Western Digital Announces Caviar Green 2.5 TB and 3 TB SATA Hard Drive

[btarunr]

WD today announced that the company is shipping the world's largest capacity SATA hard drive. As the latest addition to its WD Caviar Green family of SATA hard drives, the new hard drives deliver up to a massive 3 terabytes (TB) of storage capacity on a single drive. WD is leading the industry in capacity for SATA hard drives by utilizing 750 GB-per-platter areal density and Advanced Format (AF) technology.

WD Caviar Green drives are an eco-friendly storage solution with WD GreenPower Technology, which reduces power consumption by enabling lower operating temperatures for increased reliability and decreases acoustical noise for quiet operation. The WD Caviar Green 2.5 TB and 3 TB hard drives are designed for use as secondary external storage and next-generation PC storage in 64-bit based systems.



Drives with capacities in excess of 2.19 TB currently present barriers for PC hardware, firmware and software. To satisfy the new set of requirements of which users must be aware to successfully integrate larger capacity drives, WD is bundling its WD Caviar Green 2.5 and 3 TB hard drives with an Advanced Host Controller Interface (AHCI)-compliant Host Bus Adapter (HBA), which will enable the operating system to use a known driver with correct support for large capacity drives. For more information on solving the 2.19 TB drive barrier, please see the WD information sheet here.

"WD remains a leader of hard drive capacity and low power innovation. With our WD Caviar Green drives, we enable energy-conscious customers to build systems with the highest capacities that deliver the optimal balance of system performance, ensured reliability and energy conservation," said Jim Morris, executive vice president and general manager of WD's client systems storage group. "Customers will be able to take advantage of this breakthrough capacity point now for secondary external storage in legacy 32-bit systems that run on Microsoft Vista or Windows 7 platforms."

Price and Availability
WD Caviar Green 2.5 TB hard drives (model number WD25EZRSDTL) and 3 TB hard drives (model number WD30EZRSDTL) are available now in the U.S. at select resellers and distributors. MSRP for the WD Caviar Green 2.5 TB hard drive is $189.00 USD and the 3 TB hard drive is $239.00 USD. WD Caviar Green hard drives are covered by a three-year limited warranty.

View at TechPowerUp Main Site

 

[Mussels]

if only they werent WD, i'd be on these like herpes on a cheap hooker

 

[Disparia]

Because they're WD I'll be buying these up!

 

[freaksavior]

Damn just bought 2tb's

 

[wolf]

i hope these drop in prices quicker than 2tb drives took, theyre absolutely dirt cheap atm

 

[suraswami]

Good and Bad.

Good - Consolidate and Store everything in one location
Bad - if it dies you loose whole lot more

 

[RejZoR]

if only they werent WD, i'd be on these like herpes on a cheap hooker

One of the better quotes Though why don't you like WD ? Their drives are good, especially if you look at the Caviar Black series.

 

[bear jesus]

if only they werent WD, i'd be on these like herpes on a cheap hooker

What is wrong with WD drives? i don't own any and have not for a good 6 or 8 years.
I would love a pair of the 3tb ones to use for a pair of full backups of all my data.

 

[mdm-adph]

if only they werent WD, i'd be on these like herpes on a cheap hooker

Yeah, what's wrong with WD? What's your favorite brand? I thought that Seagate was still the current pariah.

 

[Mussels]

i've had many WD blacks die on me for no reason. they just fried overnight, in the same enclosures that seagates and samsungs still run fine in.

WD blacks are barely faster than my 5,400RPM samsung 2TB's - if that.


WD cost more, use more power, make more heat, and arent any faster than samsung - so i see no reason to go them.

oh and as for their green drives which negate some of those problems.... SLOOOOOOOOOOOOOW at sequential writes. from personal experience, never again.

 

[Mindweaver]

They look good! I really don't care for the green edition.. but i'll take them in black!

 

[freaksavior]

i've had many WD blacks die on me for no reason. they just fried overnight, in the same enclosures that seagates and samsungs still run fine in.

WD blacks are barely faster than my 5,400RPM samsung 2TB's - if that.


