Western Digital Offers First 2 Terabyte Drives

**Lemur** · 02-01-2009, 01:20

Be still my beating heart ...

WD's new 2TB drive offers a total of 32MB of cache and is a four-platter design (500GB per platter); areal density is up to 400GB/inch2. The earliest 1TB drives used five platters; Western Digital's 2TB Green is, in some sense, a bit ahead of the original 1TB curve. [...]

With economic times as nasty as they've been recently, Western Digital is rumored to be considering a series of unique marketing incentives to boost consumer uptake of the new hard drive. Ars has been quietly informed that should one proposed initiative be adopted, the first 69 buyers at every outlet where Western Digital products are sold would be rewarded with a 2TB Green "Not Kanye West" Western Digital hard drive, featuring samples, teasers, and trailers for all the self-produced porn (bisexual and otherwise) found within the artist's various e-mail accounts. It should be noted that West vehemently denies producing or starring in any of the videos and has publicly fingered "some hacker."

Okay, so the last bit is weird. But there's nothing strange about two terabytes in a svelte package! Bring on the 1080p pornography!

**Gregoshi** · 02-01-2009, 01:26

Overkill. 10mb is more than enough.

**naut** · 02-01-2009, 10:01

2TBs? That's, that's, HUGE!

Edit: What's with the last part...

**Omanes Alexandrapolites** · 02-01-2009, 14:33

Who, in god's name needs anything more than 100GB! My laptop and my desktop both have a 60GB hard drive and both have about 20GB of that free (laptop 17.3GB at the moment). That includes all my music, pictures e.c.t. I'd understand somebody with an awful lot more games, music or indeed video content than me needing more, but I, like I said, could not really see that going over 100GB. Documents and music are transferred between both computers weekly via CD, so it's not like one is storing one set of data and another another.

If that doesn't horrify you enough, I used to survive on 32GB - that was Windows XP though, and Vista does take up significantly more hard disk space from the outset. Still, I usually had the drive only slightly over half full with absolutely everything I needed on it.

**seireikhaan** · 02-01-2009, 22:01

Originally Posted by Omanes Alexandrapolites

If that doesn't horrify you enough, I used to survive on 32GB - that was Windows XP though, and Vista does take up significantly more hard disk space from the outset. Still, I usually had the drive only slightly over half full with absolutely everything I needed on it.

Pah. My old junker that I was using up through about 8 months ago had a 16 GB HD.

Two TB is crazy though, I doubt the most porn-addicted, music loving, part-time artist couldn't use all that HD space...

**Lemur** · 02-01-2009, 22:27

Originally Posted by seireikhaan

I doubt the most porn-addicted, music loving, part-time artist couldn't use all that HD space...

Just watch me. Uh, I mean, that is to say, you might be right, but there might be some hypothetical perverts out there who could, um, use some extra space.

**LittleGrizzly** · 02-02-2009, 11:48

I think my friend isn't too far off a TB between his external and internal hard drives, he's a bit of a collector though, my 600 GB hard drive will meet all my needs for the next few years no problem...

**Xiahou** · 02-02-2009, 16:07

A terabyte isn't as much as it used to be. My current desktop's drive only has about a 200gig HD and I'm constantly bumping against a full drive. For me, it's mainly games that take up the most space- it seems a modern game takes up 20gig+ to install anymore. I now have to uninstall an old one whenever I want to put something new on. Add to that a few gigs for my music library and photo collections and it adds up quick. If you do video editing- forget about it...

I think the next PC I build will have at least 1 TB of storage- maybe 2 if the drives are cheap enough by then. And the way install sizes have been ballooning, I could see using up a good bit of it.

**drone** · 02-02-2009, 17:00

Games generally take up the most space on my drive, but I can see the need for personal terabyte storage. Music and movies can chew up the space. A photography nut can easily start piling up the drive space, a good camera will generally eat 2-3Mbyte per picture. And, of course, pr0n....

The philosophical problem I see with large drives is the difficulty in backing them up. When a half-full 2 TB drive starts making bad noises, the sense of doom is just that much larger.

**Geezer57** · 02-02-2009, 17:18

My primary computer at home has approx. 1.4 terabytes for HDD storage (4 drives of varying capacity). I'm getting close to running out of room. Games take up most of the space for executables, but the biggest culprits are all the DVD images I've backed up.

As soon as these WD 2.0 terabyte drives become more widely available, I'll be picking up a couple - if for nothing else than backup to the backup.

**Mouzafphaerre** · 02-04-2009, 06:05

.

Originally Posted by Omanes Alexandrapolites

Who, in god's name needs anything more than 100GB!

Someone who stashes music, hi-res photos, movies and, well, you know...

I have a 320 in my tower, almost full to the brink, and an external 500 with about 30 G free space.

.

**TevashSzat** · 02-06-2009, 00:05

Originally Posted by Mouzafphaerre

.

Someone who stashes music, hi-res photos, movies and, well, you know...

I have a 320 in my tower, almost full to the brink, and an external 500 with about 30 G free space.

.

And I thought I had alot of random stuff stored in mine.

I have my computer with 160GB full and then a 640 GB external one that is about 240GB full atm.

I only have like ~4 computer games installed on my comp, though, so I could probably add at least another 20Gb or so if I installed most of my games