Western Digital's 2TB Caviar Green hard drive launches, gets previewed

There's no veil of secrecy covering this one, but Western Digital has finally come clean with the industry's first 2TB internal hard drive. Launched today in the USA, the planet's highest capacity single HDD -- otherwise known as the 2TB Caviar Green ($299; available now) -- sits on a 3.5-inch platform, includes 32MB of cache and is based around WD's 500GB per platter technology (with 400Gb/in2 areal density). HotHardware was able to take a sneak peek at this here device (a pre-engineering sample, as it were), and was gracious enough to host up some juicy benchmark results for those eager to see how this capacious beast performed. Against the formidable Spinpoint F1 (Samsung) and Barracuda 7200.11 (Seagate), the WD managed to hold its own, which is saying a lot for a drive of this magnitude. Check the full release after the break.

WD® LAUNCHES INDUSTRY'S FIRST 2 TB HARD DRIVES

WD's Eco-friendly, Cool and Quiet, WD Caviar® Green™ Drive Marks the Largest Capacity Hard Drive in the Industry

LAKE FOREST, Calif. - Jan. 27, 2009 - WD (NYSE: WDC) today announced the first 2 terabyte (TB) hard drive – the world's highest capacity drive and the latest addition to WD's popular, environmentally friendly, cool and quiet, WD® Caviar® Green™ hard drive family. This new 3.5-inch platform is based on WD's industry-leading 500 GB/platter technology (with 400 Gb/in2 areal density) with 32 MB cache, producing drives with capacities of up to 2 TB.
"While some in the industry wondered if the end consumer would buy a 1 TB drive, already some 10 percent of 3.5-inch hard drive sales are at the 1 TB level or higher, serving demand from video applications and expanding consumer media libraries," said Mark Geenen, President of Trend Focus. "The 2 TB hard drives will continue to satisfy end user's insatiable desire to store more data on ever larger hard drives."
WD Caviar Green is one of the most successful product lines in the company's recent history with its third-generation GreenPower™ technology, now providing 2 TB of proven reliable storage for today's high-resolution files and graphics. WD Caviar Green drives are designed for use in USB/FireWire®/eSATA external hard drives, desktop computers, workstations, and desktop RAID environments.
"Saving power without sacrificing storage capacity is what consumers want, and what many businesses are requiring today. With the launch of the new WD Caviar Green 2 TB hard drive, customers receive the additional capacities needed to operate today's highly advanced programs and high-resolution digital files while using less power than typical drives with similar performance and capacities," said Jim Morris, WD senior vice president and general manager of client systems.
Rock Solid Mechanical Architecture, Cool, Quiet Hard Drives
A number of advanced technologies enable the speed, capacity and performance of WD's Caviar Green 1.5 TB and 2 TB hard drives. Those include: StableTrac™, which secures the motor shaft at both ends to reduce system-induced vibration and stabilize platters for accurate tracking during read and write operations ; IntelliPower™, which fine-tunes the balance of spin speed, transfer rate and caching algorithms designed to deliver both significant power savings and solid performance; IntelliSeek™, which calculates optimum seek speeds to lower power consumption, noise, and vibration; and NoTouch™ ramp load technology, which is designed to ensure the recording head never touches the disk media resulting in significantly less wear to the recording head and media, as well as better drive protection while in transit.
Availability and Pricing
The WD Caviar Green 2 TB is available at select resellers and distributors. MSRP for the WD Caviar Green 2 TB hard drives (model WD20EADS) is $299.00 USD. More information about WD Caviar Green desktop drives may be found on the company's Web site at http://wdc.com/en/products/Products.asp?DriveID=576
About WD
WD, one of the storage industry's pioneers and long-time leaders, provides products and services for people and organizations that collect, manage and use digital information. The company produces reliable, high-performance hard drives that keep users' data accessible and secure from loss. WD applies its storage expertise to consumer products for external, portable and shared storage applications.
WD was founded in 1970. The company's storage products are marketed to leading systems manufacturers, selected resellers and retailers under the Western Digital® and WD brand names. Visit the Investor section of the company's Web site (www.westerndigital.com) to access a variety of financial and investor information.
###
Western Digital, WD, the WD logo and WD Caviar are registered trademarks of Western Digital Technologies, Inc. in the US and other countries; Green, IntelliPower, IntelliSeek, NoTouch, StableTrac, and GreenPower are trademarks of Western Digital Technologies, Inc. All other trademarks herein are property of their respective owner. As used for storage capacity, one megabyte (MB) = one million bytes, one gigabyte (GB) = one billion bytes, and one terabyte (TB) = one trillion bytes. Total accessible capacity varies depending on operating environment. As used for buffer or cache, one megabyte (MB) = 1,048,576 bytes.

