HDDs
Without much fanfare, Western Digital this week introduced its first dual actuator hard drive, a 20TB drive that is designed to offer SATA SSD-like sequential read/write performance. The Ultrastar DC HS760 drive is meant to increase IOPS-per-terabyte performance for hyperscale cloud datacenters and will compete against Seagate's dual actuator Exos 2X family of HDDs. Meanwhile, Western Digital's offering will also mark the latest deployment of the company's OptiNAND technology. The dual actuator Ultrastar DC HS760 HDD builds upon the company's single actuator Ultrastar DC HC560 drive which uses nine 2.2TB ePMR (energy-assisted perpendicular magnetic recording) platters. But in the case of the HS760, WD adds a second actuator to the drive, essentially splitting it up into two quasi-independent drives with each half having domain over...
Western Digital My Book Studio Edition II 6TB Review
While we await more Thunderbolt storage devices, Western Digital grabbed headlines not too long ago for the announcement of its 6TB My Book Studio Edition II Mac-ready external drive...
34 by Anand Lal Shimpi on 9/10/2011Hitachi Ships First 3.5" HDD With 1TB Platters
Without increasing rotational speed the only hope for improving mechanical hard drive performance is through greater platter densities. There are other benefits realized through increasing platter density: larger capacities...
9 by Anand Lal Shimpi on 9/7/2011Seagate Ships World's First 4TB External HDD
Just over a year ago Seagate introduced the world’s first 3TB hard drive. Although it shipped in an enclosure for external use, the Seagate GoFlex Desk was available with...
10 by Anand Lal Shimpi on 9/7/2011HighPoint's RocketU 1144A PCIe x4 USB 3.0 Controller: A Big Back-end
Most USB 3.0 controller cards available on the market today utilize the PCIe x1 interface. With a maximum theoretical bandwidth of 5Gbps, it is possible that these controllers...
40 by Zach Throckmorton on 8/30/2011150GB & 300GB VelociRaptors Get SATA 6 Gbps, Larger Cache
While SSDs are all the rage these days, Western Digital is still making headway on their 10,000RPM VelociRaptors. The drives come in 150GB, 300GB, 450GB and 600GB capacities in...
28 by Saumitra Bhagwat on 7/28/2011Seagate GoFlex Slim 320GB: The World's Thinnest External HDD
As a desktop user I never really jumped on the external storage craze. I kept a couple of terabyte drives in RAID-0 inside my chassis and there's always the...
31 by Anand Lal Shimpi on 4/5/2011Seagate GoFlex Mac & Thin @ CES 2011
I met with Seagate briefly at the show and it gave me an update on additions to its drive lineup. Unfortunately there still are no updates to the Momentus...
15 by Anand Lal Shimpi on 1/10/2011Western Digital Caviar Green 3TB and My Book Essential 3TB Drives Reviewed
Two months ago I looked at the world’s first 3TB desktop hard drive. It was a 5 platter, 3TB Seagate Barracuda XT inside an external GoFlex Desk chassis. The...
48 by Anand Lal Shimpi on 10/19/2010Seagate GoFlex Home 2TB Reviewed
If you’ve got more than one PC in the home, having a network drive to share files, stream media and create backups can make a lot of sense. Seagate...
30 by Rajinder Gill on 10/10/2010Western Digital Introduces new USB 3.0 External Drives, Hits 3TB
Although Seagate was first to market with an external 3TB drive, it wasn’t without issues. In our testing of the 3TB GoFlex Desk we found that under continuous usage...
21 by Anand Lal Shimpi on 10/5/2010The World's First 3TB HDD: Seagate GoFlex Desk 3TB Review
Seagate recently announced the world's first 3TB 3.5" HDD. There's just one catch: it's external only. The FreeAgent GoFlex Desk 3TB arrived in our labs over a week ago...
81 by Anand Lal Shimpi on 8/23/2010