Western Digital's 3TB behemoth arrives...

[Echo147]

Although at $239/£195 RRP it's almost triple the price of some 2TB brands!

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/10/19/wd_3tb_caviar_green/

 

[Homerboy]

Although at $239/£195 RRP it's almost triple the price of some 2TB brands!

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/10/19/wd_3tb_caviar_green/

yeah I saw this this morning on DT.
No wonder the prices on 1 and 2TB drives have been dropping the past week or so. NE has 2TB right now for $99... so very tempting.

 

[Lonyo]

Bleeding edge tech is always worse value than cheaper drives.
2TB isn't even the sweet spot, 1.5TB is. When 2TB came out they were I think 2x the price of 1.5TB.

As with everything it'll go down, the main benefit is more capacity in a single drive. If you have the space for multiple drives, you're usually better off (value wise) getting multiple smaller drives.

 

[Homerboy]

Bleeding edge tech is always worse value than cheaper drives.
2TB isn't even the sweet spot, 1.5TB is. When 2TB came out they were I think 2x the price of 1.5TB.

As with everything it'll go down, the main benefit is more capacity in a single drive. If you have the space for multiple drives, you're usually better off (value wise) getting multiple smaller drives.

I think we all pretty much know that

2TB seems to be the sweet spot right now though. (with a quick look at NE) NE has 2TB for $99 shipped (you can actually take another $10 off today with a promo code) and 1.5TB are $79 shipped.

 

[AdamK47]

Ugh, it's a green drive.

 

[Dahak]

Ugh, it's a green drive.

but for a storage drive that should be fine. I doubt anyone will be using a 3tb drive for an os drive

 

[Soulkeeper]

750GB/platter is impressive
a 1 or 2 platter black drive is what i'd like to get

 

[Campy]

5 platter 4TB drive some time 2011 is almost guaranteed now.

 

[dfuze]

Ugh, it's a green drive.

That is exactly what I would prefer for my server where speed isn't an issue, run slower for less heat.

 

[fleshconsumed]

That is exactly what I would prefer for my server where speed isn't an issue, run slower for less heat.

With SSD drives becoming cheaper this would actually be preferred combination for desktops. SSD for OS drive and large low cost 5400 green drive for storage.

 

[corkyg]

Regarding OS on a 3TB drive, an interesting note in the current issue of MaximumPC.

". . . , Windows 7 will automatically create a 100MB system-reserved partition during the install process. . . . there's a limitation in the PC that prevents Windows 7 from booting [sic] from a drive larger than 2TB (Unless you have a 64-bit version of Windows, a GPT Partition, and a UEFI bootloader.) The miximum size of a Windows boot partition is roughly 2TB. . . ."

This would suggest a smaller OS partition and a large data/storage area.

GPT=GUID Partition Table
UEFI=Uniform Extensible Firmware Interface

 

[Zap]

Damnit, I've just bought my fifth 2TB drive. Ah well, at least they were under $100 shipped per, so I'm still up on $/GB.

 

[CurseTheSky]

Are there any (reliable) 2 platter 1.5TB or 3 platter 2TB drives out now? That's what I'm interested in.

 

[IndyColtsFan]

That is exactly what I would prefer for my server where speed isn't an issue, run slower for less heat.

These drives are not good for RAID.

 

[taltamir]

Bleeding edge tech is always worse value than cheaper drives.
2TB isn't even the sweet spot, 1.5TB is. When 2TB came out they were I think 2x the price of 1.5TB.

I calculated cost per GB, the cheapest is 2TB right now. That makes 2TB the sweetspot.

but for a storage drive that should be fine. I doubt anyone will be using a 3tb drive for an os drive

people storing TBs of data want redundancy, aka RAID... the green drives have problems with that.

I am really disappointed at those 3TB drives... what the hell were they thinking with the 512B sectors? the only thing that is good for is winXP compatibility... and some partitioning tools.
But winXP cannot use drives over 2.2TB anyways.
Because of their stupid implementation they need special expansion cards for use in even a modern OS... they should have just exposed 4kb sectors to the OS and be done with it. Instead we get even more problems than the 2TB drives with 4kb sectors had.

 

[blastingcap]

but for a storage drive that should be fine. I doubt anyone will be using a 3tb drive for an os drive

This.

