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Western Digital 2TB Green Drive

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Introduction:

Many readers can remember a simpler time, a time when hard drive sizes were measured in megabytes. Gone are those halcyon days. Hard drive capacity has finally hit the 2TB milestone (and in an eco friendly package no less). Western Digital has released their newest “Green Drive” and the world’s first 2TB drive, which focuses on power management in addition to capacity. So does this new incarnation have what it takes to satisfy our data pack rat needs? Read on to find out.

Western Digital’s Overview:

As hard drive capacities increase, the power required to run those drives increases as well. WD Caviar Green drives make it possible for energy-conscious customers to build systems with higher capacities and the right balance of system performance, ensured reliability, and energy conservation.

  • Reduced power consumption – WD has reduced power consumption by up to 40 percent compared to standard desktop drives with the combination of WD’s IntelliSeek, NoTouch, and IntelliPower technologies.
  • Helps enable eco-friendly PCs – WD Caviar Green drives yield an average drive power savings of 4-5 watts over standard desktop drives making it possible for our energy-conscious customers to build systems with higher capacities and the right balance of system performance, ensured reliability, and energy conservation.
  • Cool and quiet – GreenPower technology yields lower operating temperatures for increased reliability and low acoustics for ultra-quiet PCs and external drives.
  • Massive capacity – Capacities up to 2 TB offer the most available capacity for storage-intensive programs and space-hungry operating systems, like Windows Vista, with plenty of room left over for photos, music, and video.
  • Perfect for external drives – External drive manufacturers can eliminate the need for a fan in a high-capacity product with a WD Caviar Green drive, the coolest and quietest in its class.
  • IntelliPower – A fine-tuned balance of spin speed, transfer rate and caching algorithms designed to deliver both significant power savings and solid performance.
  • IntelliSeek – Calculates optimum seek speeds to lower power consumption, noise, and vibration.
  • NoTouch ramp load technology – The recording head never touches the disk media ensuring significantly less wear to the recording head and media as well as better drive protection in transit.
  • Perpendicular Magnetic Recording (PMR) – Employs PMR technology to achieve even greater areal density.
  • 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. (2 TB models only)
  • Low power spin-up – WD Caviar Green drives consume less current during startup allowing lower peak loads.
  • Advanced power technology – Electronic components deliver best-in-class low power consumption for reduced power requirements and increased reliability.
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12 Comments... What's your say?

  1. I bought the 1.5TB version and put it in an external enclosure, hooked up to my laptop through usb. It’s very nice for storage, but playing FLAC off of it is very irritating: VLC will load part of the file, and then the drive goes back to sleep… 8 seconds later VLC wants the next part and the music will pause for a splitsecond while the drive powers up again, it will do this 2 or 3 times before finally working properly the rest of the song…

  2. The IntelliPower feature means that, depending on how the HD is used, it can speed up from it’s default speed of 5400 to 7200 rpm, so do NOT expect this to be fast; instead, use this drive primarily for storage!

    Unfortunately, WD does NOT state this @ their webiste which is VERY MISLEADING!

    People are buying SLOW drives at the cost of “environment friendliness” (i.e.low energy consumption device)!

  3. I have bought this peace of crap few months ago! And I really hate it, because when it gets to the point of 1/2 capacity it’s stops working! I can’t download anything after it reaches 1TB level, so basically it’s not a 2TB hard drive, it only gives you 1TB capacity! It was just a waste of my time and money! Don’t buy this crap!

  4. Ah I didn’t see the last page stating the price, sorry. That’s really not that bad considering I paid around $80 for 500gb early this year. Which now I could probably pay upwards of $90 for 1tb now lol. I like the whole “green” idea of hard drives now.

  5. Thanks for posting, I enjoyed reading this Review. I think you should post more frequently, you obviously have natural ability for reviewing Hardware. Maybe you could Review mine sometime…

  6. Vista this, XP that.
    ZFS!

  7. This drive looks cool, but who really needs a 2TB Drive. for their own computer?

    I have a 500 GB and that does more than fine for my music, back up, and some TV shows that i downloaded.

    • This drive works really well in NAS systems and Home Theater PCs where you want the machine to be low power and have a small profile ideally. Like I said in the conclusion, it also works very well for datacenters where they need as much storage density as possible so they can save floor space.

    • Actually I passed the 1tb years ago and now even 3tb of storage is a bit constraining. You might not need more than 500g, however add in the whole family with kids and soon with those games (gigabytes just to install games not to mention saved games, whole music selections in flac, copies of dvd for streaming, family pictures, etc.) And that 3tb is just my computer, add in the kids and for my household it’s over 6tb of storage.

      • I completely agree…I have a 1TB Drive that I use as a back up drive, and its full…all the time. I sometimes find myself deleting stuff just so I can fit newer stuff in. I wish i had one of these…lol…

  8. Sounds nice buts what’s the price on this beast?

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