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Western Digital Targeting Enterprise Servers with SAS Hard Drives

Bart Salisbury — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 15:21:08 -0600

Western Digital, the world’s second largest hard driver manufacturer and a favorite of the masses, has decided to play with the big boys, announcing their first hard drive for the enterprise storage market.

The enterprise market is made up of big business, which places heavy, mission critical demands on their hard drives. You need some serious hard drive storage if you plan to offer email, web applications, or cloud-computing services. Drives that can handle the stress long-term, with little chance of failure are favored in this market, currently dominated by Seagate and Hitachi Global Storage Technologies.

Western Digital’s first offering is the WD S25, available in 147 Gb and 300 Gb capacities. The drive, which has a 2.5-inch form factor, spins at 10,000 RPMs. It also includes the technologically necessary Serial Attached SCSI (SAS) interface, either SAS 3 Gb/s or SAS 6 Gb/s. While similar in appearance to Western Digital’s VelociRaptor, it has faster read and write seek times, and a higher MTBF rating of 1.6 million hours.

Image Credit: Western Digital

Western Digital Boasts Record Year in Quarterly Revenue Report

Paul Lilly — Fri, 23 Oct 2009 15:06:02 -0500

Recession? Tech slump? Losses? Apparently these are all things Western Digital is not familiar with, even if just about everyone else in the tech industry is. The hard drive maker today reported record quarterly revenue of $2.2 billion, and that's not the only record that was set.

Hard drive shipments also hit a record high totaling 44.1 million units for the quarter. All tallied, Western Digital pulled in net income of $288 million, or $1.25 per share, for its first fiscal quarter ended October 2, 2009.

"For the second consecutive quarter, demand for hard drives was stronger than expected as the positive industry conditions that materialized in the June quarter continued throughout the September quarter," said John Coyne, president and chief executive office. "We believe that demand is being driven primarily by consumers as a result of the growing social media phenomenon. This is creating demand in mobile and desktop PCs, branded products, and enterprise storage."

Western Digital went on to say that its hard drive inventories remain at historically low levels. And going forward, the hard drive maker says demand remains strong, so the good times should continue.

Image Credit: Western Digital

Western Digital Caviar Black 2TB

Nathan Edwards — Thu, 22 Oct 2009 22:30:00 -0500

Faster than a VelociRaptor, and six times the capacity

After months of making do with 5,400rpm and 5,900rpm 2TB drives and odd-bird 1.5TB drives, it’s finally happening: 7,200rpm two-terabyte hard drives are coming to rigs near you. First out of the gate and into our greedy arms is Western Digital’s 2TB Caviar Black, the performance cousin to the 2TB Caviar Green we reviewed in May. And brother, it’s just what we’ve been waiting for.

The 2TB Caviar Black is spec’d to impress, with four 500GB platters, two processors, 64MB of cache, and a dual-stage actuator system that puts a fine-tuned piezoelectric actuator head at the end of the standard magnetic actuator, enabling fine-tuned tracking for speedy seek times. The Caviar Black also comes with WD’s standard No-Touch ramp loader, so the read/write head never comes in contact with the platters, increasing the drive’s lifespan.

If this is the shape of 7,200rpm drives to come, we're wetting ourselves with excitement.

All these little extras add up, and the 2TB Caviar Black offers the speediest sustained reads and writes—exceeding 112MB/s each—of any consumer magnetic hard drive we’ve ever tested. That’s 15 percent faster than the Seagate Barracuda 7200.11 1.5TB’s read speeds. The 1.5TB Barracuda, previously our high-capacity speed champion, couldn’t keep up in sustained writes, either—here the Caviar was nearly 30 percent faster. And thanks to the greater areal density of the Caviar drive, its random-access read and write times are just 7.6ms and 5.0ms, respectively. You won’t find faster seeks short of a VelociRaptor or solid state drive. Of course, solid state drives offer the best performance—the $370 Patriot Torqx, our Best of the Best SSD, achieves sustained reads of over 200MB/s, sustained writes of over 175MB/s, and seek times measured in the tenths of milliseconds.

The 2TB Caviar Black has an MSRP of $300, the same price that low-powered 2TB drives like the Caviar Green and Barracuda LP debuted at earlier this year. Street prices, of course, will be lower, and keep falling—the first waves of 2TB drives, the “green” ones, are already selling for as low as $200. And the Caviar Black’s sustained reads and writes trump the fastest of those green drives by 20MB/s.

The 1.5TB Barracuda held a spot on our Best of the Best list for more than a year, but now it’s been firmly supplanted—the 2TB Caviar Black is officially our favorite hard drive.

Expect 7,200rpm 2TB drives from Hitachi, Seagate, and others in the next few months as well, with the aim of high performance. But if you buy a capacity hard drive today, next week, or even half a year from now, you can’t go wrong with this Caviar Black. It has the fastest sustained read and write speeds of any consumer magnetic hard drive we’ve ever tested. It’s faster in any benchmark than all standard hard drives save the WD VelociRaptor, which still holds the edge in burst speeds and random-access times—barely. Think about that for a second: You can get VelociRaptor-busting speed and six-and-a-half times the capacity for $300. We’re sold.

