As demand for higher capacity storage continues to increase due to large video applications, including HD video, Western Digital has expanded its WD AV-GP line of hard drives to include a 2 TB capacity, the industry’s largest available drive to-date. According to WD, the AV-GP hard drives with WD GreenPower Technology provide cooler and quieter operation and lower power consumption, as much as 40 percent over standard drives in their respective classes.
"Our consumer electronics customers require hard drives that consume less power, generate less heat and operate quietly," said Sharad Srivastava, Director-Sales (India & South Asia), Western Digital. "Audio and video recording applications, such as DVRs, media servers, media centers and mainstream surveillance systems, often demand 24x7 operations from hard drives. Our drives meet the demanding requirements of these markets including higher reliability, universal compatibility, low power consumption and theability to simultaneously record multiple audio and/or high-definition video streams."

Following are several features of the WD AV-GP line of hard drives:

* The drives have been designed to last in high-temperatures for when they are required to be con for long periods.
* Noise levels have been minimized to less than one sone - virtually below the threshold of human hearing.
* The IntelliPark feature is designed to deliver lower power consumption by automatically unloading the heads during idle to reduce aerodynamic drag. IntelliPark improves non-operating shock characteristics, providing enhanced robustness in environments where excessive transportation and handling occurs.
* They’ve been tested for compatibility with a broad range of AV products including set-top boxes, DVD recorders and mainstream surveillance systems.
* SilkStream is a feature designed to optimize smooth, continuous digital video playback of up to 12 simultaneous HD streams. It’s compatible with the ATA streaming command set so CE customers can use standard streaming management and error recovery options.
* The drive arm frequently sweeps across the disk to reduce uneven wear on the drive surface common to audio video streaming applications.

The WD AV-GP 2 TB hard drive (model WD20EVDS) is available with select distributors. Maximum suggested retail price (MSRP) is Rs. 15,500.

Late last week Western Digital briefed us on their forthcoming release of a new addition to their Caviar Green family of hard drives. No we're not talking some sort of exotic sushi or cracker-bound fish egg here either but rather a new, rather humongous and environmentally more friendly hard drive from WD, that can be considered an "industry first". Today marks the day that standard rotational media breaks the 2TB barrier. Let's spell that out a bit more clearly again here; T-W-O full Terabytes of SATA-based storage on a single, standard 3.5" hard drive. Those of you on the consumer side of the market, hording gigs of music, movies, pictures and other media just got a bunch more breathing room to play with. And those of you in the enterprise space now have a new option to consider with respect to bulk, low-cost, power-efficient storage. Perhaps that rack just got a little smaller or the need to cool it a little less?

Today Western Digital is announcing their WD20EADS drive, otherwise known as the WD Caviar Green 2.0TB. With 32MB ofonboard cache and special power management algorithms that balance spindle speed and transfer rates, the WD Caviar Green 2TB claims a top rung spot on the density-per-square-inch and power-efficiency ladders.

We've had an engineering sample here in house for a few days and have done some preliminary testing on it. We'll be offering a full performance evaluation with the final revision of this new drive in the coming weeks but we have a sneak peek for you here. Let's start with the specifications and then we'll take a closer look at the vital signs.
Specs:

* Capacity: 2TB (400Gb/sq.in. areal density)
* 32MB cache buffer
* Variable spindle speed
* 3.5-inch form-factor
* 500GB/platter, 4-platter design
* 3Gb/sec SATA with NCQ
* SATA power connector only
* PMR head technology
* RoHS compliant

Tom's Hardware reports that Western Digital will be first to market with a 2TB drive. The WD20EADS is a part of WD's GreenPower series, and uses four 500GB platters. Other specs include 32MB of cache and a seek time of 8.9ms.

Although Tom's Hardware reports that the drive will run at 5400RPM or 7200RPM, you should take the claim of 7200RPM with a grain of salt until we get our hands on actual hardware for testing. As this analysis from SilentPC on the first GreenPower drive indicates, GreenPower drives normally run at the slower speed.

