Western Digital Reveals High-Performance 4TB Hard Drive.

Xbitlabs ^ | 11/20/2012 08:48 AM | by Anton Shilov

[Ernest_at_the_Beach]

h3>Western Digital Introduces 4TB WD Black Hard Disk Drive

Western Digital, the world’s largest maker of hard disk drives, on Tuesday introduced its 4TB WD Black HDD which combines high performance with maximum capacity. WD Black drives are aimed for gaming, high-performance desktop systems and workstations.

Based on four latest-generation 1TB platters, the new WD Black drives combine 7200rpm spin speed, 64MB cache, dual stage actuator technology, Serial ATA 6Gb/s interface, and an integrated dual processor to deliver ultimate performance in a maximum-capacity drive. The new HDDs also support such technologies as IntelliSeek, which 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.

[rarestia]

Solid state disk (SSD) is amazing technology. I went from a 30-45 second boot time with spinning disk (traditional HDD) to a 12 second boot time on SSD with my gaming PC.

[TChris]

With the recent announcement of a 5x increase in areal data density technology, we may see 20 TB drives within a year or two.

Imagine a 1-2 PB NAS in a single rack. :) :) :)

NetApp, are you getting this!?

[Ernest_at_the_Beach]

There is a paper out there...that says you really should not be using consumer drives in RAID arrays.

WD introduced their Red Line for use in arrays....

Ignore the pending RAID Castrophe at your own Risk--PDF

[Ernest_at_the_Beach]

Newegg again:

WD Red Drives

[spel_grammer_an_punct_polise]

I had too many WD drives fail over the years...well before the warranty date. Seagate is the way to go. I’ve had only one Seagate fail and that was well after the warranty date.

[ChinaGotTheGoodsOnClinton]

I agree with you. I’ve had the same thing happen to me.

[rarestia]

Umm... the article we're talking about is discussing Hitachi enterprise class HDDs. I'm very much aware of the consumer-grade RAID issues and spent a good amount of money on my enterprise-class Seagate HDDs for my NAS.

[Still Thinking]

Imagine a 1-2 PB NAS in a single rack. :) :) :)

Sheesh!

[Still Thinking]

But the article is about black drives (enterprise), not blue (consumer) or green (low power).

[KoRn]

It still has moving parts..... /yawn

[reg45]

....nothing moving in this bad boy....

except electrons! And they are very fast.

[MCH]

Amazing stuff. Top consumer HD capacity about 15 years ago in the ‘96-’97 time frame was around 4GB. 15 years later we’re looking at a 1000X increase in capacity on commodity drives to 4 TB. That’s about an order of magnitude increase every 5 years. As with Moore’s Law regarding compute capacity, can/will persistent storage capacity continue increasing at this rate?

[teflon9]

Picked up a 1 TB Seagate SATA drive (7200 rpm) for $50-something in late 2011, right before the drive prices started going crazy, allegedly because of flooding in Thailand. That made a lot of people buy solid-state drives. But 4TB is a lot of real estate. Takes a lot of pr0n to fill that. : )

[GraceG]

I have 4 x 2TB Seagate drives with bad sectors that say otherwise

[zeugma]

Start a defrag and come back in like 2019...

Defrag? In 2012? I haven't run a system you have to defrag the disks on in years.

[spel_grammer_an_punct_polise]

“I have 4 x 2TB Seagate drives with bad sectors that say otherwise.”

Bad sectors are usually caused by the stylii ‘skipping’ over the discs. My guess would be that you have other issues that are causing the ‘skipping’. ‘Skipping’, again, can be caused by trying to access different parts of the disc too fast or perhaps they needed to be defragged. If files on the drive are separated on the discs then that could cause the ‘skipping’ effect.

The fact that you have four drives like that makes me suspect ‘skipping’ or otherwise misuse of the drive either by the person sitting at the keyboard or other software issues.

[holden]

Now, now, the judge ruled that original media for the video being watched must at all times be in the DVD drive ("styrofoam cup holder").

You are obeying the law, right?

HF

[hattend]

Bump for later

[Ernest_at_the_Beach]

I wasn't aware that Black drives were Enterprise drives.

Newegg has WD 4Tbyte drives and they call them Enterprise Drives.

See link at post #24.

WD also, some time back , introduced a line called Red drives for NAS.....