Hands-On with Western Digital's TV Live HD Media Player

Norman Chan — Wed, 14 Oct 2009 22:00:00 -0500

Possibly the media pirate's perfect movie and music streamer

Yesterday, Western Digital officially announced the second generation of their WD TV HD media player. In our review of the original device, we loved its ability to play back almost any video we tossed at it, but lamented its inability to handle encrypted media files. Since then, Western Digital has issued a series of firmware updates that improve format compatibility (including DivX), but the new WD TV Live adds new hardware features as well. Most notable is the addition of an Ethernet port to connect the WD TV Live to your home network. That means you can not only stream movies from your desktop PC or NAS boxes to the WD TV Live, but also get video, music, and photo content from the internet. We received a retail sample of the new system, and tested it to see if these new features are worth the $50 price bump.

First, a quick briefing on how the WD TV Live and its previous iteration work. The WD TV system is a media player, but video and music files aren't stored on the device itself. You connect USB hard drives or flash keys to either of the two USB ports on the back and the top of the player, and the WD TV reads files off of those storage drives to play onto a connected television or monitor. The first WD TV launched with support for most standard video formats (MPEG, WMV, H.264), 1080p resolution and high-bitrate playback, and used HDMI or Composite video connections. Its support for community-adopted video containers, like MKV and H.264 AVI files, made it a popular alternative to the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 for media playback.

In addition, the firmware for the WD TV has been open source, which has led to 3rd-party firmware updates that have added neat functionality to the player, including USB optical drive and limited network adapter support. The WD TV Live utilizes new internal hardware, so it's unclear that existing 3rd-party firmware will run on it.

The WD TV Live's packaging is very similar to the original's. Included in the box is the player (which is about the size of a portal hard drive, only thicker), an IR remote, AAA batteries, power adapter, and video cables. The box includes both Composite and Component cables, though they're cables with 3.5mm jacks on one end to plug into the WD TV. Neither the first WD TV nor the WD TV Live include an HDMI cable, though everyone knows they're relatively cheap to buy from monoprice.com.

Also new is a warning sticker on the back of the WD TV Live, reminding you not to stack USB hard drives on top of the player. In our experience, the player gets pretty hot when playing back 1080p video, though we've never had one of these devices die on us from overheating. Still, it's a good idea to keep the player on its side during use, and avoid placing it on top of or around other hot gadgets.

Physically, the WD TV Live (on the left in the above photo) is exactly the same dimensions as the original. WD opted for a matte grey finish as opposed to the glossy black of the original, which was prone to greasy fingerprints. We still prefer the black finish. The HDMI logo has also been removed from the front face of the device.

On the rear of the player, you can see the new Ethernet port as well as the modified Composite and Component video out ports. If you choose to use the Component connection, you'll have to output audio from the Composite port (for stereo sound) or use the Optical port for 5.1 audio playback. The HDMI connection outputs both audio and video.

Here's a quick glance at the differing format support, as indicated from the packaging (WD TV Live on the right). The original WD TV box is a little out of date, since new firmware has expanded what type of files the WD TV can play, including a wide range of soft subtitles. DRM-protected files are stil not yet supported. But enough about specs -- let's turn this thing on!

System boot up on is a tad faster than the new player, but the thing we noticed most was how responsive the new menu is. Optimizations in hardware and the OS software have paid off, and navigating around the WD TV doesn't feel sluggish at all. This is a necessary improvement, since there are more menu categories to browse around this time around.

The actual menus aren't changed much from the first WD TV. Cosmetic changes like a darker blue background aren't a big deal -- you still navigate around the layered menus using the arrow keys. You can use the included remote to work the menu system, or pair the WD TV with a universal remote like the Logitech Harmony series.

The first thing you'll want to do is set up the Network configuration. The WD TV has an automated setup process that detects your router settings and DLNA network drives, including Home Servers and NAS boxes.

We ran the WDTV through the gamut of numerous video and audio files of varying size, bitrate, and formats, and the WD TV Live handled them all with ease. Everything from MP4s ripped from DVDs using Handbrake, 1080P WMV movies from Microsoft, or even MKV H.264 Blu-Ray rips with embedded subtitles and 5 audio channels played back without problems.

HD video stored on a Windows Home Server was instantly detected and flowed over a wired connection without any loss of quality. When we connected the WD TV Live to a hacked router that acts as a wi-fi bridge to try streaming video over 802.11g, video playback was a little more limited -- very high bitrate files occasionally stuttered. You definitely want to be on a 802.11n network to stream high def content. Western Digital plans on selling its own wireless Ethernet adapter for the WD TV Live, but there's no work on what wi-fi standards it'll support.

On to the new connected features. WD TV can tap into Youtube to play video, but browsing options are pretty limited. You can enter channels showing the newest, most popular, highest rated, or "featured" videos, but searching for specific content is a tedious process. Entering search terms is done with the arrow keys on your remote, and it took us at least 5 minutes to find specific movie and game trailers. However, you can log into your Youtube account to visit favorited channels and user subscriptions.

