WD Kicks IDE Drives To 200 Gbytes


Recommended Posts

Western Digital Delivers Industry?s Largest, Fastest Hard Drives With 200 GB Capacity and 7,200 RPM

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

WD Caviar? 60 GB-Per-Platter Family Satisfies Today?s Need for Speed and Capacity

LAKE FOREST, Calif., Jun 25, 2002 ? Continuing to lead the 7,200 RPM market with its WD Caviar? family, Western Digital Corp (NYSE: WDC) today introduced the industry?s largest capacity hard drive ? its WD Caviar 200 GB 7,200 RPM product. This milestone marks the fourth consecutive first-to-market 7,200 RPM hard drive delivered by Western Digital ? which was first to deliver 7,200 RPM hard drives in 80, 100 and 120 GB caWD Caviar 60 GB-per-platter 7,200 RPM hard drives will be offered in capacities ranging from 120 to 200 GB and will be available this July. his July. To ensure quiet operation in noise-sensitive desktop/work station environments, Western Digital offers hard drives equipped with optional fluid dynamic bearing (FDB) motors.

?Hard drive manufacturers are providing incredible levels of performance and capacity to the PC market, as well as to today?s emerging markets demanding massive local storage such as personal video recorders,? said Mark Geenen, president of TrendFocus, a research firm specializing in the data storage market ?Western Digital successfully focuses on the highest capacity and highest performance EIDE hard drives, and delivers another first with 200 gigabytes.?

?Continued demand for the exceptional performance of 7,200 RPM hard drives at the highest capacities makes these hard drives an ideal choice for computing needs that range from top-of-the-line desktops and work stations to high-end IDE applications such as entry-level enterprise servers,? said Richard E Rutledge, vice president of marketing for Western Digital.

Source: Western Digital Corperation Press

http://www.wdc.com/company/releases/PressRQuick Tip:4

Quick Tip:

On a side note, if you wish to purchase and install this make sure you have an ATA Card or Motherboard Interface that supports 48-Bit Logical Block Addresing, otherwise this will appear to be a 127GB drive when you attempt to format and install it

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Originally posted by freeza

damn.....imagine having just 2 of those

/me waits till they add the 8MB Cache and make them JB(Special edition Drives)..hehe...

weeeeeeeeeeeee :D

Link to comment
Share on other sites

well my mobo is ready but FBA motors, how much better are those cuz i don't hear my maxtor drive (40GB not that new, maybe 1- 1 1/2 yrs old) and i never hear it....

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Originally posted by youm0nt

im confused so WD and seagate are making newer HD's?

i guess that would be it! USUALLY, everyone makes new hard drives ;)

as far as 200GB WD is firsts to 7200RPM

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 4 weeks later...

"Drivezilla" breathes fire at 200GB

drivezilla.gif

By John G. Spooner

Staff Writer, CNET News.com

July 29, 2002, 8:00 AM PT

Western Digital's 200GB "Drivezilla" is about to stomp its way into desktop PCs.

The company began shipping the hard drive--part of its new family of Caviar drives ranging from 120GB to 200GB--in small numbers over the past week. The new machine, which spins at 7,200 revolutions per minute, will soon begin appearing at retail stores and online, and will be available in some new desktop PCs later this quarter.

The drive, which the company nicknamed Drivezilla, will give high-end consumer PCs a whopping 80GB more storage than most now have. The majority of top-of-the-line PCs come with 120GB drives, though most manufacturers offer desktop PCs that can fit two 120GB hard drives in order to offer more data storage capacity.

Western Digital expects that people who use their PCs to edit and store video and photos, or to perform other multimedia tasks, will want the new drive for its extra capacity. Storing large amounts of video, for example, quickly adds up on a hard drive. Compressed video takes up about 13GB of disk space per hour. Meanwhile, the new drive can also be used by workstations, which are heavy-duty desktops used for tasks such as creating mechanical designs.

Western Digital created Drivezilla by increasing the areal density, or the amount of data its drives can store per square inch. Drivezilla can stuff 66.7GB of data on each platter. A platter, which resembles a record or CD, is used to store data in a hard drive. Manufacturers stack the platters inside the drives in order to reach different capacities.

Drivezilla uses three platters to reach 200GB; the new 120GB drive uses two.

Most other hard drive makers, such as Seagate, have surpassed the previous mark of 40GB per platter and have reached 60GB per platter. But they have not yet offered drive capacities higher than 160GB.

Drivezilla's closest competitor is Maxtor's DiamondMax D540X hard drive. It is available at up to 160GB, but at a slower rotational speed of 5,400rpm.

Drivezilla's 7,200rpm allows it to transfer data more quickly.

Still, the drive's capacity and performance will come at a price. It will sell at retail for $399, a bit more than other high-end drives when they were first released.

"We're loading the various channels, " Richard Rutledge, vice president of marketing for Western Digital, said referring to the different ways the drive will be sold. Not all PC retailers or PC makers have it yet, he said. Retailers will get it first, he added, and PC makers "will start shipping by the end of the quarter."

Meanwhile, Drivezilla is breaking through other barriers as well.

Because of its larger size it will likely be one of the first hard drives widely available to consumers that will take advantage of a new interface between drives and PCs. The updated interface surpasses the previous barrier to hard drive capacity, which had been 137GB.

Technical Committee T13, a group that maintains the ATA standard for connecting drives to PCs, overcame the capacity limitation. Last year, the committee released an updated standard that uses greater number of bits--48 bits versus 28 bits--to allow the drive to handle more data.

The new interface can deal with up to 144 petabytes of data. A 144 petabyte drive--if one were available--would offer about 120,000 times more capacity than a 137GB drive.

Because it may take some time for the new interface to work its way into the PC market, Western Digital is taking measures to ensure that its new drives will work with PCs.

Only Windows XP's Service Pack 1--an update due out next month for the Microsoft operating system--will offer built-in support for the new interface.

To allow its drive to work on PCs that don't have the updated version of Windows XP, Western Digital will include a special controller card and software. The card will be included with the new drive when it is sold at retail. Buyers will have to install the new card and software.

Drive makers will surely need the new interface, as developments push areal densities to 100GB per platter. Such density could allow desktop drives to reach 400GB of storage by the end of next year.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

This topic is now closed to further replies.
  • Recently Browsing   0 members

    • No registered users viewing this page.