that the next Photoshop Download will be 400GB
I question it's green credentials. In terms of environmental damage, what is the energy expended to make a 2TB hard drive and what is the material usage (and eventual wastage) that goes into making such a thing? Is the energy saving in terms of Joules over the lifetime in your PC (A year or two before you buy a 3TB drive) worth the millions of joules that went into making it? What will you all be doing with the 500GB drives that you will be removing? Landfill in Africa?
You can afford the cost in the shop, but before you decide to buy it, can we afford the environmental cost?
Everyone seems to be assuming that since this drive is expected to cost about 170 euro, that it will cost $225 in the US. This is very unlikely. Electronics are usually priced about 1:1 EUR:USD. So a 170 EUR drive can be expected to go for about 170 USD. Part of this is screwing over Europeans, and most of it is VAT (which is included in the retail price in Europe, unlike American sales tax). In Germany, at least, VAT is 19%, so 32.30 EUR (or almost $43) of that 170 is going to the government.
so... weren't they supposed to be released this week?
Everybody is happy when prices are going down,but you forget a major point here,cheaper means less quality parts and philosophy behind this is if you payed $ 200 instead of $500 you'll not complain if the drive die on you,you'll just buy a new one.If you're lucky the drive will last from one months (as has mine) or maybe few years (have such drives too,when they were more expensive ).
i know this is thread has been buried by now... but does anyone have updates on this 2tb monster? i'm returning my 1.5 seagate to newegg because this is the 3rd rma. fool me 4 times? i think not. WD, release the beast!
I was hoping they would put these out already, but it looks like they've got a hold on them. Just talked to Western Digital, who's official guess is "sometime in April".
I guess better late than never, but I need space RIGHT NOW, so I'm ordering two of the 1.5TB drives from Seagate. I was really hoping WD would have gotten these out already.
Good on you WD, i'll be picking a few of these up for a RAID array.
I recently had 4 7200.11 1tb seagates fail me and i wont touch them with a 40ft pole.
Currently i have 10 WD 640 gb drives and they perform rather admirably. (4 - raid 0 in this PC, the rest in other computers/external-sata).