Western Digital about to ship 2TB Caviar Green hard drive?

Western Digital has known that Seagate was toiling away in hopes of being the first to market with a standalone 2TB hard drive, and evidently it has chosen to work its engineers that much harder. In a presumed effort to beat Hitachi (and everyone else) to the 2TB barrier, WD is reportedly aiming to launch its Caviar Green 2000GB WD20EADS later this week, and with it will come 32MB of cache, an 8.9-millisecond seek time and an expected price tag of around €170 ($224). Best of all? It should be "available immediately" just as soon as it's outed for real.

[Via Electronista]

[werks@wd @ Jan 13th 2009 11:57PM]

You can bet on seeing it soon! And they work!

[Pip @ Jan 14th 2009 12:49AM]

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.

[Leo @ Jan 14th 2009 12:53AM]

@Pip
Maybe it's just me, but I trust WD more than I trust Seagate.

[msalivar @ Jan 14th 2009 12:56AM]

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.

[Fanfoot @ Jan 14th 2009 12:59AM]

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.

[Pip @ Jan 14th 2009 1:18AM]

@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 @ Jan 14th 2009 3:35AM]

@ leo, get your own damn name!

[Tim Brown @ Jan 14th 2009 5:15AM]

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.

[bobbintb @ Jan 15th 2009 8:22PM]

@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.

[Unbiased @ Jan 13th 2009 11:58PM]

It's about time we're hitting the 2GB barrier!

[Wyatt @ Jan 14th 2009 12:20AM]

TB****

[nerdtalker @ Jan 14th 2009 12:46AM]

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....

[ImaYam @ Jan 14th 2009 1:12AM]

what qualifies as "the best of us" ?

[EFG @ Jan 14th 2009 7:51AM]

Clak & iEye. Duh.

[rocky_boss @ Jan 13th 2009 11:59PM]

Holy $hite ... loads of green p0rn !!! ooooOOOoooo

[loop @ Jan 14th 2009 12:28AM]

its pr0n dude.check your urban dictionary.and quit looking at it because you are obviously going blind

[stefan @ Jan 14th 2009 6:25AM]

nah, it's notpron

... sigh... loved those riddles.

[mcwiggin @ Jan 13th 2009 11:59PM]

Now if only they can get the 2TB Caviar Black Drives out.

I have had some bad luck with green powers and poor reliability.

[Flashpoint @ Jan 14th 2009 12:01AM]

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.

[lpppppl @ Jan 14th 2009 12:28AM]

Get TWO 1TB drives. Then you'll have one egg in two baskets!

[msalivar @ Jan 14th 2009 12:58AM]

quantum eggs? just what kind of chicken was this?

[Zinger314 @ Jan 14th 2009 1:38AM]

Schrödinger's Chicken.

[monkfishbandana @ Jan 14th 2009 12:24PM]

Quantum superposition is in your computer, both damaging and not damaging your important data...

[Zack @ Jan 14th 2009 4:49PM]

@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 ;-)

[RioRyan @ Jan 14th 2009 12:02AM]

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.

[Samboini @ Jan 14th 2009 3:56AM]

I'd be pissed if anything took a piss on me, hard-drive or not.

[Precurse @ Jan 14th 2009 10:32AM]

They're not... Even Raid5 can't necessarily always help with failures either.

http://www.tomshardware.com/news/RAID-5-Doomed-2009,6525.html

[pr_master @ Jan 14th 2009 12:05AM]

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.

[suicycle.com @ Jan 14th 2009 12:19AM]

Exactly! That pricing is crazy!

[aznofazns @ Jan 14th 2009 12:46AM]

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.

[kal326 @ Jan 14th 2009 8:44AM]

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.

[va jj @ Jan 14th 2009 12:08AM]

now i can finally have 8tb of storage on my hp mediasmart server without dealing with usb or esata.

[Hal @ Jan 14th 2009 12:13AM]

nom nom nom to the 2TB, but what makes it green?

[Stompntom @ Jan 14th 2009 12:16AM]

Green Hard Drives are.......people!

[Jeff P. @ Jan 14th 2009 12:22AM]

@Stompntom
Now THAT was an obscure reference! You almost made me Soylent my pants.

[TavisJohn @ Jan 14th 2009 12:30AM]

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".

[John @ Jan 14th 2009 12:39AM]

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.

[aznofazns @ Jan 14th 2009 12:48AM]

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.

[msalivar @ Jan 14th 2009 1:05AM]

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.

[Brazen521 @ Jan 14th 2009 6:25AM]

They switch between 5400 and 7200 rpm. I'd rather destroy the environment with all of my evil 7200 rpm drives.

[Brazen521 @ Jan 14th 2009 6:27AM]

They switch between 5400 and 7200 rpm. I'd rather destroy the environment with all of my evil 7200 rpm drives.

[msalivar @ Jan 14th 2009 1:40PM]

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.

[cwluc @ Jan 14th 2009 12:27AM]

Oh my sweet lord in heaven :-)

[usetheforce @ Jan 14th 2009 12:20AM]

Another drive for D-Link to claim to support in their NAS boxes, but actually they're completely incompatible!

[TheCow5 @ Jan 14th 2009 12:44AM]

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)

[Patriks7 @ Jan 14th 2009 1:15AM]

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

[musback @ Jan 14th 2009 8:00AM]

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

[TheCow5 @ Jan 14th 2009 3:15PM]

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

[Matt @ Jan 14th 2009 12:48AM]

or a 8GB DROBO!!

[Jeff @ Jan 14th 2009 12:49AM]

Seems like all hard drives are good for is storing pr0n