3TB WD Green!

[x88x]

Western digital is going to be introducing their 5th generation Green series drives on the 29th of this month, with the launch of their new 3TB model. Upping the ante yet again, the 3TB WD Green will have four 750GB platters, up from the five 600GB platters in Seagate's 3TB external. They are sticking with the same 64MB cache already in use by the current drives, unfortunately..I feel like they could get a lot more performance for not much more cost by upping that to at least a few GB, but I guess that's not so much a concern with the Green drives. WD is showing some good sense here by sticking with a SATAII (3Gbps) interface, as no platter HDDs come close to saturating that connection anyway, a trend that I expect will continue for a long time if not forever.

Even without upgrading the cache and sticking with the SATAII, it's still going to have a launch MSRP of $239.99. That works out to just under 8 cents/GB, significantly higher than the just under 5 cents/GB price point that most 2TB drives are at right now, but significantly better than the ~15 cents/GB that WD launched their first 2TB drives at.

I know that I, for one, am quite excited to see the performance boost, especially once those 750GB platters migrate to their Black series drives. :twisted:

It should be noted that these drives use the GPT partition table system instead of the MBR system, which tops out at 2.19TB. This means that if you're using XP you're going to need special equipment and if you're using 32-bit Vista or 7 you won't be able to boot from the drive if you have a UEFI-compatible MBB.
http://www.storagereview.com/western_digital_caviar_green_3tb_review_wd30ezrsdt l
http://www.microcenter.com/single_product_results.phtml?product_id=0351317&utm_source=ACT_BYO&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=E0929+eNews+20101019

EDIT:
I just found out (http://techreport.com/discussions.x/19826) that to get around the UEFI HDD controller problem, WD is bundling a PCIe x1 Highpoint SATA controller card with it. If the picture is correct, I believe that the controller in question is this one (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16816115072), which retails for $25. Factor that into the price, and the cost/GB drops to 7.167 cents.

[d_stilgar]

Nice. I've always wondered, is the Seagate external drive wider than a standard 3.5 inch drive?

I've been planning a NAS for a few years now and I keep holding off because the drives keep getting better and better. Maybe in the summer I'll do it. We'll have to see.

[x88x]

IDK about the physical size of the Seagate 3TB, but it is possible to squeeze 5 platters into a normal thickness 3.5" drive...it's been a while since I'd seen it done before that drive, but it is possible.

As for planning a NAS, it depends on your needs and your financial position. Personally I would wait until these 3TB Greens drop in price; I would guess they'll drop to <=5 cents/GB by about this time next year at the latest. If you want something sooner than that, though, you can build a 10TB RAID-5 cluster now for just $600 in drives...and that's good quality drives too (well, for home use)...and that should last you quite a while.

Alternately, once these 3TB Greens drop below ~$170 I'll probably start looking into upgrading my fileserver, at which point I'll have a bunch of 1.5TB drives (6 atm, possibly adding another in a few months) that I'll be willing to sell pretty cheap.

[TheGreatSatan]

Yuck, WD's are garbage. Even worse, they're slow garbage drives that are so good for "mother-earth". Like I tell customers: "If WD doesn't always trust their own drives in their My Books, then why should you?"

[mDust]

Yuck, WD's are garbage. Even worse, they're slow garbage drives that are so good for "mother-earth". Like I tell customers: "If WD doesn't always trust their own drives in their My Books, then why should you?"

Storage drives don't need to be fast, but what do they put in My Books?

[x88x]

I agree that WDs were complete and utter garbage in the 90's, but all the WD drives I've had or used that were made in the last 10 years or so have been rock-solid. ..except for on MyBook external, which from what you're saying that wasn't a WD drive anyway. What do they put in them then?

On 'green' drives, like mDust says, storage drives don't need to be fast. Completely ignoring any environmentalism (whether real or inferred), for a home fileserver, I would rather have a slightly slower array (I can't access it any faster than 1Gbps anyway, now can I?) that consumes less power (read: cheaper to run), then a slightly faster array that consumes more power. These new 3TB drives drop to 1.5W power consumption when they aren't in use! That's less one of my SSDs in operation (2W), and not much more than my two SSDs in standby (0.5W each, 1.0W total). There is a place for low-power-consumption drives, just as there is a place for high-performance drives. And it's not like WD are the only ones doing it; Seagate and Samsung both make low-RPM/low-power-consumption drives for the exact same reason.

On another note, if you notice, the last two big platter upgrades that WD has done (the 500GB platters and these new 750GB platters) have been introduced in their 'green' series drives, which run slower (and thus cooler), giving them a good platform to prove the mass viability of the new platters, without dropping them straight into high performance drives.

EDIT:
I just checked a 1TB MyBook that I have on hand, and I can't really see the drive, but the sticker on the end of it (the drive inside the enclosure, not on the enclosure) is definitely a WD product sticker. I also found these (http://rebootdaily.blogspot.com/2007/03/how-to-open-western-digital-my-book.html) disassembly (http://www.instructables.com/id/Disassembling-a-Western-Digital-My-Book/step2/Remove-the-hard-drive/) walkthroughs (http://www.sigg3.net/b2perma.php?p=1185&c=1), and they all end up with a WD drive. I also did some quick searching, and I'm not seeing anything referencing the drive in any MyBooks not being a WD made drive. I'm curious where you got your info; maybe there was a certain line that they sourced different drives for?

[Oneslowz28]

I have 3 500Gb WD greens in my server, 1 in my Desktop and 1 in my Photo Editing PC. Top that off with a 500 and 1TB Black in my Desktop. The smarts data on all of them read 100%. But TBH I have only had 2 HDD fail since I have been using PCs. The first was due to a lightening strike and the second was a hitachi 40GB that had been running non stop for 10 years.

[TheGreatSatan]

I've had to crack open 5 My Books for customers because they crap out so easily. In only 2 of them did I find a WD drive. Two were Samsung drives and the other was an Hitachi.

[x88x]

Huh, weird. The only thing I can think is that when they were doing those lines the wholesale price for those drives was somehow lower than putting one of their own drives in...I wouldn't think that would ever happen, but.. *shrugs* ...you don't put a Hitachi in anything unless price is your only concern...

[TheGreatSatan]

What? Don't like Deathstars?

[blaze15301]

i havew a hitachi desk star one of the first tearabytedrives. it has yet to crap out on me. but i ahve noticed once i hit that 600 gb mark it starts to go kinda slow. so i may be looking into a new ahrdrive soon. since ive been building computers ive had just about every brand drive imaginable. sea gate samsung wd. hp, etc from what i keep hearing tho samsungs arent goign to well.

[x88x]

Really? I've had nothing but good experiences with my Samsungs. I will say though, I've had my confidence in Seagate consumer drives drop a lot over the last few years. It seems like ever since they bought Maxtor that their consumer drives have dropped to..well, about Maxtor level..ok, but not exceptional (like Seagates were before). They still make great enterprise drives, it's just the consumer models that seem to have dropped the ball.

The only manufacturers I've had consistently bad experiences with though, are Hitachi, IBM (iirc, Hitachi bought out IBM's HDD manufacturing), and old-model WDs (think the pre-10GB era). I worked at a non-profit for a couple years building/repairing/etc older computers back in 04-05, and whenever I pulled one of those three out of the bin it was always about 50/50 (at the best) whether it would work or not.

[d_stilgar]

I second having issues with seagate drives in the past.

[TheGreatSatan]

I prefer Seagate or Samsung. And for the record, my two WD Raptors have been great