Archive for: Western digital
Hardware giant, Western Digital, is about to get a bit more muscle in the fight against competing hard drive manufacturer, Seagate. Today, March 7th, 2011, WD announced that they were purchasing Hitachi Global Storage Technologies for ~$4.3 billion USD. In total, $3.5 billion in cash as well as $750 million worth of shares will trade hands. According to Western Digital CEO, John Coyne, scale is the sole source behind the purchase, citing the need for more size and R&D spending to combat rival Seagate. The CEO also hopes to offer a greater selection of products for consumers under the WD brand, further increasing the company’s own value.
While many of you out there may be tech-fiends, living and breathing each every new gadget that is announced/released, not all of us can be as well versed in the digital way. But more likely however, is that you have a family member or two that always turns to you for tech help. Love it or hate it, you’re the savior. So when that particular person comes to you asking about an easy way to remotely access their photos, you can now respond with a concise and easy answer…
Western Digital’s Jim Welsh claims that by 2014, every household will have at least 1TB of digital content. That’s a pretty bold claim. What about the millions of non-tech savy seniors — you know, the ones that have trouble operating the microwave? I’m pretty sure they won’t be streaming last.fm while updating their Facebook and tweeting their friends. I doubt “every” household will have 1TB of digital content for at least another decade or two.
Still, it is kind of interesting to think about. A better question: How much do digital content do you own now, and how much more do you think you’ll acquire as we race along to the future (and in this case, 2014)?
Last week we touched on some new and interesting news possibly coming from Seagate. And wouldn’t you know it, our guestimate was spot on (as was many other peoples’).
The new Seagate Momentus XT was put through it’s paces by Hothardware and found to be “in between a WD Scorpio Blue and Seagate Barracuda 7200.11″ in terms of overall speed. So no, this hybrid tech won’t be a worth contender to SSD”s and users looking for the ultimate in speed. For that, a blazing fast, wallet slaying SSD is still your best bet.
If it’s actual benchies you’re looking for, the average times for the Momentus XT Hyrbird are as follows: ~110MBps/~100MBps read/write. Not out of this world, but something to consider I guess when deciding between HDD or SSD, no?
For the rest, you’ll have to give Hothardware your eyes and attention a bit longer.
Speed, like drugs, hobbies, food, and smoking is addictive. With speed, the adrenaline rush that follows is the natural high for some. In the tech world, while we ourselves may not be moving hundreds of miles per hour in the dopest ride, we do have certain objects that move at high velocity — hard drives. As far as old spinners go, the general rule of thumb is that the faster the drive spins, the faster it will perform. Now, this isn’t exact as a few other factors such as connection interface, number of platters, and cache size also affect the end result. But if you want to soon move from merely “fast” to really fast, Western Digital has a new set of VelociRaptor hard drives they’d love you to take a look at.
While not technically revealed “officially” yet, the announcement is due soon..as in within the next couple weeks soon. The new found speed will come courtesy of the drives utilizing the newer, faster data SATA 3.0 (6Gbps) protocol. Other notable mentions that have no tie to speed include a small 2.5″ form factor wrapped in the 3.5″ “IcePack” cooler allowing easy installation in your standard sized drive bay. Another nod goes to the 3ms average latency time which I might add is pretty damn fast for your standard “moving” hard drive.
Like many other hard drives coming onto the market, the new VelociRaptors will also feature a “NoTouch Ramp” technology which simply means the drive head never touches the actual drive meaning longer life all around and less chances for hard drive failures — yay.
Finally, one corporate-grade feature that is moving down to this prosumer drive is that of “Rotary Acceleration Feed Forward (RAFF)” This little spiffy piece of tech will help the drive cope with high vibration situations. In the corporate world, certain environments such as the drive being stuffed in a large drive array within a server farm is the most obvious image that comes immediately to mind. For consumers who won’t really ever move their computer or face the same levels of vibration in the home environment, this feature likely won’t return any investment. Still, it’s nice that WD included it.
In my personal experience with a few VelociRaptor drives currently on the market as well as seeing countless reviews, benchmarks, and hands-on videos comparing these drives to comparable SSD’s has left me rather unimpressed. The price premium for the ‘Raptors doesn’t come anywhere close to balancing out on any return in investment (read: speed). Even still, these new drives will no doubt win over countless geeks and speed freaks for yet another generation.
