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A very long time ago, "experts" in the technology field shouted that the end of magnetic storage was soon to be. It was at the release of the pre-Gigabyte drives that those experts said that magnetic storage would hit a wall in terms of density and the entire storage solution would move to flash. Western Digital scoffs at those so-called "experts" to release a brand new Caviar Green 2TB drive. While those same experts were wrong about magnetic storage limits (for now), SSDs are the future of computer only due to the non-moving parts and high transfer speeds. That being said, magnetic storage brings the highest density possible in the same form factor. SSDs can't touch this yet.Next Page »

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.

http://www.wdc.com

Icy Dock seems to make amazing products that work just as they are designed and marketed. It really is a breathe of fresh air when you pick up the 3.5 internal enclosure and it works perfectly.Next Page »

All enclosures are not built the same. Icy Dock steps in to show how a real enclosure should be made and they get it right the first time.Next Page »

The drive costs about $600 making it relatively cheap compared to previous incarnations. Flash can handle wear and tear better than traditional drive that use mechanical parts but they don't have the write cycle longevity of the traditional drives. New technologies help alleviate this problem.

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The flash drive isn't for everyone. At 32GB, it is far smaller than the conventional drives found in current notebooks, desktops or even MP3 players. Many business users, however, never max out the capacity on their drives. The drive will also add about $600 to the cost of a notebook. Those prices will crimp sales, Handy said. "There are certain applications where it can be used, but I just don't see it for business where the most violent thing they (users) will encounter is a cab ride in New York," said Handy.

There was a discussion on the forums about flash drive wear and tear. How about taking a hard drive and putting flash on it? And not stuff like D/SRAM, flash... yeah.

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ReadyDrive has spawned a new category of flash-assisted hard drives. Both Samsung Semiconductor Inc. and Seagate Technology have announced hybrid drives that integrate a 1.5-in. magnetic hard disk with up to 256MB of onboard flash. Both are expected to be available early next year. A competing technology from Intel Corp., code-named Robson, places the cache on the motherboard, along with a controller chip. Robson will launch with Intel’s Santa Rosa notebook platforms in the first quarter of 2007.