WD cost more, use more power, make more heat, and arent any faster than samsung - so i see no reason to go them.

oh and as for their green drives which negate some of those problems.... SLOOOOOOOOOOOOOW at sequential writes. from personal experience, never again.

I can agree with this. I have had more wd drives die on me. I currently have 7 seagates in my server.

Dads computer - seagate 500gb
Mac - seagate 320gb
moms dell - seagate 320
Brothers Acer - 320 seagate
HTPC - 500gb, 750gb seagate
Dads htpc - hitache
Server 4 x 2tb, 2 x 1.5tb, 1 x 40gb

nuff said

 

[beautyless]

We are still need a lot of capacity storages. So this is the answer. But I will looking for another faster Black edition of WD harddisk to be system drive.

 

[Mussels]

We are still need a lot of capacity storages. So this is the answer. But I will looking for another faster Black edition of WD harddisk to be system drive.

i hope you have a computer with EFI instead of a BIOS, cause otherwise you wont be able to use one of these as a system drive.

 

[FordGT90Concept]

Yay, I hope this pushes Seagate to make their >2 TB drives available to the public.

 

[wahdangun]

wew, its till useless, if you don't have motherboard with efi, why bios can't die already

 

[Cheeseball]

I'd probably stick with the 2TB Blacks they've got.

 

[AsRock]

if only they werent WD, i'd be on these like herpes on a cheap hooker

Sounds like ya had issue's with them.. Never had one fail on me yet around 10 years. More More accurate since the 850MB HDDS.

Because they're WD I'll be buying these up!

 

[Maban]

I can't see how $230 is a justifiable price. You can get a 3TB Barracuda XT from an external drive for $205. Granted it will void the warranty taking it out but still a much better deal.

 

[RejZoR]

Well i can say the same for Samsung, Mussels. Its laying on my desk collecting dust. Sure it was reasonably cheap and performed well, but it started causing problems after 1,5 year.
I have great trust in Samsung brand. I have their DVD burner, their LCD monitor, their smartphone and i had their HDD. Out of which 1 DVD burner died in less than 1 year and one HDD in 1,5 year.
LCD monitor is like 3 years old and still working like new (knocking on hard wood) and the phone is new but i had another Samsung before and it performed well and still is (my mom is using it now).
I can conclude that samsung makes quality A/V appliances but fails at PC components quality.
They have to work a bit on that. After all, WD is on the scene almost since the first HDD's arrived while Samsung is rather new here (for quite some time but compared to WD, not for so long).

And i use CrystalDiskInfo on all my PC's to get SMART info before something goes wrong this time.

 

[TheLaughingMan]

The failure rate for HDD's are the same for every brand....about 6% within the first 6 months.

I currently use a Sammy F3 as my system drive and a WD 2TB as storage. Never had any issue with either companies drives. I have had a lot of trouble with Seagate, but we all gotta hate one of them.

This is earlier than I predicted in previous post. I expected them to be available before Christmas, but this is about 4 weeks earlier than I would have thought.

****See Freaksavior, I told you to wait a few weeks for the 3 TB's to be released.

 

[Lipton]

I can't see how $230 is a justifiable price. You can get a 3TB Barracuda XT from an external drive for $205. Granted it will void the warranty taking it out but still a much better deal.

That depends, these are 4 platter disks while the Seagates are 5 platter disks, meaning these should run cooler and quieter. But who knows if WD actually pulled that off. ^^ Also, the 3 TB Seagate XT had an MSRP of $249 when it launched.

Edit: found a review here: http://www.pcper.com/article.php?aid=1021

 

[btarunr]

Good and Bad.

Good - Consolidate and Store everything in one location
Bad - if it dies you loose whole lot more

The same was said about 2 GB drives when the average PC had 500 MB hard drives.

 

[bear jesus]

The same was said about 2 GB drives when the average PC had 500 MB hard drives.

And i say the same thing now as i did back then, buy 2 of them

 

[sunil]

Actually the best deal about now is 2x2TB @ $99 each.