Western Digital brings Advanced Format to Caviar Green

[Machinus]

This will decrease performance on older operating systems, but the question is by how much...

[Tech Dav]

This will decrease performance on older operating systems, but the question is by how much...

the question is who cares?

[onethreehill]

Western Digital’s Advanced Format: The 4K Sector Transition Begins
The first drives will be Caviar Green drives using multiple 500GB platters – so the 1TB, 1.5TB, and 2TB Caviar Green. These drives will be shipping any day now, and can be identified through two different methods: 1) They all have 64MB of cache - the first WD Caviar Green drives to come with that much cache - and 2) They all have EARS in the drive model number, e.g. WD10EARS.

As we stated before, in spite of the benefits of 4K sectors, Western Digital is not pushing these drives as part of any major product launch. Rather they’re going to be quietly trickling in to the marketplace. Expect a price premium at first (as with any other new product) before settling down. We don’t have a drive on-hand to review, but from the fact that this is a low-key launch, WD isn’t painting any expectations of a performance difference, although this will be something to test in the future.

http://anandtech.com/storage/showdoc.aspx?i=3691

[generics_user]

these might be my next upgrade drives once i fell my 2x1TB

WD10EADS are the best storage drives i ever had; no transfer of vibration with stock lianli rubber grommets and completely inaudible over my corsair HX620 @ idle which is a very silent psu

best storage solution out there is SSD (samsung RBB or intel X25) + WD green power drives

[onethreehill]

Today went down to SLS and came back with a pair of 1TB of EARS.



This pair was manufactured on 10 Dec and Made in Thailand. The new EARS come with 64mb Cache instead of 32mb Cache.

It has also instructions written on the Decal if you are running Windows XP as your OS to achieve the benefits of Advanced format drive:



Comparing the EARS and the EADS



SRP per drive is $138

The other improvement is that this is an Advance Format drive.



In terms of performance, The EARS as compared with the EADS 's 2 versions (P8B0 and M2B0):







Even with 64Mb cache , its performance still not as good as the P8B0 version which comes with a full 5 years warranty.

http://forums.hardwarezone.com.sg/sh....php?t=2606346

[stevecs]

But notice on their spec sheets that WDC is not showing any improvement in error rates. 4K sectors (and the better efficiency used by the 80 or 100byte (80 here) ECC over the previous method should give a huge boost. That alone would be a selling point to me but with it lacking I don't see any real benefit here.

[zozo]

So, does anyone know if the EARS drives support TLER with the WDTLER tool ?

[[XC] Oj101]

What does he mean by it doesn't come with a five year warranty when according to the label it does?

[XS Janus]

So, does anyone know if the EARS drives support TLER with the WDTLER tool ?

99.9% no.
They disabled it to prevent enthusiast users like us cannibalizing their RE4 drive sales!

Which I'm fine with... but please drop that enormous premium on them WD!