A Closer Look:
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On the surface, the new 3TB iteration of the Western Digital Green Drive series looks the same as the other drives in the series. Under the hood we have double the cache (up to 64MB from 32MB) of prior versions and the largest platter density around. The Green series of drives have the ability to dynamically optimize how fast they spin, depending on the system load. This means the drive doesn’t quite feel as fast as a 7200 RPM drive, but still feels faster than a 5400 RPM drive.
Compatibility:
Just like the 2TB version before it, this drive has some limitations that you need to be aware of. The first is that the drive uses what is called Advanced Format to store data on the platters (any drive over 2.2TB in size uses Advanced Format). This makes it incompatible with some older motherboards. Because motherboard manufacturers aren’t going to go back and release a BIOS update for all of their older boards, Western Digital includes PCI-E HBA (Host Bus Adapter) card that will work with the drive. The bundled card is a HighPoint Rocket 620 SATA III card that has a low-profile bracket. This can be a pain if you don’t have a low profile case. What I did to get around it was to remove the screws that hold on the mounting bracket. You can then fit it behind an existing PCI slot cover. It’s not the best solution, as the card isn’t secured down and could pop out if the case is moved excessively, but it is better than nothing. Maybe in the future Western Digital can include an additional, non low-profile, mounting bracket. The card uses the native Windows AHCI driver, so you won’t have to worry about searching for a driver disk.
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Even with the bundled card, there are still some limitations that can prevent you from booting from the drive as your primary OS drive. You also need to have a motherboard that has Unified Extensible Firmware Interface (UEFI). On top of that, if you aren’t running a 64-bit version of Vista or later, you still won’t be able to use it as your primary boot drive. This is due to the limitations of MBR, and the switch over to GPT. Western Digital has a nice chart on their site that illustrates what OS’s are able to boot from the drive, but to save you some time, Windows XP is not supported. Western Digital also has a really nice PDF on their site that dives more in depth about the limitations of the MBR and the switch to GPT. I’m glad that they care enough to make the documentation readily available for their customers. Even if you aren’t able to boot from the drive, there should be nothing stopping you from using it as an external drive or as a second data drive (provided your motherboard can either read the drive or you use the bundled card).
Really an amazing high performance green drive with a capacity of about 3TB, which is in it self an amazing thing to read and share, even more to have one in your PC. Thanks for sharing it…..