I am completely out of space in my primary PC and would love to sell some smaller HDDs to get one or two 3TB drives instead.

OS can go on my fast 7200rpm HDD and then eventually onto SSD.

 

[tweakboy]

Man this thing has more platters then sheep in my dreams. LOLOL

Cache is not what makes a difference in mechanical HD speed. so scratch out the 64MB plus its huge drive it need 64MB anyhow. This thing is gonna have soo many sectors and plattters what 4 or 6 ... The chances of it breaking down are higher since there is more platters and all those sectors. WDC never breaks down if you take care of it but , I wouldnt use this as a primary drive. Only strictly for storage and would worrry about a future failure.

The bigger the drive the higher the chance of breakdown. simply put.

 

[taltamir]

Man this thing has more platters then sheep in my dreams. LOLOL

huh? the WD 3TB drive is using 4 platters only. the seagate 3TB uses 5 platters.
4 platters is pretty common, 5 platters is less common, but still there are a bunch of such drives.

 

[sxr7171]

Kind of bad that WHS can't use it. That's about the only thing that really needs it IMHO. I also read the ZFS thread and if it isn't working in it either, this is going to be a problem. Already had fun looking for 14 jumpers to get the 2TB advanced format into WHS. This one won't easily fit into any current storage platform or so it seems.

 

[an_89]

With SSD drives becoming cheaper this would actually be preferred combination for desktops. SSD for OS drive and large low cost 5400 green drive for storage.

I agree, green drives, with less speed but less heat and less noise tahn fast disks, are the perfect companion to SSD for bulk data storage.
I see hard times coming for fast mechanical disks: SSD are faster and have much more room to improve in next years.
Another important advantage is that they fits better in a silent system, part because solid state, part because contributing to produce less heat allows the system to have less vents.
And they are smaller and use less power so fits better in portables and ultraportables... silent home entertaimnet systems and portable systems are the faster growing segments in sales, and SSD+green drives are preventing fast HDs to even dream to be used in those systems one day.

 

[RebateMonger]

Kind of bad that WHS can't use it. That's about the only thing that really needs it IMHO. I also read the ZFS thread and if it isn't working in it either, this is going to be a problem. Already had fun looking for 14 jumpers to get the 2TB advanced format into WHS. This one won't easily fit into any current storage platform or so it seems.

I haven't spent much time thinking about it, but it'd seem the only way to use this disk with WHS V1 would be behind a hardware RAID card, with two or more of the disks used as multiple 2 TB (max) virtual disks in some sort of RAID array.

WHS V2, when released, should be able to use this disk directly.

 

[Echo147]

...I am really disappointed at those 3TB drives... what the hell were they thinking with the 512B sectors? the only thing that is good for is winXP compatibility... and some partitioning tools.
But winXP cannot use drives over 2.2TB anyways.
Because of their stupid implementation they need special expansion cards for use in even a modern OS...

The 512b implementation has no bearing on needing an expansion card - your SATA chipset or RAID card needs 64bit LBA support to host the drive.

Unfortunately it seems to be a pretty obscure attribute that isn't stated in my P6T's spec-sheet.

 

[taltamir]

The 512b implementation has no bearing on needing an expansion card - your SATA chipset or RAID card needs 64bit LBA support to host the drive.

it needs 64 LBA because they are using 512B sectors.
2^32*512B = 2,199,023,255,552 aka 2.2 TB
2^64*512B = 9,444,732,965,739,290,427,392 aka 9,444,732,965 TB
2^32*4096B = 17,592,186,044,416 aka 17.6TB

so 64bit LBA is totally unnecessary at this time, they just need to stop emulating 512B sectors and expose their real 4kb sectors. This will increase max drive size from 2.2TB to 17.6TB and it will solve the issue with alignment. It means you don't need an expansion card, you can use an external drive, you can do a lot of things that are currently not possible. This crippling of features for backwards compatibility is downright bizarre.

 

[pcslookout]

How do you backup such a drive?

 

[Homerboy]

How do you backup such a drive?

define "backup"
another 3TB drive in another PC (remote?) Local tape drive, multiple HDDs... sometimes you only need to back up certain data on a drive. Even if there is 3TB full, only 5GBs may need to be backed up (DVD5/9 suffices then).

For any amount of data, there is a viable backup solution.