How much will the first 2TB drive set youback? Around $210-240, rumors say, but we'll all know for sure when the drive hits retail shelves later this week. Will you be lining up for the first 2TB drive, or would you rather have a couple of 1TB drives? Hit Comment and sound off.

Sales of netbooks, laptops and desktop replacements has been rising these last several years, in 2008 we even saw the scale tip over in favor of these portable computers. Most of these devices share the same processor, video card and chipset technology as their desktop counterparts, delivering performance almost on par. The overall speed of a PC is determined by its slowest component, inside laptops this has been the hard drive, due to space constraints manufacturers have to use 2.5” (and even 1.8”) sized drives, which reduces the storage space as well as speed compared the desktop 3.5” disks. With the introduction of the Solid State Drives in 2008, we should be able to overcome this bottleneck in our portable PCs, unfortunately pricing is still quite high and disk size is limited to a fraction of what the good old hard drives are capable of.

In this business world every penny saved is a penny won, so you won’t see any SSD in entry and mainstream laptops just yet, instead you do get larger drives which can store up 500Gb inside a 2.5” HDD housing, impressive to say the least.

We tested a business grade Dell Latitude D630 laptop with three different 2.5” hard drives to see how much it would benefit from a HDD upgrade. On the Dell site the default configuration costs $1243, it comes with an 80Gb 5400rpm 2.5” HDD. Dell gives you theoption to upgrade to a 7200rpm model for $40 which is definitely worth it. You can also go for an SSD, but the cheapest will set you back $450 and it’s only 34Gb… not really a good deal. They also have a “128Gb Mobility Solid State Drive“ listed for $460, which can be any MLC based SSD.

The 7200rpm 80Gb 2.5” disk we found inside our D630 was a Seagate Momentus 7200.2 80gb. Dell does change brand and model over the course of a year, so it’s a not 100% certain you’ll find this disk in every D630 ordered with a 80gb 7200rpm HDD. Specifications
The Seagate Momentus 7200.2 SATA/300 80 GB laptop hard drive enables the best combination of high performance, capacity and mobility in a 2.5-inch small form factor (SFF). The Seagate Momentus 7200-RPM-class hard drive is ideal for performance-class laptops, SFF PCs and many other small or mobile performance environments.
# 8-MB cache
# SATA 3.0Gb/s interface
# Highest available laptop hard drive performance for maximum productivity
# Superb reliability
# Rugged mobility
# Whisper-quiet operation
# Low power consumption



We wanted a lot more storage on this laptop than was offered by the 80Gb Seagate, Dell only offers upgrades up to 160Gb so we had to look elsewhere. In a local shop we picked up two 2.5” drives from Western Digital, one Scorpio 250Gb and one Scorpio Black 320Gb.
Specifications Scorpio Black
With 7200 RPM spin speed, 16 MB cache, and capacities up to 320 GB, these drives enable you to have the best of both worlds: the capacity and performance of a desktop PC with the convenience and portability of a notebook.

Specifications Scorpio
With 5400 RPM spin speed and 12 ms access time and up to 3 Gb/s SATA interface speed, even the most demanding customer will appreciate the performance achieved by WD Scorpio Blue drives.



The Scorpio Black is top of the line performance drive, 7200rpm and 16Mb cache, it matches and surpasses the specifications of many desktop hard drives. The Scorpio (none-black) spins at 5400rpm which is considerably slower so it’ll be interesting to see how it stacks up to the competition.

Hard drive storage has been a bottleneck point in computers for as long as most of us can remember. Solid State Drives have hit the market, but currently are so expensive for the amount of storage that you get that they just aren't feasible. When you're looking at $200 for 128 GB of storage (for a generic SSD) you're likely to keep your old slow hard drive and just drool over the SSD line of products, wishing they offered a better price performance ratio.

