2TB Caviar drive too good to be true?

[safan80]

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/12/15/wd_2tb_caviar_drive/


Quite right - but Czech website blows the gaff

By Chris Mellor

Posted in Storage, 15th December 2008 15:28 GMT

Free whitepaper: Calculating total power requirements for data centers

A Czech website is listing a 2TB WD Caviar drive for sale, although the current largest capacity WD Caviar drive is 1TB. Don't bother trying to order one of these 2TB whoppers though - they aren't available yet.

What's happened is that someone in receipt of a non-disclosure presentation has disclosed the information to the Czechs - you can read about the forthcoming drive here. Naturally, the site says that their warehouse has none in stock.

The Caviar Green WD20EADS - 2TB product is described as a 3.5-inch, SATA II drive (3Gbit/s I/O), spinning at 7,200rpm and priced at 5,943 Kč (Czech koruna) before VAT. In real money this is about €230, meaning about £230, before VAT.

We're ostensibly looking at a 4-platter drive with 500GB/platter areal density or a 3-platter unit at a totally amazing 666GB/platter. However, comments on the Czech website, admittedly not translated by anything cleverer than AltaVista Babelfish, suggest that the capacity is actually measured at 1000B/KB instead of 1024 bytes/KB, which would make the drive capacity about 1.86TB and not 2TB. That would give around 445GB/platter for a 4-platter unit and 620GB/platter for a 3-platter unit. Anything at the 600GB+ per platter level would be awesome and unlikely.

WD's position is "We don't announce products until we are shipping", and the company is definitely not shipping.

We reckon it's a 4-platter unit coming down the WD Pike and Seagate's 1.5TB Barracuda is about to get pipped in the capacity stakes. If WD is running NDAs on the product now, that suggests an announcement will be made in the next month or three. All will be revealed then. ®

[breakfromyou]

600+ GB platters...VERY unlikely.

500gb Platters from WD...possibly. Seagate just announced their 500gb single platter drive.

As for the capacity being "only" 1.86tb instead of 2, that's the way its been for ages...somebody doesn't know what they're talking about.

GP != 7200 RPM. "Intellipower" (5400-7200rpm)

[Helmore]

Now do me 2 of those 2 TB WD Caviar Green drives for €100 each and I'll be happy. Although I'm sure we will have to pay a lot more for these unfortunately.

[don_xvi]

I can't believe that someone writing for a technolgy news website in the "storage" area wouldn't (1) understand the storage marketing business and (2) clarify GB (at least as applied to mass storage) vs GiB. I'm firmly in the camp that "k" means 1000 and "M" means 1,000,000, but regardless of which side of this debate you are on, this is a perfect area to clarify between SI GB vs GiB.

For those that aren't familiar, GiB (or TiB, MiB, etc) means gibibyte, or "Giga Binary Byte" to create a unit of measure to satisfy those that think a "K" is 1024. See Wiki for more: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gibibyte

[tiro_uspsss]

I want 2TB ES.2 :D

[RaZz!]

with a 2tb drive i'd poo my pants when this drive fails. 2tb of data gone at one time! i'm more the guy who spreads his data across mutlitple smaller drives. :p:

[don_xvi]

with a 2tb drive i'd poo my pants when this drive fails. 2tb of data gone at one time! i'm more the guy who spreads his data across mutlitple smaller drives. :p:

I like to spread my data across multiple LARGER drives ! :)
What does hard drive failure say to ME ??? Oh, no, RRRRAAAAAAAAIIIIIIIDDDDDD !!!! :yepp:

[STaRGaZeR]

I like to spread my data across multiple LARGER drives ! :)
What does hard drive failure say to ME ??? Oh, no, RRRRAAAAAAAAIIIIIIIDDDDDD !!!! :yepp:

What does controller card failure say to you? :p:

[Clint]

What does controller card failure say to you? :p:

Thats why systemdisk + two 1.5TB mirrored.:up: No need for raid on storage and chances that both drives fail at same time are very slim.

[Revv23]

whats system disk?

[-thc-(cZ)]

just to help out, i speak czech and the description or any of the comments on the czech site don't have much aside from the regular marketing crap you would expect a retailer to post, delivered by the manufacturer..

One comment was fun though, guy asks why do they not make a RAID inside a single drive?? He backs off his mirror the A and B sides of each platter idea after a few replies, but tries again with RAID 0.. good stuff and very imaginative wishful thinking hehe


edit (here is the marketing talk): up to 38% less power hungry with Intel®liPower™, Intel®liSeek™, Intel®liPark™, StableTrac™. Shock resistance off/in use supposed to be 65G/250G. Noise 2.5B idle, 2.8 in use, MTBF 1000000 h

[tiro_uspsss]

One comment was fun though, guy asks why do they not make a RAID inside a single drive?? He backs off his mirror the A and B sides of each platter idea after a few replies, but tries again with RAID 0.. good stuff and very imaginative wishful thinking hehe

its called Intel Matrix RAID - yes it is possible to make a RAID array 'inside' a HDD - using the individual platters as 'drives'.. its been around since.. ICH7R I think

[-thc-(cZ)]

well the discussion came down to talking "RAID" and SINGLE drive in one sentence.. which by definition is pretty funny

:D

[B.E.E.F.]

its called Intel Matrix RAID - yes it is possible to make a RAID array 'inside' a HDD - using the individual platters as 'drives'.. its been around since.. ICH7R I think

Got a link to a FAQ of some kind?

