Tag Archives: WD

The Wirecutter’s best deals: Sony’s RX100 point-and-shoot and more!

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This post was done in partnership with The Wirecutter, a buyer's guide to the best technology. Read their continuously updated list of deals at TheWirecutter.com. You may have already seen Engadget posting reviews from our friends at The Wirecutte...

Western Digital Black2 drive packs both solid-state and spinning storage

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WD Black2 drive

Performance-minded PC users frequently want both a fast solid-state drive for crucial apps and a regular hard disk for everything else, but that's not always feasible in the tight space of a laptop. Western Digital is making that two-drive option a practical reality through its new Black2. The design puts both a 120GB SSD and a 1TB spinning disk into a single 2.5-inch SATA enclosure, offering more speed and capacity than you'd find in a typical hybrid drive. It's potentially an ideal blend for gamers and small form factor PC builders, although they'll pay for the privilege -- WD is shipping the Black2 today for $300, or roughly as much as the two drives by themselves.

[Thanks, Metayoshi]

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Source: Western Digital

HGST Launches Helium-Filled 6TB Hard Drive

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HGST Helium filled hard drive He6HGST, a subsidiary of Western Digital, announced on Monday the launch of its first helium-filled hard drive. The new Ultrastar He6 drive comes with a 6TB capacity in a 3.5-inch drive enclosure.

According to HGST, having helium in the enclosure has significantly less friction than air, allowing for less energy needed to physically move platters around inside the drive resulting in more platters with an acceptable performance. More platters mean more drive space with a general increase by three quarters over a standard air-filled hard drive.

The challenge has been to create a chamber in the drive that was tight enough to avoid leaking the helium, and HGST assures us that it is a safe volume with “less helium than a balloon”. Pricing was not initially available, however the company stated that it will “…cost-effectively extend the capacity and cost-per-gigabyte curve for many product generations to come.”

HGST

WD announces My Cloud, an external drive that connects to your home network for $150 (video)

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WD announces My Cloud, an external drive that connects to your home network for $150 video
Sure, there are plenty of physical storage options out there, but WD's new My Cloud does a little more than the traditional external hard drives. For starters, and as the name would suggest, My Cloud can connect to your own home (or office) network and allow you to wirelessly transfer files to and from it. What's more interesting here, however, is that WD's making it easy to access the plug-and-play device from anywhere -- for example, you can be in a completely different continent and still be able to upload / download files. There's also a USB 3.0 which acts as an expansion option, Gigabit Ethernet for wired connectivity, DLNA features and an undisclosed dual-core CPU to handle most of the load.

Better yet, because it's a local network drive, there's no need to format it for Mac or Windows, making it compatible with both from the get-go and leaving out the need for any unwanted software. To manage things like users, storage space and advanced settings, Western Digital has introduced the companion My Cloud Dashboard, which can be accessed via a desktop application. On the mobile side, there are apps for iOS and Android that allow users to upload photos, videos, documents and other type of files, as well as integrate with cloud services including Google Drive, SkyDrive and Dropbox. The WD My Cloud is now available starting at $150 for the 2TB model, while the beefier 3TB and 4TB variants are priced at $180 and $250, respectively.%Gallery-slideshow99587%

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Source: WD

WD upgrades NAS-friendly Red drives with 2.5-inch versions and 4TB desktop model

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WD upgrades NASfriendly Red drives with 25inch versions, 4TB desktop model

If you're looking for hard drives built to withstand the rigors of network-attached storage, Western Digital has a treat in store for you. The company just expanded its Red line of NAS-ready drives to include 2.5-inch models in 750GB and 1TB capacities; both disks fit into smaller enclosures while maintaining the Red series' power and speed optimizations for always-on media servers. WD is offering a few perks for desktop users, too. The existing 3.5-inch range now includes a high-capacity 4TB drive, and every new Red model ships with NASware 2.0 technology that should improve reliability. All three Red variants are shipping today; the compact 750GB and 1TB disks respectively sell for $79 and $99, while the 4TB behemoth costs $229.