We feel your storage needs pain and went in search of higher speed, better price performance products that still offer good speeds, but a better price performance ratio than SSD's. The Western Digital VelociRaptor 300 GB hard drive offers faster transfer rates than traditional platter drives, larger storage capacities than their more expensive cousins, the SSD, and speeds that rival SSD's when used in RAID 0.

To show how the different drives perform we went to the ends of theEarth and collected seven hard drives and ran them in nine different configurations, but none will ever have the coolness factor of the Western Digital VelociRaptor. With one exception, the Western Digital VelociRaptor in RAID 0!

Western Digital has long been a performance leader in the hard drive world. That made it especially odd when the company debuted its first terabyte in the "GreenPower" Caviar GP. Despite what enthusiasts might have hoped, GreenPower didn't mean "Hulk smash." Instead, it referred to the drive's eco-friendly motor, whose slower spindle speed dramatically reduced power consumption. WD had driven to the terabyte party not in a performance-oriented sports car, but behind the wheel of a tree-hugging econobox.

To be fair, the Caviar GP's performance was surprisingly good for a drive whose platters spun at close to 5,400RPM. In some tests, it was even faster than terabyte drives spinning at a full 7,200RPM. The GP also lived up to its energy-efficient billing, sucking half the power of some of its terabyte rivals, all while barely making a whisper.

Since its release, a reshuffling of Western Digital's hard drive branding scheme has transformed the Caviar GP into the Caviar Green. Now it's time for the drive itself to change. The original Caviar GP reached the terabyte mark with four 250GB platters, but the latest model we'll be looking at today has been upgraded to 333GB platters, of which it needs only three.The higher areal density of the Caviar Green's new platters promise improved performance, and since the drive is spinning only three of them, power consumption should drop as well. On all fronts, then, this latest Caviar Green looks better than the original. Let's see if it is.The idea behind the Caviar Green is a simple one. For some applications, be they home theater PCs, secondary desktop storage, or a home file server stuffed into a closet, you don't need the fastest hard drive on the block—just one that's fast enough. Those markets are likely to prefer drives with lower noise levels and power consumption, which the Caviar Green is more than eager to provide, ideally while maintaining an acceptable level of performance.

It might be counter-intuitive for an enthusiast to give up any performance, but the trade-off makes sense here. At least in consumer markets, most folks buy hard drives looking to expand storage capacity for their multimedia libraries. You don't need a fast hard drive to store or smoothly stream even the highest definition video content, and your multi-gig MP3 collection certainly doesn't need to be on a 10K-RPM VelociRaptor.

When it first launched the GreenPower Caviar, WD refused to disclose the drive's actual spindle speed, saying only that it was somewhere between 5,400 and 7,200RPM. The company later admitted that the drive ran at closer to the former than the latter, but we haven't been able to coax out an exact spindle speed.Numerous sites have speculated that the Caviar Green essentially runs at 5,400RPM, and now even Western Digital has changed its tune. Sort of. The drive's latest spec sheet lists the Green's rotational speed as "IntelliPower," which WD defines as "A fine-tuned balance of spin speed, transfer rate and caching algorithms designed to deliver both significant power savings and solid performance." So much for clarification.

Western Digital obviously doesn't want customers making assumptions about the Caviar Green's performance based on rotational speed alone, but the decision to obfuscate it behind blatant marketingspeak is entirely unnecessary and evasive. After all, the market isn't short on examples of drives with slower spindle speeds outperforming faster ones. One need look no further than our most recent mobile storage round-up to see Western Digital's own 5,400-RPM Scorpio Blue beating Seagate's 7,200-RPM Momentus in some tests. Consumers deserve a little more credit.
Enough with the soapbox, though. We have a drive to test. The latest addition to the Caviar Green lineup can be identified by its WD10EADS model number. You'll want to write that down, because the old drive's model number is WD10EACS. The drives themselves are quite similar, with the biggest difference coming on the platter front. Western Digital has replaced the original's quartet of 250GB platters with a trio of platters that weigh in at 333GB each. This 33% increase in areal density enables the Green to offer a terabyte with fewer platters, allowing the motor to spin less weight, which further reduces the drive's already low power consumption. The higher areal density of these new platters should also improve the Green's sustained transfer rates by spinning more bits past the drive head in a given span of time.