[Julio @ Jan 27th 2009 8:09AM]

Who'll be next to whip out a bigger one?

[NHAnimator @ Jan 27th 2009 8:12AM]

I hear Aerosmith's ready with their big 10-inch.

[Kris120890 @ Jan 27th 2009 8:13AM]

When you say whip out a bigger one are we talking about the hard drive or something else.

[Ruben @ Jan 27th 2009 8:15AM]

Seagate is the next one. They are also at 500GB per platter. The 7200.12 should be out soon, so then it will be a battle between who has better transfer speeds (and a better firmware, apparently).

Since the 7200.12 is supposed to be much faster than the 7200.11, I think Seagate will take the speed crown.

[Julio @ Jan 27th 2009 8:23AM]

On a related subject, we all know most people who will be buying this size drive are just trying to compensate for something.
2TB hard Drive is the SUV of the Desktop world!

[Saad Rabia @ Jan 27th 2009 8:26AM]

@Julio: That's what she said.

[giuliop @ Jan 27th 2009 8:52AM]

She said, "2TB hard Drive is the SUV of the Desktop world!"?

[Saad Rabia @ Jan 27th 2009 8:59AM]

She said: "Who'll be next to whip out a bigger one?" (First comment)

[iphonerulez @ Jan 27th 2009 10:21AM]

Mine's bigger than yours. Nearly twice as big. Worth every penny of $299 for bragging rights.

[Knee to the Groin @ Jan 27th 2009 11:17AM]

Who'll be next to whip out a bigger one?

That's easy, the WD Black...

[Amir @ Jan 27th 2009 11:50AM]

@knee,
I see what you did there,
wait, did u really mean it ?

[Stevo @ Jan 27th 2009 2:37PM]

The bigger the better! :P

[thedesolate1 @ Jan 27th 2009 11:38PM]

Many people got burned on the seagate 1.5's so i'd be wise to wait and see..

[Tarnation @ Jan 27th 2009 8:17AM]

Nice! My one concern is if this thing dies you could have a $300 door stop with a lot of your data still on it. RAID 5 array with these puppies...I may need to go change my pants now.

[Precurse @ Jan 27th 2009 9:57AM]

Raid5 may not be enough...

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

[b @ Jan 27th 2009 12:09PM]

"

SomeJoe7777 is on the right track, but failed to explain it completely.

First consider the soft error rate, the rate at which a bit may be read incorrectly one time, but read correctly most of the time. That number isn't really important other than as a context for what uncorrected read error rate is. The URE rate is the rate at which raw bits passing under the read can't be consistently read AND match what was written. Note that we're talking about the raw bit stream from the media. All HDs for at least 15 years have had advanced ECC encoding on each sector which is capable of recovering from at least one bit (typically several bits) error in the bit stream for that sector. This means that the ECC which is built in to the drive will correct that 10 ^ -14 URE.

The URE applies to the raw bit stream, not to the ECC corrected data coming out of the drive, and the ECC can recover from at least 1 bit error in the bit stream for each (and every) sector on the disk.

