WD's 3TB Internal HDD Comes with PCI-e Card

[exfileme]

Although Windows 7 and Vista can support capacities over 2.19 TB, a special PCI Express card will be bundled with the new 3 TB and 2.5 TB hard drives to overcome the hardware hurdle.

WD's 3TB Internal HDD Comes with PCI-e Card : Read more

 

[huron]

I continue to be amazed at how they can continue to increase platter density. I still wonder when they will reach a limit.

Also...is anyone else worried about so much information on one disk? Yes, I'm a fan of RAID and backup, but 3TB seems like so much data.

I can still remember...(I'm sure we'll get plenty of comments - floppy disks, punch cards, MB of storage, etc)

 

[scimanal]

I am more curios about Raid support more than anything else, I wouldn't make this my bootable OS drive, but would this go into my Drobo? I am worried it won't...

 

[K2N hater]

Ever heard of Ontrack? That was a piece of software installed on boot sector which allowed boot on old BIOS that wouldn't allow > 2GB disks. I bet that could have been used instead. A driver-level patch would also do the trick but asking Microsoft to do their work is like asking for a new feature which is not compatible with any current Windows version but is sure to be shipped with the following one...

 

[christiangordon]

I agree huron... i would be worried about data on such a large HDD. I would prefer to have a few smaller 1TB or 2TB disks mirrored.

 

[aevm]

I've got a few questions...

If I build a new PC in 2011, and I want a lot of disk space, I must look for a motherboard with EFI, get Windows 7 64-bit, and then I can use these 3 TB disks without needing HBA cards?

What if I want to add 6 of these new disks to my current machine? Would I need 6 HBA cards? I don't have PCI-E slots for all of them. Does one HBA card support multiple drives?

There's a more detailed review here
http://www.storagereview.com/western_digital_caviar_green_3tb_review_wd30ezrsdtl

 

[SchizoFrog]

[citation][nom]huron[/nom]Also...is anyone else worried about so much information on one disk? Yes, I'm a fan of RAID and backup, but 3TB seems like so much data.I can still remember...(I'm sure we'll get plenty of comments - floppy disks, punch cards, MB of storage, etc)[/citation]
Personally I don't think it is so much about the amouont of data being stored as it is the size of data being stored with many people using these drives to rip full size DVDs, BluRays, etc... along with Video and Image editing advancing and also taking up huge amounts of digital space. I doubt anyone is storing 10m+ text documents.

 

[lejay]

[citation][nom]huron[/nom]I continue to be amazed at how they can continue to increase platter density. I still wonder when they will reach a limit.Also...is anyone else worried about so much information on one disk? Yes, I'm a fan of RAID and backup, but 3TB seems like so much data.I can still remember...(I'm sure we'll get plenty of comments - floppy disks, punch cards, MB of storage, etc)[/citation]

Well, it's not going to be 3TB of really, really important text documents, is it? 99% porn and you know it.

 

[SchizoFrog]

[citation][nom]christiangordon[/nom]I agree huron... i would be worried about data on such a large HDD. I would prefer to have a few smaller 1TB or 2TB disks mirrored.[/citation]
I don't understand your concern. If you are going to RAID Mirror then why does it matter about the size of the disk? I could understand a concern if you were using a RAID Stripe.

 

[dgingeri]

Does anyone know of a UEFI motherboard available right now? I've seen a couple laptops that use it, but not desktop systems.

 

[michaelssw]

$239 not bad, compared to when they released the 2TB at $299 initially

 

[ajcroteau]

Feels like were going back to the old 16-Bit ISA IDE Controller cards...

 

[jellico]

[citation][nom]huron[/nom]I continue to be amazed at how they can continue to increase platter density. I still wonder when they will reach a limit.Also...is anyone else worried about so much information on one disk? Yes, I'm a fan of RAID and backup, but 3TB seems like so much data.I can still remember...(I'm sure we'll get plenty of comments - floppy disks, punch cards, MB of storage, etc)[/citation]
I know what you mean. And they're close to maxed out yet. I read an article last year that was talking about using laser diodes in the hard drives to heat the surface of the platter at write time in order to further increase the data density. They indicated that storage capacities could be increased by as much as 10 times!

 

[Travis Beane]

Don't know about all of you, but I'm going to completely skip the 2.5/3TB drives and just wait for the 4TB.
I do understand the concern of having so much data on a single disk though. Losing all of the data stored on a 250GB drive sucked, I imagine 4,000GB would be hell.

I hope they're not only working on performance and density, but also reliability (which is, arguably, the most important feature). I can only fit so many drives into a single system (easily), I don't want to use a RAID 60...

 

[Guest]

3tb is not enough for my family VHS video collection.

 

[someoneelse]

This drive is perfect for recording tele in a media center pc.
If you are using a 3tb for recording tele then small errors or even loosing the all the data is not the worst thing ever. With an HD media center pc the more space the better. Shame I can't get this in XP (32 bit) though.

 

[Cryio]

Another hit at Microsoft's Windows XP. Ha!

 

[mayne92]

So what PCI-e slot will this take up I'm wondering...So much things going to pci-e but many consumer boards don't have all these slots or slots available...time for some sacrificing.

 

[tu_illegalamigo]

So All this next gen stuff coming in 2011 better damn well support EFI.

 

[ohseus]

@mayne92 PCI-e not a PCI-e x16 video slot. I think most boards have at least one these days.

 

[kikireeki]

This 3TB solution sounds problematic enough to be avoided -for the time being at least-.

 

[70camaross396]

It not capacity that is the issue, it is reliability. I have had very good luck with WD drives. I have only had 1 failure in 10 years of using them. even then it was a 20 GB drive, I lost every thing i had at the time. that is when i leared about RAID 0/1/5/10.

I prefer raid 5 or raid 1. for home use raid 1 is fine. all it costs is a motherboard that supports Raid and 2 identical drive. (technically the drives dont have to be identical. the raid volume will only be as large as the smallest drive) I would put 2 3TB Drive in a Raid 1 and call it good. In a busniess I would use Raid 5 or Raid 6 (raid 6 is like raid 5 except with double parity so it can tolerate 2 drives failing at once). Raid 5/6 have improved read/write speed over raid1, but that is really more for servers than performance desktops. even though some MB now support raid 5.

I currently have 2 1tb WD black edition in raid 1. they have never given me a minutes problem.

 

[ikefu]

3tb is not enough for my family VHS video collection.

Hey everyone! I brought my 3Tb hard drive of vacation videos along so we could watch them! All 9000 hours of them!

 

[theoutbound]

Until we have a solution that doesn't involve shoving a controller card into a PCI-e slot, I'll stick to multiple smaller drives.

 

[Zoonie]

How much porn would a porncollector collect if a porncollector could collect porn? ;P