With available SATA or EIDE interfaces, WD Scorpio Blue drives offer high-performance, low power consumption, and cool operation, perfect for notebooks and other portable devices. Pick the drive that suits your needs with the confidence in knowing that all WD Scorpio Blue drives are built to the highest standards of quality and reliability.
Key Features:
Massive capacity - Whether they are in an external drive or a notebook computer, WD Scorpio Blue SATA drives are available in capacities up to 500 GB and offer the most available capacity for space-hungry operating systems, like Window Vista®, with plenty of room left over for photos, music, and video.

Quiet - In a notebook drive, silence is golden. WD’s exclusive WhisperDrive™ combines state-of-the-art seeking algorithms to yield one of the quietest 2.5-inch hard drives on the market. These algorithms also optimize the way a drive seeks for data, which significantly improves power consumption. So now silence (and longer battery life) is golden. Reliable and rugged - WD's ShockGuard™ technology protects the drive mechanics and platter surfaces from shocks. WD's SecurePark™ parks the recording heads off the disk surface during spin up, spin down, and when the drive is off. This ensures the recording head never touches the disk surface resulting in improved long-term reliability due to less head wear, and improved non-operational shock tolerance.

Fast and efficient - With 5400 RPM spin speed and 12 ms access time and up to 3 Gb/s SATA interface speed, even the most demanding customer will appreciate the performance achieved by WD Scorpio Blue drives.

Tested for compatibility - We perform tests on hundreds of systems and a multitude of platforms in our FIT Lab™ and Mobile Compatibility Lab to give our customers confidence that our drives will work in their systems.

Ideal For

Portable digital devices of all kinds, including notebook computers, external storage, and digital media players.

After recently announcing that it has started shipping its latest WD Scorpio Blue 2.5-inch hard drives with 500GB of storage space, Western Digital has announced today a new product offering that will provide computer users with a maximum of 500GB of storage. Designed to be both stylish and portable, the company's new My Passport Portable USB drives allow users to benefit from an increased storage capacity, so that they can take their private data wherever they go.

The company's new drives, part of the "My Passport" production line, will allow users to take advantage of half a terabyte of music, videos or photos, which they can carry around with them. With a maximum weight under 7 ounces, the new models have been designed to be portable and also withstand an intense day-by-day usability. In addition, the new My Passport Elite portable hard drives have been featured with software that allows users to automatically back up their data, directly from the computer.

"In our mobile society, there is an increasing desire to have your data collection at your finger tips at all times," said Jim Welsh, vice president and general manager of WD's branded products and consumer electronics groups. "The new My Passport 500 GB portable drives provide the convenience of a compact USB-powered drive with the high capacity previously only available in larger desktop drives."Western Digital's My Passport Elite portable hard drives provide features such as a capacity gauge that informs users of how much space is available, as well as automatic backup software that can let users designate files and folders for automatic and continuous backup.



The new My Passport family of portable drives with 400GB and 500GB capacities is currently available for purchase through the company's online store with a Manufacturer's Suggested Retail Price (MSRP) between $179.99 and $219.99, depending on model. The other two series of portable hard drives, the My Passport Elite and My Passport Essential are available in capacities ranging from 160GB to 500GB and, while the former can be purchased in four different hues – bronze, titanium, westminster blue and cherry red – the latter provides a wider range of colors.

