Western Digital Shipping World's First Internal 3TB Hard Drive
Western Digital Shipping World's First Internal 3TB Hard Drive
Posted 10/19/2010 at 6:24am
| by Paul Lilly
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We've been stuck at 2TB for what seems like forever, and there's good reason for that. Drive partitions larger than 2.19TB create a unique problem for PCs, and trying to boot from them requires a mish mash of technologies, including the use of a GPT partition, a modern 64-bit OS (Vista or Windows 7), and a motherboard equipped with an EFI BIOS.
Despite all this, Western Digital has gone ahead and begun shipping a 3TB hard drive in Caviar Green trim, which qualifies as the largest capacity internal SATA drive around. The drive utilizes four 750GB platters as well as Western Digital's Advanced Format technology, which you can read more about here.
To sidestep the issue of integrating large capacity hard drives into your system, Western Digital also bundles an Advanced Host Controller (AHCI)-compliant Host Bus Adapter with its 3TB (and 2.5TB) hard drives, which makes it easier for OSes to locate and use a known driver with correct support for large capacity drives. In other words, you can actually boot from the thing without any crazy voodoo.
The 3TB drive is available now for for $240, while the 2.5TB drive sells for $190.
Image Credit: Western Digital
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bbarker3
October 20, 2010 at 6:47pm
Of a 3TB hard drive, what is it's actual capacity? My 500gb external, I think it drops down to 465gb actual usable (If nothing is currently on it). And can someone explain to me why when I purchased the hd, I only got 465gb usable space? Where did that 35gb go?
Eoraptor
October 19, 2010 at 7:46am
Man, after reading this article, I had to go and give myself a crash course in GPT and EFI.
o.0
Ahem. now that my brain is back online after trying to process all the new stuff in each, I wonder why we didnt get it years ago on the PC platform (and surprised myself with how little I knew about how BIOS is programmed and its limitations)
And respect the risk that WD is taking pushing out a drive with such specific requirements, hoping it will push the rest of the industry forward to implimenting the advacements needed to support it. (incidentally, the wikipedia is both coarse and out of date on the topic of EFI)
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