AfterDawn: News

WD to offer 3TB drives within weeks?

Rumors suggest that Western Digital has overcome some technical hurdles and will be able to deliver 3TB hard drives to retail soon. According to Tech Arp, Western Digital will be updating its Caviar Black, Caviar Blue and Caviar Green lines, adding models with 3TB capacity. The drives are reportedly being prepared for retail after WD solved some compatibility problems with 32-bit Windows.

Tech Arp's source claims that the launch will happen sometime in mid-October. Seagate launched a 3TB external FreeAgent hdd during the summer, but has not followed up with a discrete drive yet. Due to 32-bit addressing in 32-bit operating systems, problems arise attempting to use an internal hard drive with more than 2TB storage capacity.



WD's new 3TB drives will use larger 4KB storage sectors as part of the Advanced Format Sector Disk technology, and most systems should be able to use the 3TB models for storage. UEFI will be required instead of a standard BIOS however to boot from a hard drive with over 2TB capacity.

Written by: James Delahunty @ 4 Oct 2010 14:42

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• 19 comments

• toked

  moar terabytes!!
  

  4.10.2010 15:09 #1

• Gplanet

  Just talking about more space earlier. Have 2 external terabytes and 1 in computer. More terabytes !!!! Never mess with Seagate known for going out fast

  4.10.2010 15:38 #2

• Mysttic

  And yet oddly of late Seagate is the first to know of their drives dieing out fast. sigh.. bring me back the quality of old into space of the new....

  4.10.2010 15:54 #3

• toked

  Originally posted by Gplanet: Just talking about more space earlier. Have 2 external terabytes and 1 in computer. More terabytes !!!! Never mess with Seagate known for going out fast I have 2 1TB hard drives in my desktop and I have yet to use even a quarter of a terabyte. Don't they know we need MORE!? MORE!
  

  4.10.2010 15:54 #4

• dragon ball z (unverified)

  more space is good especially if you are riping dvds that you legaly purchased.depending on how many dvds you have you could use up one terabyte.that is doubly true of blue ray dics.

  4.10.2010 16:17 #5

• andmill11

  I rip all of my bluerays. I already have filled up my 1.5 TB. If one of these is $200 or under I could definitely see myself picking one up.
  

  4.10.2010 16:22 #6

• ThePastor

  2TB is going for like $110 so a 3TB shold be like $160 + Premium cost... $180 or $190
  
  Internal, this is good. External... if it's USB2 it is just too damn slow. It's got to be USB 3 or ESATA

  4.10.2010 18:56 #7

• bobiroc

  I hope this will drop the prices of the 2TB ones. As soon as Windows Home Server "Vail" is released I want to build one of those. I already have a nice quad core processor, 4Gb ram, Motheboard, Power supply and Case. Just need the storage and Windows Home Server to complete it. I have about 2.5TB in my desktop now and between my music, movies, and other data I have it nearly filled. Would love to get a 6 - 8TB in a WHS to centralize that storage and have a nice place to back up my desktop and laptops. I have seen and used WHS version 1 and it is a nice little setup but I am willing to wait a little while for version 2.
  
  As far as seagate goes I will not touch them. I have RMA'd so many of the 750GB - 1TB drives lately that I have lost confidence. I just RMA'd two more today. We bought a whole bunch of these for some servers that did not need high RPM drives but needed lots of storage and raided them for servers and to build a couple NAS type devices and nearly 40% of them have failed in the last year or two.
  

  AMD Phenom II 965 @ 3.6Ghz, 8GB DDR3, ATI Radeon 5770HD, 300GB 10,000RPM Raptor, 2TB Additional HDD, Windows 7 Ultimate.

  4.10.2010 19:02 #8

• KillerBug

  It is nice to see an end to the stagnation...we went from 500GB to 750GB to 1TB to 1.5TB to 2.0TB in quick hops, one right after the other...it seems like we have been stuck on 2.0TB forever. Bring on the 100TB drives!!!
  
  Originally posted by bobiroc: As far as seagate goes I will not touch them. I have RMA'd so many of the 750GB - 1TB drives lately that I have lost confidence. I just RMA'd two more today. We bought a whole bunch of these for some servers that did not need high RPM drives but needed lots of storage and raided them for servers and to build a couple NAS type devices and nearly 40% of them have failed in the last year or two. To each his own...I have a dozen seagates in my server, running 24-7. Keep them cool & level and they will last forever...I can't count how many old Seagate drives I have given away after they were so old that they were not even worth storing anymore. Can't say that for WD; I got three dead drives in a row...one DOA, and two with serious problems that could not be flashed away. On top of that, they seemed to be designed not to work with RAID adapters...a curious thing considering they did not seem to want to work with any kind of onboard adapter either.