Western Digital today announced the addition of 750GB and 1GB RE3 SATA hard drives to its enterprise lineup. The new drives boast a beefy 32MB cache buffer, enhanced vibration and shock tolerance, and what the company claims are "new electronics to increase performance approximately 20 percent and by as much as 60 percent in high-vibration environments."Rounding out the feature-set are a several marketing buzzwords, including StableTrac (reduces system-induced vibration and stabilizes platters), dual processor (better processing power), RAFF technology (corrects linear and rotational vibrations), IntelliSeek technology (calculates optimum seek speeds to lower power consumption, noise, and vibration), and several more.

Western Digital has the MSRP on the 750GB and 1TB models at $199 and $249 respectively. The drives are available now and carry a five-year limited warranty.

Expanding its portable storage offerings, Western Digital has introduced its new Mac-formatted My Passport Studio portable drives. The newest members of the My Passport family are designed for Mac users on-the-go and are equipped with both FireWire 400 and USB 2.0 interfaces, a capacity gauge, and include a soft drawstring carrying bag for protection from scratches and dirt. The My Passportstudio portable drives are offered in capacities of 320 GB and 250 GB.
Weighing in at less than 5 ounces, the My Passport Studio portable drives make it easy to carry office files, thousands of songs, videos or photos and back up a Macintosh laptop using Apple Time Machine backup software utility. With a silver metallic finish, these portable drives feature a shock-resistant enclosure to provide protection. Some unique features of the new My Passport Studio portable drives include formatted HFS+ Journaled for Mac compatibility, FireWire 400 and USB 2.0 interfaces and a capacity gauge that enables users to know at-a-glance how much space is available. These new drives also work with Apple Time Machine backup feature included in Apple's Leopard operating system.

"We designed the My Passport Studio portable drives to work seamlessly with Apple's Time Machine, making this drive an ideal storage solution for creative pros on-the-go who require high performance storage to back up and carry their massive amounts of digital content," said Sharad Srivastava, Director Sales (India and South Asia), Western Digital branded products and consumer electronics groups.

WD's My Passport Studio portable drives will be available with select distributors in India. MSRP for the My Passport Studio portable drives are up to Rs. 10,500 (depending on capacity).

Western Digital is now shipping WD VelociRaptor hard drives, the next generation of its 10,000 RPM SATA "Raptor" series of drives. Designed with an enterprise-class foundation, the new hard drive comes packed with twice the capacity and a 35 percent performance increase over the previous generation.
The WD VelociRaptor hard drive is built with enterprise-class mechanics and packs 300 GB of storage capacity into a 2.5-inch enterprise form factor. The 2.5-inch WD VelociRaptor drive is enclosed in the IcePack, a 3.5-inch mounting frame with a built-in heat sink - a customization that fits the drive intoa standard 3.5-inch system bay and keeps this powerful drive extra cool when installed in a high-performance desktop chassis.

"Demand for ever-higher PC performance continues to increase and WD is the leader in this category with the WD Raptor. We created WD VelociRaptor hard drives to lead PC enthusiasts into the next era of PC and Mac storage performance and satisfy their insatiable thirst for computing speed," said Sharad Srivastava, Director Sales (India & South Asia), Western Digital. "The new WD VelociRaptor delivers the greatest performance and reliability of all SATA hard drives currently on the market."

WD's Velociraptor Drives are available through select WD's distributors in India, at select retail stores and online retailers for a suggested retail price of Rs. 16,500.

If PC enthusiasts had a hall of fame for hardware, Western Digital's Raptor hard drive would be a shoo-in. Storage-related products are usually a little short on sex appeal, but the Raptor has become an icon—a testament to what it means to be an enthusiast.

Like many enthusiast legends, the Raptor started with enterprise-class hardware designed for corporate server rooms. Western Digital, a plucky desktop drive maker with no background in SCSI hardware that dominated the enterprise scene at the time, came to bat with the world's first 10K-RPM Serial ATA hard drive. The original Raptor didn't usurp the enterprise crown from well-established SCSI players, but its performance blew away every other Serial ATA hard drive on the market. What's more, the Raptor plugged into standard desktop motherboards, delivering near-SCSI performance without the need for expensive expansion cards.