By default, Youtube will stream the Hi-Quality of HD version of a video if its available. You can turn this off if you're on a slow or shakey internet connection.

Online music streaming is actually a pleasure to use. Menu entries for Pandora and Live365 let you log into an account and access online radio feeds. The player experience replicates the features of those services you'd find on their respective sites, as well. We're not sure how many people actually want to stream online radio to their TV, but the option is there.

Finally, you can browse Flick's photo content with pre-configured feeds, such as the last week's worth of "interesting" photos. Again, this is more of a novelty feature than an actual practical one -- we don't envision many people rummaging through Flickr on their TVs out of boredom.

One disappointment is that most of the pictures we opened from the Flickr feed turned out to be the low-resolution photo, which then isn't stretched out to fill the screen.

From our early tests, the WD TV Live looks to be a worthy successor to the WD TV. It's most attractive features haven't changed -- video aficionados and media pirates alike will still be drawn to it for its wide file format support. The Ethernet connectivity and streaming feature, however, really makes this a true contender as the dominant media player in your home theater setup. The device's small profile, relatively low power usage, and whisper quiet operation makes it more ideal than the Xbox 360 or PlayStation 3 for in-network media streaming. Whether that's worth $150 or adding another media player to your TV stand is up to you.

Note: As of the time of writing, Best Buy is selling the WD TV Live for $120 (may be backordered)

Western Digital Unveils WD TV Live HD Media Player

Ryan Whitwam — Tue, 13 Oct 2009 19:41:28 -0500

Western Digital has announced the second iteration of its TV connected media player. The new WD TV Live HD takes all that was awesome about the old, and adds some new tricks. The box still has wide codec support for playing files from USB drives, but it now also streams content from Youtube, Pandora, and Flickr. Users can also connect network drives to the new version to view files.

The WD TV Live HD, as the name would suggest, outputs 1080P HD video via a HDMI 1.3 port. Composite and component are also available. If you need to get video off that USB drive and on to your TV, the WD TVs provide an attractive alternative to media center PCs. The new WD TV device has an MSRP of $149.99.

Toshiba, Hitachi, and Western Digital Announce New Products

Ryan Whitwam — Tue, 15 Sep 2009 20:11:16 -0500

Three hard drive manufacturers have announced new products in a shockingly short time frame. Toshiba is releasing a new 1.8 inch drive for MP3 players, with capacities from 60 to 160GB. In the slightly larger 2.5 inch form factor, Toshiba is offering 640GB drive suitable for notebooks.

Western Digital is also offering a 640GB, 2.5 inch drive. This new Scorpio Blue model is thin enough to fit in any standard laptop drive bay. The 640 GB drive will retail for about $145 at launch. Western Digital’s 750GB and 1TB Scorpios are three platter drives, and are too thick to fit in most standard notebooks.

Hitachi’s new offerings are in the 3.5 inch space. The company’s new 1TB CinemaStar 7K1000.C should be shipping by year’s end. A second Hitachi 1TB drive, the 5K1000 CoolSpin, is designed to be quieter at the expense of speed. It only spins at 5400rpm instead of 7200rpm like the 7K1000.C. No pricing was announced.

Western Digital Scorpio Blue 640GB Notebook Drives Now Shipping

Paul Lilly — Wed, 09 Sep 2009 12:11:16 -0500

Western Digital today said it has commenced volume shipments of its 2.5-inch WD Scorpio Blue 640GB hard drives designed for notebooks.

The tiny drives pack 640GB into a single unit by way of 320GB per platter technology, making them the highest capacity 2.5-inch hard drives in the industry standard 9.5mm, 2-disk form factor yet available. On the energy efficiency front, WD claims its capacious Scropio Blue drive consumes 30 percent less power than previous generation WD Scorpio Blue models.

Other features include WD's WhisperDrive technology, which the company describes as a "state-of-the-art seeking algorithm" to reduce drive noise, ShockGuard technology for better shock tolerance should you drop or otherwise jostle your notebook, and IntelliSeek technology, which dynamically adjusts seek speeds to lower power consumption, noise, and vibration.

The Scorpio Blue 640GB is shipping now through select distributors and resellers with an MSRP set at $149.

Image Credit: Western Digital

Western Digial Launches 7200 RPM 2TB Hard Drive

Paul Lilly — Tue, 01 Sep 2009 12:30:04 -0500

Western Digital today starting shipping its new desktop 7200 RPM 2TB hard drive to OEMs and becomes the second manufacturer to offer the high spindle speed and capacity combination (Hitachi being the first).

As part of the WD Caviar Black series, the 2TB model is based on the company's 500GB-per-platter technology. Other features include a heaping 64MB of cache, dual stage actuator technology, SATA 3Gb/s, an integrated dual processor, and NoTouch ramp load technology, which ensures the recording head never touches the disk media and, according to WD, results in significantly less wear and tear on the drive.

Western Digital's speedy 2TB drive is available now with an MSRP of $299.

Image Credit: Western Digital