Western Digital Reveals High-Performance 4TB Hard Drive.

Xbitlabs ^ | 11/20/2012 08:48 AM | by Anton Shilov

[Ernest_at_the_Beach]

h3>Western Digital Introduces 4TB WD Black Hard Disk Drive

Western Digital, the world’s largest maker of hard disk drives, on Tuesday introduced its 4TB WD Black HDD which combines high performance with maximum capacity. WD Black drives are aimed for gaming, high-performance desktop systems and workstations.

Based on four latest-generation 1TB platters, the new WD Black drives combine 7200rpm spin speed, 64MB cache, dual stage actuator technology, Serial ATA 6Gb/s interface, and an integrated dual processor to deliver ultimate performance in a maximum-capacity drive. The new HDDs also support such technologies as IntelliSeek, which calculates optimum seek speeds to lower power consumption, noise and vibration; StableTrac, the motor shaft is secured at both ends to reduce system-induced vibration and stabilize platters for accurate tracking during read and write operations; NoTouch ramp load technology.

[Ernest_at_the_Beach]

This may be the first 4G Drive for the consumer market.

: Hitachi Releases First Enterprise-Class 4TB Hard Drive ^

[rarestia]

Show me a 10K RPM with 128 MB cache and we’ll talk. Not saying this isn’t great for the likes of EMC. We’ll be able to get 75 TB of data in a single 25-disk 2.5” SATA III shelf, which is insane, but the seek times for data won’t be astronomical at 7.5K RPM.

[backwoods-engineer]

Wow, 4TB. I could put a few more movies on that :-)

[Gaffer]

I don’t know...My MacBookPro 15” Retina has 768GB of solid state memory....nothing moving in this bad boy....I can live with the smaller memory.

[ImJustAnotherOkie]

Is it a helium filled drive?

[dfwgator]

That’s a lot of porn.

[rarestia]

By memory, I believe you mean hard drive space. Memory and storage are different things, but I completely take your meaning.

And I don’t disagree with you. I have a 3 TB NAS in my office for long-term storage and bulk storage of music and system backups. I’ve not even used 50% of the total space.

In an enterprise, however, storage is a big dollar IT expense and the more you can cram into a smaller space for a smaller price, the more will be purchased.

[ShadowAce]

[Michael Barnes]

Probably still 80/90 iops though. Unless it is mirrored (which incurs a write penalty) or in a layered volume its not probably not going to be blinding performance.

[ShadowAce]

[Ernest_at_the_Beach]

Newegg:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductList.aspx?Submit=ENE&N=100007603%20600361769%20600217643&IsNodeId=1&name=4TB

[rarestia]

I don’t think the purpose is for performance but for RAW disk. Just RAID5 20 of them and you’ll have more redundant storage than you can shake a stick at.

[rarestia]

Don’t think the wife would appreciate me spending $1600 on 4 of them for my Synology NAS.

[Gaffer]

Nope, the storage space is solid state according to the documentation I see - no moving parts at all except the keys on the keyboard. I don’t recall off hand what the usable instant memory is but it is substantial. It is ridiculously expensive, but I didn’t pay for it.

[taxcontrol]

Great, now I have to wipe the drool off of my keyboard.

[rarestia]

Right... you referred to it as “memory.” I was simply pointing out the mixup in terminology, which is actually quite common.

Memory (Random Access Memory or RAM) is used for caching of programs for quicker access by the processor. Solid state storage is simply a hard drive without spinning disk. I use two 240 GB OCZ Agility 3 SSDs in my gaming desktop and have 12 GB DDR3 RAM (memory).

[Ernest_at_the_Beach]

WD was making an enterprise 4 Tbyte drive,....this seems to be for the consumer market.

Enterprise drives typically are for RAID arrays and require different firmware.

[Hoodat]

A terabyte here, a terabyte there, and pretty soon, we’re talking about real memory.

[Gaffer]

Okay...all I know is me likee MBP w/R very much....but pricey...

[djf]

Start a defrag and come back in like 2019...