Enthusiasts were so hungry for the performance delivered by the Raptor's 10K-RPM spindle speeds that we were willing to live with the drive's anemic 36GB capacity. That capacity slowly grew over time, with Western Digital upping the Raptor to 74GB in 2004 and 150GB two years later. The Raptor's last refresh was a couple of years ago, though, and the drive has fallen behind a new wave of terabyte wonders whose crazy-high areal densities deliver phenomenal performance even at 7,200 RPM.Western Digital wasn't about to let a performance icon get beaten by run-of-the-mill desktop drives, and certainly not by ones manufactured by companies that also make washing machines, so they've rolled out an all-new Raptor. Specifically targeted at enthusiasts, the VelociRaptor VR150 breaks bold new ground by bringing 10K-RPM spindle speeds to a 2.5" drive buried inside a heatsink that slides into a standard 3.5" drive bay. Read on to see why this is a brilliantly ambitious idea and whether it allows the VelociRaptor to reclaim the crown of fastest Serial ATA hard drive on the market.

We wish the current "green" trend would have happened a long time ago, and we actually hope that it results in a permanent mentality adjustment rather than fading like so many trends do. We are happy to see that companies are now expected to be somewhat environmentally-conscious. We love to see companies compete on metrics like performance per watt and we know we aren't the only ones who have an affinity for new architectures and designs that result in both efficiency improvements and performance gains. It wasn't so long ago that efficiency and performance were almost always inversely related. In the end, we (including the planet itself) all benefit when people and companies try to be more green.However, we know you didn't come here to read just about recycling, carbon footprints or hugging trees, so we'll move on to the topic of this review. Many PC hardware manufacturers are taking steps to become greener or at least help their customers green up, and Western Digital (WD) is one such company. You might wonder how a storage company like WD can do that. Well, it's quite simple really: they offer a whole line of hard drives that use significantly less power than other drives on the market. WD gives the drives in this line the "GreenPower" label to indicate their reduced environmental impact. The nice thing about going green in this case is that the power reduction could lead to lower electricity bills. According to WD, "WD’s GreenPower platform is the first 3.5-inch hard drive platform designed with power savings as the primary attribute. GreenPower drives from WD deliver average drive power savings of 4-5 watts over competitors’ drives, ultra-cool, quiet operation and solid performance." We are fortunate enough to have two of WD's GreenPower drives, the 1TB Caviar GP and the 1TB RE2-GP, on the test bench for this article. With its high MTBF (mean time between failures) rating of 1.2 million hours and RAID-specific optimizations, the WD RE2-GP is aimed at the enterprise market, while the WD Caviar GP is marketed towards the consumer desktop segment. A very interesting feature of the GreenPower drives is IntelliPower, which is a "fine-tuned balance of spin speed, transfer rate, and caching algorithms designed to deliver both significant power savings and solid performance" according to WD. What this means to potential users is that WD isn't telling us the exact spindle speed of these drives. We know that they are likely spinning at a speed between 5400 and 7200 RPM and that each GreenPower model may use a different, invariable RPM. So, while WD made power the priority with the GreenPower platform, it did so without disregarding solid performance, a wise choice in our opinion.
In addition to IntelliPower, the Caviar GP and the RE2-GP feature perpendicular recording technology and some unique WD features, such as IntelliSeek (which tweaks seek rates to decrease power utilization, noise and vibration) and IntelliPark (which also helps decrease power utilization). Because of its likely home in a large, enterprise-level storage environment, the RE2-GP also sports WD's RAFF (Rotary Acceleration Feed Forward) technology. RAFF's intent is to ensure that RE2-GP drives operate optimally even when installed in rackmounted servers that are prone to high levels of vibration. To many of you, these features don't mean much if performance gets sacrificed along the way, and the enthusiast in us has to agree. On the following pages, we'll see how well both of these GreenPower drives perform in an assortment of benchmarks.