640 Gb Western Digital Hard Drive
Western Digital has blown past the 2-terabyte barrier with a new 3.5-inch hard drive that has a whopping 3 TB of storage capacity. Drives larger than 2 TB were until recently impossible to use, because older computers could not recognize drive sizes larger than 2.2 TB.
The new SATA bulldoze is part of WD'south Caviar Green line and can exist used as an external storage device or equally an internal disk on select systems. The drive has a suggested retail price of $239 and is bachelor in the The states. Western Digital besides announced a 2.v TB drive for $189. Both drives come with a three-year limited warranty, and are not sold with a hard drive enclosure.
Dining on Green Caviar
With iii TB of storage capacity, Western Digital says you lot can store up to 600,000 digital photos or 750,000 MP3 song files or 360 hours of 720p or 1080i high-definition video. Western Digital's pricing ways yous're paying a little less than $0.08 per gigabyte on the 3 TB drive and $0.09 with the two.five TB model.
The new Caviar Dark-green models have 750 GB on each drive platter (the 3 TB organization has iv platters). The disks rotate at 5400 rpm, accept a 64MB cache and a iii-gigabit per second transfer speed. Many hard drives spin at 7200rpm or faster, just WD'due south lower rpm speed allows the drive to exist more eco-friendly past consuming less power, hence the "Green" in Caviar Greenish.
The 2 TB Barrier
Older computers, typically Windows XP-era computers and older, used a partition scheme called the primary kicking record (MBR) that made information technology impossible to recognize bulldoze sizes larger than 2.two TB. Mod operating systems such every bit Windows Vista, seven and Mac OS Ten Leopard and Snowfall Leopard employ the GUID segmentation table (GPT) and are able to recognize the larger drive sizes.
The GPT sectionalisation scheme is function of the Unified Extensible Firmware Interface (UEFI), an industry standard designed to modernize the boot process.
Who Tin Use WD'southward New two.five and iii TB Drives
Almost whatever Windows or Mac estimator tin use WD'due south new Light-green Caviar three TB bulldoze as an external difficult drive, with the exception of Windows XP systems. If you have an XP system you are out of luck, equally WD's new drives do not support your system. The new Caviar Green drives tin can too be used every bit an internal secondary drive for all 64-bit systems, equally well as Windows Vista and Windows 7 32-bit systems.
If y'all want to utilise the new 2.5 or three TB drive as your primary boot disk, things get a footling bit hairier. Only 64-scrap systems can utilize the new large-size drives as their chief hard drive. That puts Mac OS X Leopard and Snowfall Leopard in the clear, co-ordinate to WD, merely Windows Vista and vii users will have to brand sure they are not using the 32-chip versions of those systems. To check whether yous are running a 32-fleck or 64-bit version of Windows click on Kickoff>Calculator and then right-click on Properties. Then look for the line that says "System blazon."
Mac users should know that WD's new drives do not support Boot Camp, therefore they cannot be used as a dual-kick difficult drive.
Western Digital says some Linux systems will also support the drives. Linux users should bank check with their Bone provider to see if your organization offers support.
More than Caviar Complications
Fifty-fifty if y'all accept the correct operating system, your computer hardware may non exist running the right firmware to easily use the new 2.5 TB and 3 TB drives. Some modernistic computers are hybrids that use the GPT partition organisation, but also use legacy BIOS firmware — the get-go software that loads at boot fourth dimension — instead of the newer UEFI standards. For those systems, WD has bundled a special Advanced Host Controller Interface Host Passenger vehicle Adapter with all 2.5 TB and three TB drives. The HBA hooks into a PCI-Express carte du jour slot and includes driver support for the larger capacity drives.
Before attempting to install the new Caviar Light-green drives, Western Digital advises you lot to check with your motherboard or difficult drive enclosure manufacturer for whatever special requirements your system may have for supporting larger capacity drives.
If using Western Digital's new iii TB drives sounds like too much work, another alternative is to go with Seagate's FreeAgent GoFlex Desk external drive. Seagate's drive comes with a hard drive enclosure, and volition piece of work with systems running Windows XP, Vista, 7 and Mac Os X 10.4.ix or college.
Connect with Ian Paul ( @ianpaul ) and Today@PCWorld on Twitter for the latest tech news and assay.
640 Gb Western Digital Hard Drive,
Source: https://www.pcworld.com/article/504060/western_digital_announces_2_5_3_terabyte_hard_drives.html
Posted by: castleleareved.blogspot.com
0 Response to "640 Gb Western Digital Hard Drive"
Post a Comment