Lake Forest, CA – Western Digital has announced the industry’s largest hard drive to date, the 2TB WD20EVDS.
WD says the drive is targeted at the surveillance, a/v and security markets and offers power consumption as much as 40 per cent lower than standard drives.
“Our consumer electronics customers require hard drives that consume less power, generate less heat and operate quietly,” said Jim Welsh, senior vice president and general manager of WD’s branded products and consumer electronics groups.
“Audio and video recording applications, such as DVRs, media servers, media centers and mainstream surveillance systems, often demand 24×7 operation from hard drives. Our drives meet the demanding requirements of these markets including higher reliability, universal compatibility, low power consumption and the ability to simultaneously record multiple audio and/or high-definition video streams.”
The drive features a number of technologies beginning with the word ‘Intel’, which begs the question of whether WD is in receipt of any legal documents from attorneys based in the Santa Clara area.
IntelliSeek, IntelliPark and IntelliPower handle tasks such as unloading the heads during idle to minimize aerodynamic drag, improving mechanical shock performance and cutting power consumption. Noise levels have also been cut to almost the threshold of human hearing, claims the company. The SATA drive can deliver 3Gb/sec and comes with 32MB cache.
Pre-emptive Wear Leveling increases drive life by regularly moving the drive arm across the disk to reduce the uneven wear on the drive surface often caused by audio video streaming applications.
The WD20EVDS is priced at $299 and is available now.