[tiro_uspsss]

Got a link to a FAQ of some kind?

having a look at Intel site now.. cant seem to find it.. either that or i'm confused! :D :slapass: :p:

http://www.intel.com/support/chipsets/imsm/sb/CS-020784.htm

[-thc-(cZ)]

its since ich6r and you need two drives : )
"...part of each disk is assigned to a RAID 0 volume, and the other part to a RAID 1 volume."

[turbox997]

Interesting, Komag(now owned by WD) is one of the main suppliers of hdd platters, they supply for Seagate, Hitachi, and of course WD. Unfortunately I can't find any news about their latest breakthroughs and who they are currently supplying.

I wouldn't doubt a 2TB drive being released in the near future(this coming year), because it's very feasible for a 4x500GB platter setup.

Any one happen to know the theoretical limit of a hdd platter using perpendicular recording?

[FischOderAal]

with a 2tb drive i'd poo my pants when this drive fails. 2tb of data gone at one time! i'm more the guy who spreads his data across mutlitple smaller drives. :p:

The more drives you are using, the higher is the chance of one failing (though the "loss" is not as high when one drive fails).
So, RAID1 of two of these will make more sense than raiding four 500 GB drives ;)

[RPGWiZaRD]

I'd gladly take a 2x500GB platter WD disk. Have had great experience with WD7500AAKS and WD6400AAKS drives. ~11.8ms access time on the WD6400AAKS I got and the drive is really quiet (can barely hear it during load) and decent avg transfer rate of ~90MB/s and was the cheapest 640GB drive, can't complain. :) If a 2x500GB platter AAKS version will be released I'm sure it will be among the cheapest 1TB drives at 95~100 EUR or so, yet among the fastest. :p That's why I like WD, fast, cheap and silent.

2TB is too large, in future when files also get larger I will probably buy one but not today.

[xenolith]

I personally don't use any RAID, I use an off-site backup for all my critical files. Even if I didn't use any backup, I'd much rather lose 25% of my data if one of the four 500GB drives failed then 100% if the one 2TB drive failed.

[Clint]

whats system disk?

Ehh, the disk where the operativ system lies/is installed.

[don_xvi]

I like to spread my data across multiple LARGER drives ! :)
What does hard drive failure say to ME ??? Oh, no, RRRRAAAAAAAAIIIIIIIDDDDDD !!!! :yepp:


What does controller card failure say to you? :p:

It says "Put my $15 brother in and resume business".
Linux software RAID. Dare I say it ? FTW ! :D

[Empty_Quarter]

If someone wants this, you better buy two for RAID-1, Losing 2TB worth of data is not fun.

[Particle]

And while we're at it, let's all make a pledge to quit being lazy on capitalization. It isn't just personal style...it makes writing confusing.

MB != Mb
GB != Gb

Capital Bs mean bytes while lower case Bs mean bits.

1 GB = 8 Gb

And I refuse to use the gay-sounding "mebibyte" and "gibibyte". GB to me (and I believe most of the functional world) means 1,073,741,824 bytes unless it's labeled by someone trying to sell something. At least ONE area of memory doesn't try to rip us off by intentionally using the definition that lets them provide the least amount of "stuff" for the label--1GB of RAM is 1,073,741,824 bytes. Flash memory also used to be truthful back in the day, but alas that is no longer so.

[don_xvi]

It's almost enough to make you think that the rest of the world's system is catching on, and that only memory and SOME operating system suppliers use the "1024 = 1k" system... ;)

P.S.- It's not a BIT "gay-sounding" to talk about going out and buying more TiBbies !!! :)

[Monkeywoman]

think heat would be a problem? 2T of data means lots of seeking=heat.

P.S. think they will every make windows recognize those gigs lost to the conversion method? i.e. like above; GiB...

[RejZoR]

Actually Windows calculate the data correctly (even though they mark it as MB and GB by using 1024 conversion), while vendors of optical discs and HDD's strictly use MB and GB with conversion number 1000). 1MB in Windows is 1024KB while 1MB on HDD's specs means 1000KB. Yeah it's lame. I wonder why no one uproared about this already (Microsoft would be the right one for that).
One is counting apples, other is selling oranges and users get strawberries... isn't that just sad?

[Katanai]

its called Intel Matrix RAID - yes it is possible to make a RAID array 'inside' a HDD - using the individual platters as 'drives'.. its been around since.. ICH7R I think

No it's not. You can not RAID a single HDD.

:ROTF:

[Helmore]

Actually Windows calculate the data correctly (even though they mark it as MB and GB by using 1024 conversion), while vendors of optical discs and HDD's strictly use MB and GB with conversion number 1000). 1MB in Windows is 1024KB while 1MB on HDD's specs means 1000KB. Yeah it's lame. I wonder why no one uproared about this already (Microsoft would be the right one for that).
One is counting apples, other is selling oranges and users get strawberries... isn't that just sad?

Well the problem is, the HDD manufacturers are correct with their way of doing things, but you can't really say that the OS and RAM companies are wrong either. The prefixes used by the HDD manufacturers are pretty old and have always been about powers of 10 and not powers of 1024 (or 2 actually).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SI_prefix
Although you don't necessarily have to use the SI system, it is the most widely used system.

[Bootsy]

Got a link to a FAQ of some kind?

Here is a link to every thing you wanted to know about Intel Matrix Raid. I have been using it for years.

Enter The Matrix: Slice out and get the best part from your hard drives (http://www.ocforums.com/showthread.php?t=467848)

[XS Janus]

No it's not. You can not RAID a single HDD.

:ROTF:

I guess that is what is considered the ultimate fake raid!
:p:

[tiro_uspsss]

No it's not. You can not RAID a single HDD.

:ROTF:

yeah, my bad - I was going of my mem from when Matrix RAID was first released (some time ago now) so I got things a lil mixed up :p: hehe!