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Source: Western Digital

Western Digital ships 7mm WD Blue, world’s thinnest 1TB hard drive

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Western Digital ships 7mm WD Blue, world's thinnest 1TB hard drive

Move over, Seagate -- there's a new sheriff in slimtown. Not content to introduce the first 5mm thick 500GB HDD, Western Digital just announced that it's shipping the world's thinnest 1TB hard drive, the 7mm WD Blue. It features StableTrack which secures the motor shaft at both ends to reduce vibration and improve tracking, plus dual-stage actuators -- electromagnetic for coarse displacement and piezo for fine movement. SecurePark keeps the heads clear of the disk surface and increases shock resistance. It's the same HDD we caught in prototype form at IDF 2012 and we reckon the 7mm WD Black (hybrid) version we saw at CES 2013 can't be far behind. The 1TB model (WD10SPCXX) is priced at $139 with a two year warranty and is available to OEMs, integrators and consumers right now. We fully expect this drive to appear in one of the laptops / tablets launching at Computex this week, so don't miss our coverage.

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HGST’s 1.5TB laptop drive is the densest hard disk available

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HGST's laptop drive is the thinnest, densest 15TB drive on the market

If you're looking for pure storage for the dollar, SSDs have nothing on good old hard disks. And WD subsidiary HGST has packed more gigabytes into a smaller space than ever before with the new Travelstar 5K1500. It's a 2.5-inch, 9.5mm thin model packing 1.5TB, giving your notebook a huge shot of extra storage space while taking up very little physical space. The two platter drive boasts 694Gb per square inch and draws a mere 1.8W, though it must spin at a miserly 5,400 RPM. Still, it can absorb 400Gs of shock for 2ms and keep on ticking -- so it should have no trouble surviving reentry. HGST's targeting notebooks, external drives, gaming consoles and AIO PC markets with the model, and will also offer an enhanced availability (EA) version for power sensitive servers and other 24/7 systems. There's no price yet, but it'll be available in June -- so you might be able to take that film editing project on the road after all.

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WD ships 5mm Blue UltraSlim drive, enables thinner budget Ultrabooks

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WD ships 5mm Blue UltraSlim drive for thin Ultrabooks and beyond

We were intrigued with the prospects of Western Digital's 5mm Blue drive when we saw it last summer: finally, a 2.5-inch spinning disk thin enough to rival slimmer SSDs without the price premium of a hybrid like the WD Black SSHD. If you shared the same curiosity, you'll be glad to hear that the finished product is shipping as the WD Blue UltraSlim. Device builders can now stuff 500GB into spaces that would exclude 7mm disks, yet pay just $89 for the privilege -- a price low enough to let even frugal Ultrabooks shed some bulk. The 5mm disk reaches its miniscule dimensions through the use of a tiny edge connector that mates both power and a SATA interface, leaving more room for the drive machinery. We can't guarantee that you'll find a Blue UltraSlim in your next PC or set-top box when Western Digital hasn't named any of its customers, but we wouldn't be surprised if the wafer-like drive is commonplace in the near future.

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Source: Western Digital

WD SmartWare Pro automates backups to both Dropbox and external drives

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WD SmartWare Pro streamlines backups to both external drives and Dropbox

We're used to external hard drive makers offering some kind of backup software to add value, although it's usually forgettable for the experienced users among us -- what we erase while we're busy setting up Windows 8 File History, Time Machine or a cloud service. Western Digital thinks some cloud integration of its own will get us looking at its new, standalone WD SmartWare Pro app. While the client can automatically back up file changes to a local drive as they happen, it can also schedule backups to both the drive and a Dropbox account. The extra-cautious can backup that Dropbox account to the external disk, and the whole affair isn't limited to the company's MyBook drives, either; just about any old USB storage will do. It will cost a minimum of $30 ($20 on sale) for a three-computer SmartWare Pro license, but those who want both physical and cloud-based safety nets might consider the money well-spent.

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Source: Western Digital