Will WD actually hit that claimed 15% increase in speed on this next generation of ‘Raptor drives?
Bright Side of News
Tired of waiting around for USB 3.0 external drives to hit the scene? Me too. Well, I was until I stumbled across Western Digital’s new MyBook 3.0 external hard drive. The 3.0 addition to the name of course highlights the migration from USB 2.0 to 3.0 internals meaning these new drives will whisk away your precious files at up to 5 Gbps. If you’re keeping note, that’s roughly 10 times more than your standard USB 2.0 drive.
But the drive itself isn’t everything as you need the appropriate hardware on your PC too. On this front, PC manufacturers have drug their feet as well in regards to adding USB 3.0 support. But there’s hope yet.
If you fancy the one and only 1TB MyBook 3.0 and don’t have any USB 3.0 compliant cards/ports on your computer, WD will sell you a kit that includes the drive and a USB 3.0 PCIe card for ~$375 USD. Got your own hardware already? Super. Shave off about $40 as the drive only option will set you back ~$331 USD.
As USB 3.0 proliferates to other manufacturers and devices, expect the prices to naturally fall. It all depends on how anxious you are. Would you drop three and a half bennies on 1TB of USB 3.0 storage or are you happy as a clam, content enough to wait it out for lower prices?
TechShout
- November 16, 2009 10:47 am
The current crop of hard drives max out at 2 TB. If you think this is merely adequate you’re no doubt looking forward to when 10TB flash drives are $5 at the dollar store. As cool as it is to dream, we still have several years before storage becomes that cheap or dense. Since I can’t give you news of a 10 exabyte drive, I’ll patch over the wound with a 3TB drive. Is it here? Not quite. But it’s coming. WD was the first to break out with the 2TB hard disk which was a feat of size and storage technologies. As is usual in the technology world, if you’re sitting still you’re moving backwards.
According to Dr Geoff Barrall, founder and CEO of Drobo, WD will release 3TB hard drives in 2010. If there’s 3TB single drives that means we’ll get 6TB dual drive variants. *smiles* The evidence behind his claims come from the fact that Drobo will be offering a 3TB drive next year — Drobo gets their drives from WD. You put the pieces together. The densities required to hit a 3TB drive (roughly 500Gbit/sq in….and 750GB/platter) are certainly achievable in the near term. Can manufactures do it? I know it’s not an exabyte, but will it suffice?
Ubergizmo > The Register
Live life in the fast line do yuh? Feeling bogged down by the seemingly slow 7,200RPM the higher end/faster 2.5″ drives spin at? Western Digital would like to show you something. Their new WD S25 is a 10k, 2.5″ spinning mobile speedster that will bring even greater agility to those who are always on the go. Blow past previous benchmarks with a sustained read/write times of 128MB/s and a 16MB buffer. Further bolstering this speed demon attitude is the 3.0 GBPS and 6.0 GBPS connectivity options ensuring you don’t hit a bottle neck when it comes down to the finish line. In case you were wondering, WD’s S25 drive happens to be the first 2.5″ drive to claim that coveted 10k SAS nomenclature, ushering in a new era of minutely packaged speed. Naturally, spinning at such speeds sucks down more power than their slower siblings so full on mobile consumers may want to think twice about this drive in particular and instead opt for a speedy SSD. The S25 is currently shipping to several OEM’s and should start appearing for business users in the near future. Don’t forget your helmet and goggles…
Gadget Venue > HardwareShpere
Because a series of blinking lights is too vague and such things as capacity and I/O support are now old news, WD has taken it upon themselves to usher in the next “gotta-have-it feature” of external hard drives. Ladies and Gents, e-Ink display equipped externals are now here. From here on out, My Book Elite and My Book Studio WD hard drives will now come adorned with a 12-character e-Ink display on the spine giving you a more easily decipherable message as to how much room is really left in your little box of memories.
Further breaking it down, the labels will be available on the USB only My Book Elite and the Firewire 800/USB My Book Studio hard drives.
Ready to buy a new e-Ink hard drive or are you content for now?
CrunchGear
