WD launches 2 TB GreenPower HDDs

Western Digital Corp. today expanded its enterprise family of hard drives to include the next-generation 2 TB capacity, the largest and only 2 TB enterprise-class hard drive shipping today. Combining industry-leading 64 MB cache, dual processors, and increased areal density, WD RE4-GP hard drives yield twice the processing power resulting in as much as 25 percent performance improvement over the previous generation.

WD's GreenPower technology platform is the first 3.5-inch hard drive platform designed with power savings as the primary attribute. These drives reduce average drive power consumption by up to 50 percent over currently available competitors' drives and are ultra-cool and quiet, all while delivering solid performance.

The new WD RE4-GP 2 TB hard drive provides enterprise-class reliability for storage-hungry applications, such as cloud-computing infrastructure, large-scale data centers, data archive and tape replacement systems, commercial video surveillance and digital video editing houses, with an energy- and money-saving solution that combats the challenges facing the enterprise IT sector -- limited available drive slots, maximum capacity required, and limited power and budget. Addressing the growing high-capacity enterprise market, WD RE4-GP 2 TB drives are reliability-rated at 1.2 million hours MTBF (mean time before failure) in high duty cycle environments.

Exclusive Intelligent Drive Technology
WD RE4-GP hard drives with GreenPower technology deliver exceptional power conservation, run ultra-cool and quiet, while providing solid performance. Following are several technologies responsible for the performance enhancements:

• Faster - 64 MB cache, dual processors, and increased areal density yield twice the processing power resulting in as much as a 25 percent performance improvement over the previous generation.
• Greener - Improvements in our power-conserving technologies -- IntelliSeek, IntelliPark, and IntelliPower - deliver up to an average 25 percent reduction in power consumption over our previous generation of WD RE-GP drive.
• Improved Rotary Vibration Tolerance - Advanced mechanical and servo control optimization along with system characterization and validation enable rock solid performance under extreme vibration conditions, with negligible impact to performance, substantially more robust than the previous generation, making this drive ideal for the most industrial IT applications
• Active Power Management - WD drives with GreenPower technology monitor work load and automatically invoke idle mode whenever possible to further reduce unnecessary power consumption by up to an additional 40 percent. Drive recovery time from idle mode is less than one second, providing seamless power management between the drive and the host controller.
• StableTrac - Secures the motor shaft at both ends to reduce system-induced vibration and stabilize platters for accurate tracking, during read and write operations.
• RAID-specific Time-limited Error Recovery (TLER) - Pioneered by WD, this feature prevents drive fallout caused by the extended hard drive error-recovery processes common to desktop drives.
• Rotary Acceleration Feed Forward (RAFF) - This second generation WD RE-GP model increased rotational frequencies up to 1500 Hz, therefore optimizing operation and performance when the drives are used in vibration-prone multi-drive systems such as rack mounted servers or in systems deployed at industrial type locations.

Availability and Pricing The WD RE4-GP 2 TB hard drive (model WD2002FYPS) is available from select e-tailers and distributors. MSRP is $329.00 (U.S.). The WD RE4-GP 2 TB will also be shown by WD partners AMCC (booth number SL13007) and Promise (booth number SL12008) at the NAB Show in Las Vegas, NV.