hdd

Western Digital has been on a high-activity streak lately. Earlier this month WD acquired Hitachi GST, a huge change in the market structure that is sure to put competitor Seagate on its heels. In addition, they have continued to replace their older Caviar Blacks, as their last gen Cavs had become very long in the tooth indeed. Now, WD has just released an enourmous 4-bay high-performance RAID 0, 1, or 5 external HDD enclosure. What is the maximum storage size for this enclosure? ...read more

Whilst many predict that SSDs will eventually push HDDs out of the PC market entirely, that is still in the distant future. For now, SSDs are only plausible as small high-performance storage devices, with a hard drive to back them up as mass storage. The reason for this is just how stinking cheap hard drives have gotten over the past years. Density of HDD platters is so high that a 1TB drive is only two platters and costs as little as $65. 1TB SSDs cost $1500 plus. However, the age of single-platter 1TB drives is fast approaching, as Samsung is showing off the first single-platter 1TB HDD. ...read more

Seagate has long been on of the top two HDD manufactureres in the world, trading blows with Western Digital for several years. Just recently WD leapfrogged Seagate in market share, and while both companies are still alive and well, Seagate is surely looking to gain some market share back. That's likely one reason behind the recent announcement of their 3TB Barracuda XT HDD, their performance-oriented capacity drive. But what about the 2TB barrier in all but the newest PCs? ...read more

OWC is a relatively small company, only really covering the storage market in any breadth. And even then, they only have a few SandForce SSDs and some other miscellaneous storage products. However, they seem to be set on expanding their product lineup, and today they have announced the release of the OWC Mercury Elite-AL Pro Qx2. That's a mouthful isn't it? Specs after the break!

"This review is not about an SSD, but about the current Hitachi Deskstar 7K1000.C 1TB HDD with a very good cost-performance ratio. Sure, many PC or Mac owners save already their money for a fast Solid State Drive, however the price difference between HDD and SSD with the same capacity is so enormously high, that most SSD buyers will need an additional hard disk drive for their PC or Mac. Let us have a closer look at the results of the Hitachi Deskstar 7K1000.C 1TB SATA2 drive with 7200 rpm and 32 MB cache and let us compare them with some benchmark programs." READ MORE

"After a few weeks of rumours, Seagate’s senior product manager Barbara Craig has confirmed to Thinq that 'we are announcing a 3TB drive later this year,' but the move to 3TB of storage space apparently involves a lot more work than simply upping the areal density." source

"The world of enthusiast computing changed in 2003 when Western Digital Corporation launched its first generation 10k RPM hard disk drives. Prior to the Raptor, enthusiasts were limited to 7200 RPM drives or had to purchase expensive SCSI drives to attain the high performance they required. WDC saw opportunities in the nascent SATA interface for exceptional performance, and took a bold leap that no other HDD company has dared to follow.

Western Digital has had four generations of Raptor drives, including the latest VelociRaptor, as the fastest SATA drives available. It was only last year that Solid State Drives took the performance lead, and enthusiasts have since flocked to the most cost-effective upgrade available for computers. While access times of computer components are usually measured in nanoseconds, mechanical drives still have access times measured in milliseconds. SSDs have insanely fast access times due to their use of NAND flash memory." Source