Friday, August 3rd 2012
2 TB WD Green 2.5-inch Hard Drive Goes on Sale
Western Digital's new high-capacity 2.5-inch hard drive, the WD Green WD20NPVT made an appearance in Japanese ground stores. Strangely enough, while the drive is built in the 2.5-inch form-factor, it is 15 mm-thick, making it unfit for most notebooks. The drive provides a staggering 2 TB of unformatted capacity, and features IntelliPower variable spindle speed (4,500-5,400 RPM?), 8 MB cache, SATA 3 Gb/s interface, 0.2W idle (parked) and 1.7W (active) power consumption. It is priced at 18,800 JPY (US $240).
Source:
Akiba PC Watch
33 Comments on 2 TB WD Green 2.5-inch Hard Drive Goes on Sale
news.yahoo.com/blogs/this-could-be-big-abc-news/30k-million-years-storage-134154367.html
Might also fit my notebook, I'll have to look...
I don't really understand your comment though. But I think this is what you meant.
www.storagereview.com/western_digital_my_passport_studio_review_2tb
FYI
This drive also does NOT use variable speed. This is confirmed by WD itself in its technical sheet (www.wdc.com/wdproducts/library/SpecSheet/ENG/2879-771439.pdf). Following is a quotation from, 2nd page, bottom. See the word "invariable".
"3 A fine-tuned balance of spin speed, transfer rate and caching algorithms designed to deliver both significant power savings and solid performance. For each WD Green drive model, WD may use a different, invariable RPM."
Unfortunately, WD never clearly gave RPM for its Green series. We know for a fact that for 3,5" it is 5400 RPM. We may only wonder whether for 2,5" version it s 4500 or 5400.
TPU, please correct the information.
Fact:
1. The quoted spin speed is 5400-7200 in the spec sheets
2. At manufacturing, when they test the drives, they set the spin speed to "balance" power consumption, noise, and error.
3. It means some drives operate at 5400, some faster, manybe a few as fast as 7200 but I doubt it. (Perhaps the ones they send to reviewers ;))
4. WD can take underperforming 7200 drives and get them to work within tolerances at 5400 and then label them Green Drives
5. It IS NOT GREEN for the consumer, but it is for WD ;-) No rejects bucket... just "green them"!
6. They perform crap
7. Many people, incl. myself, fell for the green spin. I will never buy WD again. Own-goal.
kater, you are a WD marketing troll. You are more interested in protecting WD reputation than protecting the interest and knowledge of the end buyer. Shame on you!
TPU fell victim to WD PRopaganda department's efforts (like so many other sites and shops...), but more aggravating is the fact that they even suggested RPM range on their own - even WD did not do that.
Actually, WD make v good drives, I own a Blue and a Green, and had two VRs before I switched to SSD, and all perform(ed) well and all is good. Still, as already said, their marketing is, to say the least, questionable and unethical.
Just to be clear, don't accuse me of something (supporting WD) when I'm clearly objecting against what they have been doing with Green drives marketing. Also, I was the first one here to remind about the whole variable speed issue. I am merely asking TPU to make corrections to actually disclose and highlight WD's lies. TPU not only fell for WD spin, but they also failed to double check the issue, which kinda makes it worse. Especially that indepth tests by respectable sites have been online for years (SPCR, Dec 2007).
I'm sorry you fell for their spin. Still, you should have checked it properly, especially for the mythical variable speed, since it seems this feature drew your attention.
Interestingly, Hitachi is now making drives that actually DO have variable spin speed, depending on load. Read about CinemaStar 5K1000.
If you feel itch to have the product, just look up.
TPU dont need share all info about each product , especially if not brand new the future including.
I wouldn't buy this , but would love to have one for HTPC , but full speed.
I think this IntelliPower make it unreliable. But again, this is my own opinion.
Regards
One more thing - I don't agree that IntelliPower makes anything unreliable. IntelliPower is just permanently reduced speed, nothing else. All WD Black and Velociraptor have 5 (five) years of warranty, and are higher speed drives (7,200 and 10,000, respectively). Also, WD RE4 have 5 y warranty.
On the other hand, most other HDD makers offer only 2 years of warranty, even for their higher tier products.
As much as I respect TPU and consider it one of the very top PC news & review sites I must say that this piece was poorly done. Good thing is it can still be rectified ;)
Would I buy the drive for my HTPC? Hell yeah. It has everything my HTPC needs - small size (my HTPC is v small), permanently low RPM (reduced power consumption & noise) and enough performance (my main drive is SSD, and the HDD is only for storage and playback, nothing elese).
The comment about RPM had a question mark, to indicate it was a guess and not reliable information (based on previous drives)
i have nothing at all to do with the news here, and it was really obvious as to the source of this information, and why it was incomplete. If you have trouble understanding that, its your comprehension skills that are lacking - not the writer of the articles fault.