Because of that, the size of the drive is essentially irrelevant, it is the sector size and the amount of ECC per sector that is relevant. Because of the sector level ECC, the size of the drive has only a trivial effect on the likelihood of a sector becoming unreadable.

RAID (other than the improperly named RAID 0) offers an additional level of recoverability allowing for a failure of any part of a drive (e.g. one sector, one head, etc.) or a whole drive (e.g. motor, actuator, controller, etc.) to fail and still be able to recover the data.

Likewise, the size of the RAID volume is only a trivial factor in the chances that a RAID volume will be unrecoverable. The number of drives in an RAID 5 or RAID 6 array is many orders of magnitude more significant than the size of the drive or of the volume/array. The more drives, the greater the chance of a failure of one or more drives. The same applies to the seldom/never used RAID 2, 3, or 4 and to a few implementations of RAID 0 + 1 (where the data is striped before it's mirrored)

Because RAID 1 (and RAID 10, aka 1 + 0) mirrors pairs of drives, the number of drives and the size of the array are almost irrelevant. In order to be uncoverable, a RAID 10 array must have a failure the identical portion of the two drives that are mirrored within a short enough timeframe that one failed drive is not repaired/rebuilt before the second failure. That probability does not change significantly by adding more drive pairs to the array.

"

[NineT9 @ Jan 27th 2009 8:14AM]

$299? Thats insane...

You can find a 1TB internal for $99
a 1.5TB for $130
Everyday from NewEgg, Frys, Weekly Ads from BestBuy/CircuitCity/OfficeMax/etc

I understand the need to price it high for the luxury of having the biggest, but $299 is just too steep :/
Atleast we all know these will be $100 in a year :P

[neodorian @ Jan 27th 2009 9:22AM]

Yeah, but if you look at *any* component, there is usually a hefty premium for having the biggest/baddest/best at any given time even if it is only slightly better than the next lowest thing. That's the great part about building your own computer. You can find your own happy medium between bang and buck. I agree that $300 for 2TB is high when you can get 1TB for $100-120 but it's not exorbitant as some components can get. I was just about to order a second 1TB for backup when I read this and I will still be buying just 1TB.

[zioncat @ Jan 27th 2009 10:02AM]

True you can get there new hotness for 300 plus tax or two seagate 1.5 TB from newegg 259.00 plus tax out the door. Which would be what Western Digital 3 TB.

[Joe B. @ Jan 28th 2009 5:05PM]

Typical ignorance.. Wow, I can get a 50Gig drive on ebay for 3 bucks -- maybe I should buy 40 of those and have 2TB for only $120!!!!

[NineT9 @ Jan 28th 2009 6:19PM]

^ uhhh what?

[Dave @ Jan 27th 2009 8:18AM]

NEED MORE!

[Like_A_Glove @ Jan 27th 2009 9:16AM]

That's what sh..... never mind.

[Wwhat @ Jan 27th 2009 1:37PM]

Did she ask why it was green at all?

[csmitty @ Jan 27th 2009 8:33AM]

Hmmm.......might have to start looking at that HTPC setup again. Of course I would need atleast two of these. Wouldn't want all that info going bye bye.

[Noel @ Jan 27th 2009 8:25AM]

I'm down with my wholesaler for 24 of these.
I have a new supermicro core i7 server with
a lot of empty drivebays.

My media collection can now take its rightful
place as successor to the library of Alexandria.

[Jay Voorhees @ Jan 27th 2009 8:52AM]

Until someone comes and burns your shit down....

[Mark @ Jan 27th 2009 8:29AM]

How much space is actually available on this, 1.5 TB?

[NineT9 @ Jan 27th 2009 8:33AM]

~1860GB

but i really dont see why ppl make such a big deal out of how much you lose, you lose the same amount whether you have 2TB, or 4x500GB drives...If you going to buy a 2TB, losing 140GB is nothing, just like on a 200GB, losing 14GB is nothing

[Marko @ Jan 27th 2009 8:47AM]

I have a 1TB version of this, and it gives me 1000GB, hence I think the times are changing!

