Tuesday, November 20th 2012
Western Digital Expands Its Highest-Performing Desktop Hard Drives To 4 TB Capacity
WD, a Western Digital company and a world leader in hard drives, today announced its highest performance, highest capacity desktop hard drive, the WD Black 4 TB, 3.5-inch, 7200 RPM drive. Shipping immediately, the fast performance and ultimate capacity of the award-winning WD Black drives make them perfect for gaming, high-performance desktop systems and workstations.
WD Black hard drives combine 7200 RPM spin speed, 64 MB cache, dual stage actuator technology, SATA 6 gigabits per second (Gb/s) interface, and an integrated dual processor to deliver ultimate performance in a maximum-capacity drive.
"Maximizing the features and functionality of power computing applications such as gaming, multimedia and video editing, the new WD Black 4 TB hard drives offer capacity and performance-without compromise," said Matt Rutledge, vice president of WD's client storage group. "In choosing WD Black hard drives, WD desktop customers get the best possible mix of capacity, performance and reliability to handle intense desktop computing with ease."
WD Black 4 TB hard drives feature the following:
- Dual processor - Twice the processing power to maximize performance.
- Dual actuator technology - A head positioning system with two actuators that improves positional accuracy over the data track(s). The primary actuator provides coarse displacement using conventional electromagnetic actuator principles. The secondary actuator uses piezoelectric motion to fine tune the head positioning to a higher degree of accuracy.
- IntelliSeek - Calculates optimum seek speeds to lower power consumption, noise and vibration.
- StableTrac - The motor shaft is secured at both ends to reduce system-induced vibration and stabilize platters for accurate tracking during read and write operations.
- NoTouch ramp load technology - The recording head never touches the disk media ensuring significantly less wear to the recording head and media as well as better drive protection in transit.
Price and Availability
The WD Black 4 TB GB (model WD4001FAEX) hard drives are available through select distributors and resellers. Manufacturer's Suggested Retail Price (MSRP) for the WD Black 4 TB drive is $339.00 USD.
WD Black hard drives combine 7200 RPM spin speed, 64 MB cache, dual stage actuator technology, SATA 6 gigabits per second (Gb/s) interface, and an integrated dual processor to deliver ultimate performance in a maximum-capacity drive.
WD Black 4 TB hard drives feature the following:
- Dual processor - Twice the processing power to maximize performance.
- Dual actuator technology - A head positioning system with two actuators that improves positional accuracy over the data track(s). The primary actuator provides coarse displacement using conventional electromagnetic actuator principles. The secondary actuator uses piezoelectric motion to fine tune the head positioning to a higher degree of accuracy.
- IntelliSeek - Calculates optimum seek speeds to lower power consumption, noise and vibration.
- StableTrac - The motor shaft is secured at both ends to reduce system-induced vibration and stabilize platters for accurate tracking during read and write operations.
- NoTouch ramp load technology - The recording head never touches the disk media ensuring significantly less wear to the recording head and media as well as better drive protection in transit.
Price and Availability
The WD Black 4 TB GB (model WD4001FAEX) hard drives are available through select distributors and resellers. Manufacturer's Suggested Retail Price (MSRP) for the WD Black 4 TB drive is $339.00 USD.
30 Comments on Western Digital Expands Its Highest-Performing Desktop Hard Drives To 4 TB Capacity
i take it these are bog-standard 3.5" drives that (formatting/partition size aside) will work in any system?
$119 for 1.5TB
$129 for 2TB
$139 for 3 TB
$339 for 4TB
Yea, that makes alot of sense...
When it comes to HDD, it seems like the highest capacity ones always have a problem until Seagate/WD manage to write some new firmware or do some new revisions, it's probably always safer, and even economical, to go with a slightly lower capacity one.
Wake me up when we have $339 8TB drives and the 4TB drives are $100 each. :D
that's pretty darn amazing!, 1.33 TB per plate, no idea if they're using the same density as the 3TB ones... (i think not, the 3TB AFAIK are 1TB per plate).
and here i am happy with my 500GB/plate HDD.
in any case, i'll be more interested in a green(read: cheap) version of this drive as such massive size is only good for linear storage in my book (video files)
Therefore I will not buy their shitty hard drives. The same way I wouldn't buy Intel processors if they did a similar thing and built their manufacturing plants in Antarctica, and then doubled the prices of their products because the iceberg they were floating on melted and they needed a new fab plant. :roll:
I will buy 10x SSDs at reduced prices before I ever buy a hard drive that's priced ABOVE its old sale price.
And storage technology has moved on far further than it ever did. Flash prices have hit rock bottom and universities are at a breakthrough point in being about to make storage devices with hundreds of terabytes of storage possible with DNA sequencing -- in 5 years time, I expect hard drives to follow the way of the floppy disks, as well as the companies producing them (Seagate and WD) going out of business.
Black/FAEX Models:
1TB: 1.52lb
2TB: 1.66lb (+ .14lb)
4TB: 1.72lb (+ .06lb)
Not very scientific since WD lists these numbers with a +/- variation of 10%.
Oh WD, why don't you just go back to listing specifications in your specifications sheet?!
they have done it in the past, they will probably continue doing so in the future, they are sleazebags (which vexes me as they have the best rma service in my country -_-)
How long is the warranty on the 4gb?
My older WD Black 2TB is using an older 500GB per platter design, but is till have 4 platters. I don't think they'll go beyond that point. My drive already takes some time to spin up 4 platters, i don't think having 5 of them would make things better. Besides, if 1TB per platter is there, i don't see any reason not to use it.