Western Digital launches world’s first 3TB SATA HDD

Hard drive maker Western Digital has launched the largest capacity SATA hard drive available to date, as the new Caviar Green HDD line includes the world’s first 3 TeraByte SATA drive.

The new 5400-rpm drives can’t match the write/read speeds of 7200-rpm drives, but they use less energy and are therefore “greener”.

The new drives are available with 2.5TB or 3TB storage capacities, and includes the use of high-areal density technology to allow for up to 7500GB per platter. Interestingly, WD used Advanced Format technology that left behind the 512 bytes per sector normally used in HDDs — and the drives write at 4,096 bytes per sector.

Consumers interested in having 3TB SATA HDD storage will need to run Microsoft Windows Vista or Windows 7, because Windows XP isn’t able to pick up the 4,096-byte per drive format. Specifically, HDDs used in older PCs normally can’t see above 2.19TB, because they use a master boot record (MBR) partition scheme.

The newer operating systems use the GUID partition table (GPT) that can utilize HDDs with higher storage capacities, including the WD 3TB HDD.

Both drives are available now, with the 2.5TB drive available for $189, while the 3TB drive is available for $239. Paying less than $0.08 per GB (3TB) and $0.09 per GB (2.5TB) for storage space is a respectable price for such a large amount of storage on a single drive.

HDD manufacturers continually push the envelope as they look to increase the speed and storage capacities of HDDs and solid-state drives. As manufacturers push storage boundaries even higher, the use of bit-patterned media (BPM) technology and heat-assisted magnetic recording (HAMR) are just two technologies helping to keep HDD technology around longer.

There is still natural concern that hard disk drives won’t be able to withstand growing pressure from flash-based storage alternatives, such as SSDs. But for now, HDD prices and capacities can’t be beaten.