  4.10.2010 23:44 #9

• bobiroc

  Originally posted by KillerBug: It is nice to see an end to the stagnation...we went from 500GB to 750GB to 1TB to 1.5TB to 2.0TB in quick hops, one right after the other...it seems like we have been stuck on 2.0TB forever. Bring on the 100TB drives!!!
  
  Originally posted by bobiroc: As far as seagate goes I will not touch them. I have RMA'd so many of the 750GB - 1TB drives lately that I have lost confidence. I just RMA'd two more today. We bought a whole bunch of these for some servers that did not need high RPM drives but needed lots of storage and raided them for servers and to build a couple NAS type devices and nearly 40% of them have failed in the last year or two. To each his own...I have a dozen seagates in my server, running 24-7. Keep them cool & level and they will last forever...I can't count how many old Seagate drives I have given away after they were so old that they were not even worth storing anymore. Can't say that for WD; I got three dead drives in a row...one DOA, and two with serious problems that could not be flashed away. On top of that, they seemed to be designed not to work with RAID adapters...a curious thing considering they did not seem to want to work with any kind of onboard adapter either. I guess so and most of these hard drives are in climate controlled server rooms where the internal temp of the room rarely gets above 72 degrees. WD has always been the best to me out of all the drive brands.
  

  AMD Phenom II 965 @ 3.6Ghz, 8GB DDR3, ATI Radeon 5770HD, 300GB 10,000RPM Raptor, 2TB Additional HDD, Windows 7 Ultimate.

  5.10.2010 00:06 #10

• KillerBug

  Originally posted by bobiroc: I guess so and most of these hard drives are in climate controlled server rooms where the internal temp of the room rarely gets above 72 degrees. WD has always been the best to me out of all the drive brands. That tells me very little about the temperatures of the drives...internal case temperatures could be over 140F. My cooling targets the drives; not the air in the room that the drives happen to be in.

  5.10.2010 03:21 #11

• creaky

  3TB now ?, good grief, i've only just (slowly) started replacing my 3yr old 500GB drives with 2TB drives. Ah well, maybe the prices of 2TB drives will come down more (though at £85 they're stupidly cheap anyways). I have so many 500GB drives that i'll not be buying too many 2TB drives, can use the 500GB drives as backups with a bit of sensible folder organisation.
  

  
  
  Main PC ~ Intel C2Q Q6600 (G0 Stepping)/Gigabyte GA-EP45-DS3/2GB Crucial Ballistix PC2-8500/Zalman CNPS9700/Antec 900/Corsair HX 620W
  Network ~ DD-WRT ~ 2node WDS-WPA2/AES ~ Buffalo WHR-G54S. 3node WPA2/AES ~ WRT54GS v6 (inc. WEP BSSID), WRT54G v2, WRT54G2 v1. *** Forum Rules ***

  5.10.2010 06:34 #12

• jam_k

  @KillerBug and @bobiroc
  
  What do you guys think about the 'enterprise' sata drives from WD and seagate? I've purchases many WD and Seagate's over the the last 12yrs for the datacenter I work in, but it seams like all recent consumer drives of the last 7 or so years suck.
  
  I started buying WD's RE series (WD*YS part numbers) and seagates ES series (ST*NS part numbers) and have found the reliability much greater.
  
  I now buy these 'enterpirse' drives even for drives I replace in desktop PCs.
  
  haven't looked back to the consumer dives... I know they are the first to get the higher capacities and are usually cheaper, but for me, reliability is more important...
  
  what do you guys think? Have you tried em?
  
  Also, I have to admit 7-12 yrs ago, all drives from both seagate and WD where quite reliable.. I really think these enterprise drives echo back to those days and the new consumer drives are just cheapened a bit to make them more competitive.
  
  -Jam

  5.10.2010 09:14 #13

• bobiroc

  Well many of the ones I have been RMAing are Seagate Enterprise Class model ST31000524NS
  
  We had many Barracuda Consumer class drives fail so we used some Seagate and WD Enterprise class drives and the WD model WD1002FBYS drives and I still do not have confidence in the seagates. These drives are in network closets which are climate controlled and all plugged using Enterprise Class Battery Backups that not only provide power in a power outage but also clean/regulate the power coming in. In other words they are well taken care of.

