AfterDawn: News

Western Digital develops HDDs for video

Western Digital has developed a range of IDE and SATA hard disks featuring capacities up to 500GB, designed with use with audio-video content. The company claims that 500GB is sufficient for "30 hours of HD video". The drives have been tweaked to be suitable for AV applications. The company claims they can deliver playback of 12 HD streams at once and can be used for CCTV to record 16 standard-definition streams simultaneously.

Digital video recorders (DVR), HDTV and other new video-related technologies created whole new demands for hard disk drives. Putting performance aside, even just creating drives that perform quieter than their standard counterparts is essential. They must also be much more reliable.



"These are not for desktop PCs," said WD technician Alexander Patterson. "They are for DVR, PVR, set-top boxes and low-end security systems." A new feature called IntelliSeek synchs the head movement to disk spin, so the head arrives at the right moment to read the data it wants as it passes underneath. This cuts both power consumption and noise.

Source:
The Register

Written by: James Delahunty @ 14 Apr 2007 19:24

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• 8 comments

• ZippyDSM

  and why cant this be done for normal HDDs?

  15.4.2007 09:09 #1

• procode

  Likely they won't put the expense into standard hard drives, because we want them cheap .. !!
  
  I can remember paying £340 each (£680 in total) for two 6.4Gig Western Digitals, and that was cheap - at the time .. !!
  
  Yesterday, I could have bought four 500Gig hard drives instead, and still had £400 change ..
  
  Procode ..

  15.4.2007 10:10 #2

• ZippyDSM

  *L*
  point taken :P

  15.4.2007 10:22 #3

• windsong

  I dont know why theyre even bothering. I just bought a 500 maxline pro and it serves my blu ray stuff up just fine and dandy, as well as my HDTV .ts caps that are usually 15 gigs each. Dual core probably helps more anyways since hd stuff is very cpu intensive.

  15.4.2007 13:56 #4

• procode

  DualCore processors have been available (fitted and supplied), for some years now ..
  
  If your PC/Laptop is less than three years old, run an application built for DualCore, and it should identify your processor type, usually during the flash screen ..
  
  MultiCore processors are not really designed for processor speed 'exactly' ..
  
  The DualCore chips are to allow double the memory to be fitted - four Gig of RAM instead of two Gig, which obviously increases the ability of the processor to work *faster ..
  
  *Built in processor commands (the instruction set), can be initiated on both the positive and negative slopes of the pulse ..
  
  Will QuadCore processors, be the next leap forward .. ?? ;)
  
  Procode ..

  16.4.2007 02:48 #5

• borhan9

  I just like the fact that this is 500gig. Just imagine the possibilities.

  16.4.2007 20:23 #6

• pdxcrash

  Ya -- the joy of endless hrs of reading fraged recovery bits attempting to recover you'e lost 20 partitions on the blown 500g drive... haaaaa
  
  Oh using the VISTA recovery no less .. lol

  19.4.2007 12:49 #7

• electriac

  Originally posted by procode:Likely they won't put the expense into standard hard drives, because we want them cheap .. !!
  
  I can remember paying £340 each (£680 in total) for two 6.4Gig Western Digitals, and that was cheap - at the time .. !!
  
  Yesterday, I could have bought four 500Gig hard drives instead, and still had £400 change ..
  
  Procode ..My first hard drive was a SCSII on an Amiga. 20 MEG with SCSII cost over $700 in the late 1980's.

  20.4.2007 02:00 #8