Big, bad hard disk for the HD era
- Hard Disks, Terabyte drives, Western Digital -
By Alexander Villafania
INQUIRER.NET
In the early 1990s hard disks had capacities no bigger than 100 megabytes and these were already called “turbo” back then because these could execute file searches in seconds. Take note “seconds” is in plural form. These things would cost P3,000 to P5,000 that time – a fortune in today’s inflated economy.
Fast forward 10 years later most handheld digital music players would have memory capacities larger than 100 Mb. Even thumb drives worth P200 hold more data than pre-2000 hard disks and they’re faster, too.
Expanding Moore’s Law, technologies double in performance and capacity every18 months. Today’s current commercial hard disks have capacities ranging from 80 gigabytes to 750 Gb. Many users remain happy with just 80 Gb but the era of high definition is pushing the bar in storage space, thus, terabyte drives are becoming the norm. In basic speak, 1 terabyte is equivalent to 1000 gigabytes, or about a quarter million MP3 songs.
High definition videos may perhaps be the single biggest reason for needing terabyte drives. A 5-minute high definition video can use up as much as 100 megabytes of hard disk space. Given the expansion of videos to the Internet, more and more people will be posting HD videos online. This is already being seen on YouTube, which also features submissions in HD.
With hard disk space ever increasing, Western Digital is also pushing forward with hard disks that are still beyond (or at least six months) from actually being needed. One of its more recent products is the 2 Tb Caviar Green hard drive, currently its top-of-the-line, consumer level hard disk.
WD sent one test unit over to INQUIRER.NET. Unfortunately, there are no computers with motherboards that can handle such a size (most boards can accommodate only up to 1.5 Tb). We had to scrounge around for a newer motherboard, along with newer memory modules and a new processor. Good thing the 2Tb WD Caviar Green only needs 6 watts of power so there is no need for a better power supply. The lower power consumption may perhaps be one of the best features of this model, aside from its storage capacity, since current generation hard disks require about 8 watts to run.
The 2Tb WD Caviar Green uses a serial ATA connection so it can immediately run once it is installed without the need for drivers or even the dreaded pins to configure multiple hard drives. Upon start up the device barely made any sound with only a whisper-like whirr to indicate that it is already operating.
Western Digital considers this as a “green” technology due to added power-saving features. The most notable is its GreenPower, which reduces the spin of the hard disk’s spindle. This means reduced power consumption. A secondary benefit of reduced spinning of the hard disk is low heat signature that reduces the heat inside a computer’s chassis. Normally, a hard disk would feel hot to the touch (warning: do not touch any part of an open computer when it is plugged) but this one remained only slightly warm even after six hours of continuous operation. Still, using the term “green” on a device that’s not using recycled parts just as it should be is still too much exploitation of the term.
For most ordinary people revolutions per minute (RPM) does not compute, tech enthusiasts would want a hard disk RPM to be faster. Current standard is 5400 but 7200 RPMs is already catching up. Higher RPMs means faster access time for certain files stored in the hard disk. Technically, the more a hard disk stores, the harder it is for the hard disk to search for files. The speed of the hard disk’s rotation is not always the answer to faster file searches but the WD Caviar Green has proprietary software called IntelliSeek to improve the search capability of the spindle. Users may not notice this at first but those who have lots of stored files, especially big ones, will find this very helpful.
A true test of a full 2 Tb hard disk would be difficult since it’ll be hard to put as many files in it, unless I have 40 Blu-ray movies to convert. In fact, even with everyone going HD, it’ll take some time before anyone could fill up a 1 Tb drive, much less a 2 Tb hard disk. Western Digital is still ahead on this but maybe in about six more months, again using Moore’s Law, a new model with 4 Tb would come out.