  5.10.2010 09:35 #14

• jam_k

  Originally posted by bobiroc: Well many of the ones I have been RMAing are Seagate Enterprise Class model ST31000524NS
  Well, thats good to know and keep in mind...
  
  I have about a 60/40 mix of WD:Seagate and really don't notice one outliving the other... I just had a rash of WD failures, but I just got over a line of seagate failures.... overall I'd say they are about the same for me...
  
  How do you notice the WD enterprise compared to the WD consumer? for me that alone is a huge difference.. much more than the Seagate enterprise to Seagate consumer difference...
  
  I also may be a smaller user than you.. although it is also a climate controller datacenter, I only buy about 40-50 drives a year. 3 yrs ago I bought 85, that was the highest peak in my 12yrs.
  
  -Jam

  5.10.2010 10:44 #15

• bobiroc

  Well using the 2700 or so computers that are managed at my school as a base I have to say the most failures I have seen are from the Seagates or the Maxtors. Dell uses whatever brand in their computers and it varies but we have a batch from 2 years ago that all had WD drives and none have failed but the batch from last year that had a mix of mainly maxtor and seagates we have had about 30 failures. It's hard to gauge I guess but over the past 20 years of personal computer building, usage, and repair I have had the best luck with western digital.
  
  I also believe that having a high quality power source (Power Supply) and a Battery Backup is essential for long life of computer components especially hard drives.
  

  AMD Phenom II 965 @ 3.6Ghz, 8GB DDR3, ATI Radeon 5770HD, 300GB 10,000RPM Raptor, 2TB Additional HDD, Windows 7 Ultimate.

  5.10.2010 10:52 #16

• Dan P (unverified)

  Gotta hand it to you, 3TBs would be nice. Does anyone know if Vail is really going to be much better? I have a disaster of an experience with WHS and, as it turns out, I'm not alone, Windows Home Server really is/was a mess. Any of your messed with Vail yet?

  8.10.2010 00:42 #17

• KillerBug

  My experience with the "enterprise" level drives that don't offer "enterprise" performance (like 10K spindle speeds for example) is that they are no different other than price.
  
  When my seagates finally start to have issues, it is with occasional bad sectors...after 3-7 years, depending on use level and a bit of random chance. When WDs fail, they fail all at once...or at least they do in my experience.
  
  As for OEM drives, I really don't blame the drive maker in those cases anymore. The OEMs hang the drives upside-down, mount them vertically against metal plates, and power them with power supplies that are worth less than $10. Plus, there is usually no cooling provided at all. On top of that, they use the cheapest cables and mainboards available...and then they special-order "stripped-down" drive models that the hard disk makers make with the philosophy of, "If it fails, it is Dell's problem and Dell's reputation...if they want to cut the cooling efficiency, they can deal with the problems." Meanwhile, Dell's philosophy is, "The warranty is only 1 year...making it last any longer than that just reduces future sales"
  
  After all is said and done, I know that Seagate drives are more reliable than WD drives when fed with proper power, mounted label-side up, and when properly cooled (and I don't mean that they are crammed into some fanless box that is 140F inside, but happens to be in a 72F room...I keep the SMART readings below 110F under extended sustained loads). I really played devil's advocate on this; I flashed new firmware, old firmware, and hacked firmware. I used all the WD tools including a few from the community. I tried using power cables with 3.3V, I tried the ones without. I tried basic onboard SATA with no RAID, I tried software RAID, I tried hardware RAID. I sent the drive back, got one that was completely DOA (no power up), sent that back, and got another with the exact same problems as the first drive, which I tried all these things with just to be sure. I already thought that WD drives were junk when I started all this; it was a "second chance" to a company that I had already given about 50 chances to...taken with the assumption that perhaps the use conditions might have caused all the old WD failures that I had seen continuously since the 1980's...I figured that perhaps a well-treated WD drive would be really great (and quiet)...in the end I am just happy that they failed when I was not trusting them with anything important.

  8.10.2010 04:36 #18

• Jemborg

  Originally posted by bobiroc: I also believe that having a high quality power source (Power Supply) and a Battery Backup is essential for long life of computer components especially hard drives. You're right. At least a better quality PSU than what gets shipped in these OEM poots. I had a customer yesterday with a utterly dud Seagate drive, most upset as you can imagine, the PSU was 450w with 16amps on the +12v rail, wtf!
  
  For the record I've had both WD and Seagate die on me... not often.
  
  

  Its a lot easier being righteous than right.
  
  
  

  15.10.2010 23:30 #19