[ProfessorKaos @ Jan 27th 2009 10:39AM]

Dude you CANNOT have 1 TB from a 1 TB drive due to formatting . Either you are poorly minded or naiive @>@

[Suijin @ Jan 27th 2009 2:39PM]

@ ProfessorKaos: Dude you CANNOT have 1 TB from a 1 TB drive due to formatting . Either you are poorly minded or naiive @>@

Actually you don't "lose" any space. It only depends on the units you are using for reporting the space on the drive. Does 1 GB = 1,000,000,000 bytes (hard drive manufacturer) or does 1 GB = 1,073,741,824 bytes =2^30 bytes (windows definition reported).

Read the side of any current hard drive and it will explain this as there was a lawsuit ove this years back. Or look up gigabyte on wiki for explaination.

[Saad Rabia @ Jan 27th 2009 8:30AM]

My friend bought a 2 TB hard drive 1 week ago, How is this "INDUSTRY'S FIRST"???

[PSN: Aggie_CEO @ Jan 27th 2009 8:44AM]

was it a single HDD or 2 1TB drives stuck together??

[Zane @ Jan 27th 2009 8:49AM]

The nameless ones on eBay with those fake stickers proclaiming 2TB don't count.

[Saad Rabia @ Jan 27th 2009 8:58AM]

It is a one single disk with 2TB of storage. Not an external, but an internal SATA, and get this: It is Western Digital! Not green, but still.

It is almost $230 (AED 850)! Been out for over 3 weeks. I shit you not.

[Zane @ Jan 27th 2009 9:01AM]

SharafDG, if you know what I mean?

[Saad Rabia @ Jan 27th 2009 9:07AM]

Yeah I know what you mean, but not from SharafDG. :)

It is from a local computer shop in Abu Dhabi, A very good friend of ours, and they wouldn't cheat us whatsoever, and the disk looks totally genuine.

I'm trying to call the shop to get more details, they will open in 15 minutes, I guess.

[Zane @ Jan 27th 2009 9:51AM]

Mind passing the details? I'm in AD right now.

[Ariel Horwitz @ Jan 27th 2009 8:32AM]

Finally, something large enough to handle my porn collection...

[PSN: Aggie_CEO @ Jan 27th 2009 8:46AM]

I think I'd need 2 of these for my porn collection........lol

[Zane @ Jan 27th 2009 8:46AM]

Your collection's a meager 2TB? I know a couple of guys who have a library larger than that.

[Major4Play @ Jan 27th 2009 8:52AM]

Are you saying you don't have anything big enough to cope with your porn collection ? I do

[Ariel Horwitz @ Jan 27th 2009 8:54AM]

OK, I just thought that was a funny reply...

My collection currently stands at 0K.

[drackath777 @ Jan 27th 2009 2:07PM]

What are you looking at? ASCII porn?

[PSN: Aggie_CEO @ Jan 27th 2009 8:45AM]

nice........but damn that $300 price tag......

I mean I'll give it 6 months to a year before these are $150

hell 1TB drives use to be this price too....

[AbbasJin @ Jan 27th 2009 8:49AM]

woah,
These things keep getting bigger every day. I realise how useful these can be to major it related individuals and companies but i bet more than half of the end users will use these to store pirated blu ray movies and big iso dumps. :) still its good seeing zi computer devices go hi tech every passing day. cant wait for a sub $200 8core cpu then i'll get a 8tb hdd to go with it.
And by the way, dont pretend to be a saint by saying no ones gonna use these fat hard driver for pirating stuff, it.d be like lying abt never having jerked.

[Marc @ Jan 27th 2009 8:48AM]

Will it run Crysis?

[Major4Play @ Jan 27th 2009 8:51AM]

New material please.

[Kizorblade @ Jan 27th 2009 10:11AM]

"Will it store Crysis?"

That work?