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WD moves to 320GB per platter

by on20 March 2008

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Now shipping 640GB drive


Western Digital announced today that it is now shipping a new 640GB 2 platter hard drive featuring its new 320GB per platter technology. The new WD Caviar SE 16 640GB 3.5” drive will offer 3GB/s SATA performance as well as support NCQ (Native Command Queuing) technology.

The push for higher aerial density hard drives with lower platter counts are all the rage in hard drive technology at the moment because lower platter counts mean less heat and less power necessary to run the hard drive. As a by-product, normally with a higher aerial density performance also increases, while at the same time being able to offer the capacities that consumers want. Of course, heat and power are particularly of interest to those companies that are using hard drives in products like HD digital video recorders where big drives are necessary to store a lot of content, but the ability to generate less heat and use less power are a definite plus.

Western Digital intends to roll out its 320GB per platter technology across their hard drive offerings for desktop, enterprise, consumer electronics applications and external hard drive offerings throughout the calendar year. The first drive to feature the new technology is the WD6400AAKS.

With this announcement it would appear that the acquisition of platter maker Komag is starting pay dividends for the company. With this announcement of moving to 320GB per platter technology, this move puts WD ahead of all hard drive manufacturers in the race to pack more data per platter, with the exception of Samsung who has 334GB per platter technology that is the current leader.

Still, the news does put WD in a very good position moving forward as it has been able to leap frog other companies who are selling 3, 4, and 5 platter designs to reach the highest capacity points that consumers are clamoring for. With the street price of their 640GB hard drive coming in at US$139, which is just slightly higher than what the company was charging for their 500GB model, it would seem that consumers will benefit from the fact that they are able to get an extra 140GB of additional storage for close to the same amount that they were paying for the 500GB model.

Last modified on 20 March 2008
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